Bryan's Blog
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A Triple (Treble) Bird Score
I have seen a Virginia Rail in Virginia, an Arctic Tern in the Arctic, a Mangrove Cuckoo in a mangrove…. You get the idea. But then there’s this woodpecker here in New Mexico — the source of my treble (not trouble).
Hot Birds in Vermont
Here are a couple birds you don’t see every winter in Vermont: Baltimore Oriole and Harlequin Duck. And since I’m far away from both those birds, I’ll offer a bonus shot of a Mexican Jay.
Wing Prints
With all the early snow in the U.S. this winter, birds have been making impressions – literally. We’re seeing various wing prints in the snow. It makes me wonder about the reliability of identifying these prints.
The Pulse of Ten Thousand Wings
Tens of thousands of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes can change your life for good. Here’s my next dispatch from Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in south central New Mexico.
Barred Before Bosque
Before I left Vermont for New Mexico, a few Barred Owls came visiting by email. Kerry and Linda Hurd, fittingly, encountered this Barred Owl above while attending the beautiful memorial celebration of Bob Spear’s life at his Birds of Vermont Museum in…
On the Road with Cranes and Geese
My apologies for the scarcity of late here on the blog. Once my work was done on the new web site for the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, I hit the road with Ruth for a month of writing in a cabin somewhere in…
Your New Way to Wildlife
Here’s one more reason to go online before going outside. My pals at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE) today launched a new web site that features breaking news about birds, insects, amphibians and other wildlife here in Vermont and…
Fertility and Flight
In the angled light of November, a moth crossed my path through barren woods. Yeah, a moth, in the cold – a lesson in adaptation, fertility, and feminine sacrifice going by the name Bruce Spanworm.
The Last Dragonfly
Even after our first hard frost and our last soft serve, after you’ve raked your leaves and mounted your snow tires, after the warblers have abandoned us for the tropics and you yourself have abandoned notions of warmth, and even after this cold political season – even then a dragonfly of summer remains.
A Halloween Dragon
Nothing scary here – unless you’re a mosquito or some other small flying insect. Halloween Pennants (Celithemis eponina), which hunt and eat insects, range across the eastern US. They perch at the tips of low vegetation and twirl in the…
Vermont’s First Snowy Owl of Autumn
Reed Webster found this Snowy Owl in Westminster, Vermont, on October 25 – our first report of the season. The Arctic has come visiting a bit early this fall. When they do come, Snowys usually begin to arrive here in New England by mid to late…
The Last Monarch
HERE IS YOUR LAST GASP OF SUMMER. Yep, most of the Monarchs are long gone – off with the winds to Mexico. But I’ve encountered America’s favorite butterfly here in Vermont as late as October 31 and along the Maine…
