According to a recent article in the journal Science, if you were alive in the year 1970, more than one in four birds in the US and Canada has disappeared within your lifetime. What’s happening, and which birds are most in danger?
Folklore says that such a ring around the Sun or Moon portends the arrival of a storm within 24 hours. There’s truth to that.
Astronomers use the letter X followed by a constellation name to represent objects emitting X-rays — a rarity in the cosmos.
As the cold penetrates our bones and makes its hoary way into bark and under ground, the eternal natural cycle of life and death, hunter and hunted, predator and prey comes into clear and sharp focus.
Hunting season is upon us. Though this sport has lost favor in the last few years, I still await clothed hunters who now with bright day-glow orange are easily recognized at convenience stores and gas stations. Most sport their tags on the backs of their jackets.
Moonlight is at its brightest. Let’s celebrate that by giving it some attention during this lunation. Copernicus, a magnificent, isolated crater with terraced walls, is regarded by many as the Moon’s most handsome feature. It’s now at its best.
Vassar professor Debra Elmegreen is president-elect of the International Astronomical Union – the largest organization of professional astronomers in the world – and will begin her three-year term as president in 2021. Like Maria Mitchell more than 150 years ago, Elmegreen was recently elected into membership of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
This land, to be kept forever wild by the volunteer not-for-profit group Mill Brook Preserve, Inc., is like a magical world within the heart of town. There are pine groves and streams, multiple ponds and beaver dams and lodges as well as wild mushrooms and old-growth trees split in half by lightning that somehow came back to life.
Friday, Nov. 22: Can the Earth heal itself as quickly if we stop polluting it, or are we already irrevocably past the tipping point? If you’re losing sleep worrying about that existential question and could use a dose of hope, you might want to catch Dr. Lourie’s talk He is known for having initiated the largest climate action in North America: phasing out coal in Ontario.
When and why do deer lose their antlers? How do squirrels organize their nut hoards? What do shrews eat? Are bobcats making a comeback in the mid-Hudson Valley?