Dana Wilde lives in Troy. His writings on Maine’s natural world are collected in “The Other End of the Driveway,” available from online booksellers or by contacting the author at [email protected]. Backyard Naturalist appears the second and fourth Thursdays each month.
Latest columns
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Although nearly 10% of other hummingbird species worldwide are threatened with extinction, ruby-throats are not, writes Dana Wilde.
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If there are steps you can take to cut back wood and oil burning at your house, writes Dana Wilde, you need to take them.
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Water hemlock looks to the unpracticed eye just like Queen Anne’s lace. One big difference though: It can be fatal to ingest, writes Dana Wilde.
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Climate change cannot be stopped now, but its effects can be mitigated, writes Dana Wilde.
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This summer has had an inexplicable phenomenon of early and late summer colliding, writes Dana Wilde.
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As humans tear up woods for development, salamanders and most amphibians are suffering severely from habitat loss and fragmentation, writes Dana Wilde.
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With the 50th anniversary of the landing next week, it seems like the future is all in the past, writes Dana Wilde.
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A close look at how spiders defecate reveals how they go out of their way to keep their surroundings clean, Dana Wilde writes.
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I was walking around this park before it was a park, writes Dana Wilde.
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While the tornadoes get bigger and the wildfires burn, the politicians fiddle for money, writes Dana Wilde.
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The earliest horseshoe crab fossil is about 445 million years old, which means they scuttled across the floors of Earth’s silent seas roughly 350 million years before any flower blossomed, writes Dana Wilde.
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Perennially, Dana Wilde writes, questions abound about what our feathered friends are saying as their songs fill woods.
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There are echoes of a whole other world inside the woods, writes Dana Wilde.
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One feline seems to be collecting on past good deeds, while another could be building up a balance to pay off later, Dana Wilde writes.
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Even though the snow-filled woods seem relatively calm and normal this winter, big global climate problems are amassing that need attention, Dana Wilde writes.
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Much of what we see in the night sky was also seen by our ancient ancestors, writes Dana Wilde.
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Inspired by literary figures, fictional characters and ideals, the names of cats don't always seem to fit but have peculiar ways of working out, Dana Wilde writes.
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Mojo's legacy lives in on from her teaching our other felines to avoid the road, writes Dana Wilde.
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How felines came to live among us is an interesting story, Dana Wilde writes.
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Native American names for seasonal moon cycles carry more resonance than our months, which are a human-made illusion, Dana Wilde writes.
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