Category Archive

Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Wildlife for Blog”

One Photograph: Three “Wish Birds”

As a Massachusetts boy who had been seeking out new birds for better than a year, I was possessed by an unwritten “wish list” of some ten or fifteen species I’d tried desperately but failed to see.

Below the Surface: Atlantic Salmon, a New England Icon

The Atlantic salmon is a near mythical creature, long prized by indigenous people, royalty, anglers, artists, and gourmands.

The Fascinating Life Cycle of Dragonflies

Warm breezes, the shimmer of light reflected off gentle ripples on the surface of a pond, the melodic trill of summer cicadas, and the translucent glimmer of dragonflies as they perform their aerial ballet—all of these images conjure thoughts of summer in New England.

Wildlife Wonders: Green Herons

It’s well known by birdwatchers that green herons (Butorides virescens), who are common in the Connecticut River watershed, use their daggerlike bills to seize prey.

Below the Surface: Let’s Not Lose More Fish Species

The Connecticut River ecosystem has a complex food web below the surface.

One Photograph: Birds? Why BIRDS?

One day my younger brother put it to me. “How do you get interested in birds?” he asked. “Just how do you get interested in birds?”

Wildlife Wonders: Here Come the Monarchs

Each fall, as we all know, tens of thousands of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) fly from the Northeast to the central mountains of Mexico, where they huddle together and overwinter with other monarchs from across the country.

American Shad: The Iconic Fish of the Connecticut River

Many areas in this country have icon species that add richness to their sense of place. The Texas Gulf Coast is busy working to restore the iconic Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, and we have here in the Connecticut River watershed the American shad (Alosa sapidissima).

The Most Dangerous Animal in America

Connecticut is at the infestation epicenter of a beast that kills some 200 Americans a year; injures at least 10,000 others; is annually responsible for billions of dollars in property damage; trashes native ecosystems; and spreads an infection that causes fever, headache, fatigue, and, if untreated, injury to joints, heart, and brain.

In the Darnedest Places: Rails

In the marsh, the wilderness makes its last stand.” So wrote the eminent New England bird man, Edward Howe Forbush, now more than a century ago.

One Photograph- Where the Sea Breaks Through- at Griswold Point

“Head for the inlets, where the sea breaks through,” wrote Roger Tory Peterson,* “if you wish to see birds by the hundreds”; and this 14-year-old had dearly wished to do just that. I asked my dad, who had grown up here at the mouth of the Connecticut, and he knew of exactly such an inlet.

Below the Surface- A Fishway for the Tunxis (aka Farmington) River

Like a tree trunk dividing upward into branches and small twigs, our river systems have incredible complexity. The Connecticut River drains a vast, 11,000-acre watershed with many tributaries. Species of migratory fish ascended most of these, to differing degrees, depending upon which species and which tributary.

Wildlife Wonders: Be a Citizen Scientist and Enjoy the Fun

Examples of citizen science at work might be as simple and meaningful as sampling water quality in a local stream for the Nature Conservancy or helping wildlife biologists count salmon that are using fish ladders to get around hydro dams and leap upstream to spawn in rivers like the mighty Connecticut River.