Sometime during my elementary school years, a guy built a pond on his land in the middle of our neighborhood. I don’t know all of what was said or discussed about having a pond in the middle of a neighborhood, but I’m sure it was a lot. But he did it anyway. And there…

“If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.” That’s great advice and a truism for almost all wildlife, something even a four-year-old can recognize. It’s especially true for Ohio’s longest reptile, the Grey Ratsnake (Pantherophis obsoletus), previously called the Black Ratsnake. Recent advancements in genetic research have led to a deeper understanding of snake…

 It’s been technically “spring” for weeks now, but we’re just now passing into the frost free zone in Southwest Ohio. The morning chill is less biting and the afternoon highs haven’t pick up the humidity to come later. Tucked beneath a canopy of trees or out an in an open meadow you, you’ll find relatively…

“If you get out, you’ll find them.” That’s what Clark County morel mushroom hunter Jim Neff told me. It’s great this year, with the big yellows starting now. If we get some rain, they will really pop,” he said. “But I bet if you go look right now, you’d find some.” If you haven’t looked…

They blocked out the sun. That’s a phrase writers in the 1800s used to describe several natural events, including migrations of passenger pigeons, Carolina parakeets, and Rocky Mountain locust. All of which were extinct a relatively short time later. The environment is always changing, going through a series of contractions and renewals. Change happens; the…

Spring is officially here, according to the calendar. While the weather in Southwest Ohio will do what it does, meaning whatever it wants, the changes outside are going to progress rapidly. In just a blink of an eye, trees will be filled with leaves and freezing temperatures behind us. Now is the time to take…

Image credit: https://ohiodnr.gov/wps/wcm/connect/gov/f9f984f9-0e28-4586-9c15-b841fd03de19/northernspringpeeper1-HERO.jpg?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=ROOTWORKSPACE.Z18_JQGCH4S04P41206HNUKVF31000-f9f984f9-0e28-4586-9c15-b841fd03de19-pIvo2PS  I’ve heard, or more accurately, read, that you can hear a lion’s roar from 5 miles away. That’s pretty impressive. At 114 decibels, it’s in line with heavy machinery or a rock concert. At or close to 500 pounds for males, there is some mass behind the sound. At the other end of…

Spring can be the most frustrating season outdoors. Aside from really testing the theory of “no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes,” it has a way of putting what we want out of sync with what we have. The temperature might be perfect, but there’s rain. If there’s no rain, it’s cold and…

“Honest as a robin on a springtime windowsill,” sang Randy Travis in the hit song, “Deeper than the Holler.” Turns out the robin isn’t an automatic harbinger of spring. However, that little bugger singing on your windowsill at 6 in the morning isn’t a liar either.  Some of the earliest migrators to return back to…

Years ago, (let’s say late 1990’s) I was taking an early spring morning walk on the edge of a fenceline with my German Shorthaired Pointer, Eva. When a coyote popped out in front of us, maybe 60 yards from me and 30 yards from Eva, I wasn’t sure what to expect: Eva had never took…