I’ve led dozen of nature hikes through the years and on each and every one of them one of the questions posed to me has been: “What does poison ivy look like?” You’d be surprised by how many people are unfamiliar with the plant, especially given that it is so bothersome and has sent many a person to the doctor or ER. To me, it should be one of those dangers you educate your kids about at an early age – like crossing the road and talking to strangers. So, here’s a primer about poison ivy... Where to find it Poison ivy grows best in direct sun, so it can be found in waste areas (the edges of parking lots, roads, railroad corridors), thickets, open woods, orchards and lawns. Young forests without a major canopy can be especially riddled with it. Sadly, poison ivy is one of the more abundant plants in Niagara County’s woodlands. In many spots, it can blanket forest floors and hiking trails, which is why I always tell hikers to wear pants, not shorts, in Niagara’s wilds. Compare that ...

  The plight of the monarch butterfly has been well documented. Their population has been in such dramatic decline that the once common insect is now listed as “endangered” under Canada’s Species at Risk Act and the US Fish and Wildlife Service has a proposed, not yet finalized, listing of “threatened”. After observing a good seven years of increased numbers that gave me hope for recovery of the orange and black beauties, in 2024 that hope was dashed as I saw very few monarchs. As a matter of fact, over the course of the summer and fall I saw far more of their look-alike cousin, the viceroy, a butterfly that was never present in great numbers to begin with. Last year, as one would expect after such a dramatic decline, wasn’t the best year, either. Fast forward to 2026. This year, it feels like my childhood years all over again – I dare say the monarchs are abundant. Whereas I saw fewer than a dozen two years ago, I’ve seen dozens this year. It’s not a hyper-local happening, either;...

  August can be a difficult time for birdwatchers. The silence of the forest tells them that the end is near, as most species of songbirds will start their journeys south by month’s end or early-September. On the other side of that mass migration, we’re left with the familiar and friendly visitors to our feeders until the others return, some six or seven months later. So, we’re in the last hurrah of the seasons of life that we look forward to all throughout our winters. A gradual silence falls over the woodlands during the dog days of summer. The birds pipe down because mating, nesting, and caring are done; staking out territories is no longer a thing as species kindly flock up; and they go silent so as not to bring attention to themselves as they molt in advance of migration – slower of flight during that period of change, they could be an easier catch for predators. It gets to a point in late-August that some days it seems as if the only birds one hears are squawking corvids like...

  Most readers of this column hail from Niagara County, where the terrain can be flatter than a pancake. Coming from that environment, most don’t think of WNY as having steep, wooded hills big enough that many would call them mountains. There actually is a stretch of such mountains to the southwest of Wellsville in Allegany County. Parts of the town of Alma feature the highest land in New York State outside of the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains. The ultimate summit there is Alma Hill, which comes in at 2,548 feet. To put that in perspective, many of you have vacationed in the Old Forge area of the Adirondacks and have scaled the super-popular Bald Mountain (sometimes called Rondaxe Mountain). Bald Mountain would need another 235 feet to reach Alma Hill’s heights. “Leaf peeping” -- seeing the mountains and experiencing their beautiful forests and awesome views with a car -- is fun. As a matter of fact, at 2,500 feet, Alma Hill Road is the second highest free paved road in New Y...

  A handful of years ago, while enjoying solitude sitting outdoors, I heard a noise I hadn’t heard before. It was a subtle, paced, repetitious sound that was like clicking or grinding. I wondered if the metronomic culprit might be a cricket or tree frog. Always wanting to get a good picture to supplement this column or one of my daily #Nature365 posts on social media I snuck up on it. Expecting to see some sort of crawling creature on a log I was startled to discover that the noise was instead coming from inside of the log – which, by the way, wasn’t hollow. I couldn’t wrap my head around what I just experienced. What could have made that noise? A week or two later I had my “eureka!” moment when, in that same area, I saw a white-spotted pine sawyer. It was then I realized the noise I heard was the larva of the species. The babies are what give this beetle its name as the sound of them chewing wood is reminiscent of a small saw. The fact that the larva’s jaws – and just one larva,...