Nature Snippets

Winter fireflies

On any warm winter day, there's a chance that you'll encounter a winter firefly. These important predatory beetles are a sign that there's a thriving food web in your yar

Cellar Spiders: Leggy Pest Control in Your Home or Mine

Possibly the most common non-human resident in the average home is the long-bodied cellar spider. These innocuous beasties provide non-toxic, round-the-clock pest control

Water Pennies: Flat as a Pancake

I recorded this back in January and am finally getting around to launching it today. This episode features a fascinating little beetle larva that clings to rocks in river

Snowflake Declan?

The winter season ha provided some wonderful snowflakes. IN this episode I discuss a Vermonter know as "Snowflake Bentley". Wilson Bentley attached a bellows camera to a

The Amazing Bug Road SHow

Of late, I'm more frequently called upon to talk about bugs than ever. But to reduce the chances of rendering my audience comatose, I use live insects and hands-on demo

LIfe, death, black flies, and independent bookstores

Freshwater ecologists often group invertebrates based on how they eat. Black fly larvae filter particles out of the water and in one case, they managed to help put a murd

Nets, boots, macroinvertebrates, action: and an invition to a field trip 6/29/24 9:00AM in Danville Vermont

Macroinvertebrates, or the invertebrates we can see, are sentinels of clean water monitored by professional biologists. They can also be a gateway drug for budding scient

Brainwashed by Worms and 2 Event Announcements

Imagine a worm that enters the body of a different species, and then takes over its brain, altering its behavior to the benefit of the work and to the detriment of the ho

Cloudy With a Chance of Flies. And first book event announcement.

In warmer weather, have you ever encountered a cloud of flies buzzing up and down near a water body? Chances are that you have encountered a swarm of midges. This episode

Carpet beetles, skin beetles, and hide beetles, oh my!

It is entirely likely that you share your dwelling with some generally innocuous beetles that subsist in corners on dried crumbs, cat hair, or other dried organic materia

Spotted Lanternflies

What sucks the juice out of many plants, leaves a sticky mess that promotes mold growth, and will lay its eggs ANYWHERE. The answer is the spotted lanternfly, a beautiful

Upside-Down Aquatics

Scuba divers pump compressed air into or out of jackets to hang neutrally buoyant in the water column. Few insects can manage the same feat and must hang onto to plants o

Turning stones: how one guy wrote a book

A friend and radio broadcaster in my home town asked me to record something about the process of writing and publishing a book. I suspect that each book develops on a uni

Ice out and climate change

We have dramatically changed our climate. It's easy to consider that the change is slight. After all, who can remember what our climate was like back in the 70s? Back whe

Ladybird? Ladybug? Fly Away Home

Ladybugs, Ladybirds, or Lady beetles are familiar to all in art and in reality. These little munchers of aphids and other garden insects are common in many habitats. If t

Springs in winter

In colder winters than we are currently experiencing in Vermont, small streams wear thick layers of ice. In the winter of 1997 I attempted to sample some streams year rou

Green Long-Jawed Spiders

With snow on the ground, you might not expect to find many invertebrates about, but there are some exceptions. Long-jawed spiders are among the most common invertebrates

Calligrapha beetles support the matriarchy. And a new logo

Calligraphy beetles have beautiful patterns that appear to be inked onto their elytra with a fine-tipped black pen. Their larvae specialize on particular plant species be

Isopods, woodlice, sowbugs, or rollie polies? Isopods! And a book announcement.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" - Shakespeare said it best. The subject of this week's episode has many names just in English, but whatever you choose to

Tree rings: time travel in the forest

If you have seen a freshly felled tree, you may well have noticed the rings in the cross section that mark the passage of the years. But felling trees just as an historic