Bryan's Blog

Monhegan Report No. 3: Moonset to Moonrise

The sea is life here on Monhegan Island. But island communities also live close to the sky. Above is the full moon setting behind Manana and the Island Inn on Thursday morning. Twelve hours later, after a day of birding and walking and visiting with friends here, Ruth and I dashed out to Burnt Head to watch the (almost) full moon rise from the ocean.

Monhegan Report No. 2: The Other Migration

On the breath of Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind, migrants blew onto Monhegan Island Tuesday morning. No fallout, but we were busy with some of the place-name warblers: Tennessee, Nashville, Cape May. South winds Wednesday produced a quiet morning.

Monhegan Island Migration Reports

Tired songbirds drop from the skies at dawn. Falcons give chase and take life. Gulls feast on table scraps. And migration mingles with the human condition. Welcome to Monhegan Island. Ten miles off Maine’s midcoast, Monhegan is a rocky outpost…

Monhegan Report No. 1: Beer and a Movie

In the gray dawn on Monhegan Island, Merlins were already on the hunt – Blue Jays in their sights. Like stunt jets, the falcons zoomed and twisted and swooped. The jays couldn’t decide whether to scold or scatter or both.

Hawkwatching Confidential

The fall hawk migration is upon is. Here’s some advice for novice hawkwatchers.

Dirty Insect Image No. 2

It spends most of its life as an egg attached to the underside of a cranberry leaf in a single spruce bog. But during its week-or-so fling as a tiny adult, the Bog Copper (Lycaena epixanthe), about the size of…

Beginner Naturalist Course

If you prefer shorebirds to shopping, flowers over Facebook, you might be a naturalist. And you should consider joining my pals at North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier for the Beginner Naturalist Mini-Course this fall. During two lectures and two field sessions,…

Montpelier Migration

By Bryan on September 8, 2013 It began on Saturday with a couple of Black-capped Chickadees in Montpelier’s Hubbard Park. In a scraggly hawthorn, which had already lost half its leaves, my morning walk then erupted into a festival of…

Monarchs Wednesday in Brookfield

The Forecast Calls for Snowberries

NOW AWAITING A FROLIC through your senses is one of nature’s most delightful candies, a treasure so discreet that you probably pass it by during walks on the long, green path. When you are next on some mountain trail, in…

Bye Bye Yankee

Last one out the door, turn off the lights. Vermont Yankee, our aging nuclear plant, announced today that it would close at the end of next year. So much for the plant’s green-washed moniker: “Safe, Clean, Reliable.” We tend to…

Dirty Insect Image No. 1

By Bryan on August 25, 2013 Perhaps this will be a new blog feature: insects, um, er, you know, making more insects. I’ve got scores of these. I’ll begin with this copulating pair of White-faced Meadowhawks (Sympetrum obtrusum), which I…