I’ve come to recognize some cries foxes make as their love songs. Winter is their mating season and, like birds in the spring, foxes communicate by vocalizing. Late November and early December is when you’re most likely to hear foxes sing. Read the Full Story >>
Doug Pifer
Doug Pifer is an artist, naturalist, and writer. He has a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Penn State and has been an editor and art educator. His illustrations have appeared in various books and magazines and he has been a contributor to The Observer for several years. He lives with his wife and assorted animals on 5.7 acres in a historic farmhouse near Shepherdstown.
Woolly Bears and Giant Leopards
What do the giant woolly bear and the great leopard moth have in common? Quite a lot, it turns out. Read the Full Story >>
The Prairie Grass Season
Years ago the highway department scraped and graded a steep bank along the road past our property. In order to prevent erosion and to enhance the area as wildlife habitat, we seeded the bare clay soil with a mixture of native perennial plants and warm season grasses. Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi) and Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) are both useful and dramatically beautiful native grasses. Read the Full Story >>
On Seeing Uncommon Butterflies
Pennsylvania. There was a bath house where electric lights burned all night in the middle of the woods. Each morning and evening, countless insects covered the side of the building around the beam of the flood lights. Read the Full Story >>
A Tree Finds A New Life
For the past five years, we worried that every time it stormed a big limb would break off of our beloved old Kentucky coffee tree and destroy our entryway fence. Now our property is safe from that disaster and a magnificent old tree remains as wildlife habitat. Read the Full Story >>
Sounds Of Summer: The Wood Pewee
As spring turns into summer, I listen for a bird song I’ve loved since childhood. I remember hearing, as soon as school closed for the summer, a rather lazy, sentimental birdsong coming from the woods across the road. Whenever I hear it now, it invokes memories of long summer days. Read the Full Story >>
At Home With a Special Tulip Tree
For about a century, a magnificent tulip tree has stood in the front yard of our house. Read the Full Story >>
A Look at The Blue-Eyed Cicada
By the time you read this story, tens of thousands of cicadas may have already appeared in the Eastern Panhandle, filling the air with their buzzing. Read the Full Story >>
Keep Your Bird Feeders Clean
Feeding the birds has helped people young and old to get through this pandemic winter. For many home-bound Americans, this backyard hobby has helped lighten the loneliness and depression brought about by the isolation of the pandemic quarantine. But in recent months, all these bird feeders may have brought the birds an epidemic of their own. Thankfully, the solution to this problem is simple Read the Full Story >>
Feeling The Heartbeat Of Spring Emerging
During my sixty-odd years as a naturalist, I’ve learned spring actually starts long before the first of March. I write this in mid-February as it seems winter has yet to loosen its grip, until you listen and look closely. Read the Full Story >>
The Flow Must Go On
No creatures on earth can change their environment more drastically than humans and beavers. In the natural world, beaver dams create new wetland habitat for a variety of wildlife. Fishermen, hunters, bird watchers, hikers and outdoor recreationists love to visit beaver dams. But when beavers cut down trees, obstruct and divert waterways, and flood fields, septic systems and basements, their “damming” activities place beavers in direct conflict with humans. Read the Full Story >>
Seeing & Hearing The Signs of New Beginnings
As a difficult and challenging year winds down and the pandemic shows new surges, I find much comfort observing nature. The transition from late fall into winter to me represents more of a beginning than an end. Read the Full Story >>
Even the Birds Sound Different in 2020
About a half hour after sunrise, the song of a white-throated sparrow came from our big forsythia bush. I look forward to these sparrows every year, but this time I was paying special attention. Read the Full Story >>
A Colorful Winter Ahead?
Last month I heard a different bird call coming from one of our tall arborvitae trees in the front yard. When I heard it again a few days later I recognized it—pine siskins! I was excited to see a flock of about a hundred land in the same tree. Read the Full Story >>
Rediscovering Hummingbirds
Can you find something positive to remember about this summer, despite the lockdown and the quarantine? I shall remember this as the summer we rediscovered hummingbirds. Read the Full Story >>
