During October and November you will encounter an insect that’s certain to attract attention. Whatever you do, don’t touch it. A common sight in some locales, especially on trails and along forest edges, it is a jet-black, flightless creature that crawls on the ground and might have you thinking that it’s a giant ant. That insect, which can be two-thirds of an inch to more than an inch in length, is not an ant. It’s the American oil beetle. Oil beetles are members of the blister beetle family, a telling name of the danger they pose. When handled, they partake in something called “reflexive bleeding” or “auto hemorrhaging”. A yellowish, oily substance exudes from the joints of their legs. This stuff is called hemolymph, which is the insect world’s equivalent of blood. It is predominantly water, but it also contains nutrients, such as carbohydrates and lipids, and other things necessary for life, like hormones. The hemolymph of oil beetles contains a potent chemical called cantha...

If you are a Baby Boomer, you will remember how extraordinary pheasant hunting was from the mid-1950s into the early-1970s. It was one of the most popular outdoor pursuits in Western New York, far rivaling the buck fever you see nowadays when deer season opens. The shoulders of rural roadways were full of parked cars while factories and classrooms would be empty as families shared Opening Day out in the field. Pheasants were everywhere and in huge numbers; hunters had much success and put many a savory bird on the dinner table. At the peak of the pheasant hunt, New York hunters would harvest a half million ring-necks per year. That era seems so long ago and almost unbelievable, even mythical, to today’s hunters. Except for small, periodic releases on state lands, ring-necked pheasants could be considered rare in WNY. In places where pheasants were once taken for granted and maybe even considered bothersome (there were so many they’d get caught in farm equipment at harvest time) seeing ...

  Most of my nature library is made up of books I accumulated as a kid. For the most part, they remain accurate because animals and their behaviors really don’t change too much over the course of a few decades. Where they do occasionally need revision, though, is in the range maps. Take the fox squirrel, for example. Going back to the mid-1990s, fox squirrels really weren’t a thing in Western New York. Back then, if you did see one, your sightings were limited to Chautauqua County. Their traditional range had them living across the entire central US and some of the eastern US south of the NY-PA border. Fast forward to 2025. It’s a different world. Now, fox squirrels can be found, though still quite rarely, in many parts of Western New York. Perhaps an outcome of the maturation of woodlands that were once farmland, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation says they can now be found in the Empire State’s 8 western counties, with the greatest numbers at the shore ...

  If I was asked to make a short list of my favorite birds the red-breasted nuthatch would be on it. Not only are the birds cute and friendly, but their songs transport my thoughts and memories to vacations and weekends on their home turf, be it the seemingly endless coniferous forests of northern Canada or the tracts of hemlocks, pines, and spruces found in certain locales of our Southern Tier. You see, this nuthatch, unlike its very familiar cousin the white-breasted nuthatch, is not especially common in the Niagara region. In the last edition of the NYS Breeding Bird Atlas, there were only 3 confirmed nests in Niagara County and none in Orleans County. That’s because red-breasted nuthatches have an affinity for cone-bearing trees in great numbers. Those are forests of the north, or, here in Western New York, atop some of the higher peaks near the Pennsylvania border or in the woodlands of Allegany County that were planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Dep...