The first time I ever saw Cedar Waxwings catch flies was this July in my Canaan, NH back yard. In the early evening, a flock of mystery birds began awkwardly leaping and tumbling from the top of a tall tree in an ungainly reproduction of flycatcher behavior.  They did...

Apparently, I don’t know a damned thing about goldfinches. This despite the fact that goldfinches and I go way back. In Houston, two yards down from my small, private nature preserve, was a glorious and enormous American Elm. This was once a ubiquitous street tree. Elms shaded our growing...

While nature contains great and fascinating variety, the basic underlying system is almost always the same: plants can turn sunshine into sugar but they can’t reproduce without help. So they offer the sugar to anyone in a position to move sperm to egg and then to disburse the resulting...