In the open

Today I split open a dead twig of sumac in which the little upholsterer-bee had laid her eggs. From the summit a well or shaft was sunk some ten inches through the central pith....

I once surprised the weasel in this glen, with a young robin in her mouth which she had just taken from the nest and was carrying home for her family. She dropped the bird when...

Early in September the common brakes turn, imparting a faint glow to the woods. Dicksonia has a brighter hue, and patches surrounding a pasture boulder fairly seem to emit light...

We go with hungry eyes at this season. By midsummer we have been well feasted and no longer see individual blossoms so much as masses of bloom. Bloodroot and hepatica are like t...

_There is an estate on which we pay no tax and which is not susceptible of improvement. It is of indefinite extent and is to be reached by taking the road to the nearest woods a...

Here is a forest primeval such as was never known east of the Cascade, not, at least, since that remote period when the sequoia flourished in Greenland. Man wanders, a mere pygm...

The lumbermen come into the woods with the crossbills, and everywhere is heard the winter music of the ax. It is good music enough, but it has a sinister purport, and the swish...

April brings the twittering of tree-swallows, and spreads a tinge of color like a faint red mist over the swamps. This flower of the maple is one whose virtues are seldom sung,...

We are drawn ever by the voices of birds. Even such as might be called monotonous and unmelodious are none the less significant and welcome. The fine lisping notes of warblers,...

The persistence with which they fought is only to be compared to that of bulldogs, while they showed the ferocity of weasels. Once let an ant get another by the thorax and she w...

The sea is humanized and redeemed somewhat by the presence of these workers. It is agreeable to reflect that while it nourishes them, they in turn do not mar it. Man communicate...