Wildlife

Small Wild Spaces: Greenwell State Park, MD

I've been limited in my ability to do "big" trips lately (probably since backpacking in the Smokies), but have been doing a lot of exploration that's fairly local. Greenwell is an interesting little State Park in Southern Maryland, an old farm that has been (largely) allowed to return to a natural state, but also serves…Read more Small Wild Spaces: Greenwell State Park, MD

Eastern Box Turtle

Eastern Box Turtles and the Wildlife Trade You Never Knew Existed

I was listening to a Smithsonian podcast this week (shout out to Side Door, great program!), and the episode started with the host joining a pair of wildlife ecologists in an "undisclosed location" in Virginia, looking for what I thought was the most common of common backyard critters, the eastern box turtle. My first reaction…Read more Eastern Box Turtles and the Wildlife Trade You Never Knew Existed

Black Bears Are Back: Southern Maryland Sightings Signal Expanding Territory

When Leon Smith stepped outside his St. Mary's County home in mid-July and found his bird feeder knocked over, he probably wasn't expecting to come face-to-face with a black bear. The rural Maryland county along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay is not an established part of the black bear's range, and the animals…Read more Black Bears Are Back: Southern Maryland Sightings Signal Expanding Territory

Gazing Into The Field Of Flowers

Summer Sunflowers

https://youtu.be/4iJyvVMHBKw It's high summer. Haze, high humidity, intense heat, and the threat of thunderstorms have become a daily routine. Last week, as the temperature briefly dipped into the mid-80s (F), and the forecast included thunderstorms for the next five days, we took a quick opportunity to get out to the local produce farm with a…Read more Summer Sunflowers

Armadillos: Ancient, Strangely Cute, and Coming To A State Near You!

Armadillos are... unique. The ones that live in the United States, the nine-banded armadillos (Dasypus novemcinctus) are smallish mammals, around 30 inches long (about the size of a raccoon, groundhog, or skunk) but they are covered with leathery armored overlapping plates that wrap from left to right across their bodies. From underneath this "shell" emerge…Read more Armadillos: Ancient, Strangely Cute, and Coming To A State Near You!

Invasive Feral Hogs in the Smoky Mountains

A lot of my blog-posting derives from encountering something interesting that prompts me to go down a road of research and discovery. This is one of those posts. Last week, my son and I spent three days and two nights backpacking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (more on that soon, including video), and we…Read more Invasive Feral Hogs in the Smoky Mountains

Eastern Bluebird

Carnivorous Caterpillars, Living Lightning Rods, and Bluebirds

Some recent natural science stories that I find interesting: Caterpillars Scientists in Hawaii have discovered a very unique caterpillar with a very dangerous lifestyle. First of all, it's carnivorous - a trait that only 0.13% of all known butterfly/moth species share. Second, it gets its meals by living in spider webs, and scavenging the bits…Read more Carnivorous Caterpillars, Living Lightning Rods, and Bluebirds