Natural History Journal

Earlier this January, we spent several days exploring the lush, ferny redwood groves and mossy Sitka spruce forests of northwestern California, and while hiking through this enchanting habitat, observing the plants, birds and other wildlife, it occurred to me that in a sense, winter in California's Humboldt and Del Norte counties is a little bit like summer in North America's vast boreal forests.   Varied Thrush Also called taiga, the world's boreal forests form a lush, green ring around the top of our planet, covering much of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia.  These dense forests are comprised largely of coniferous trees, particularly pine, fir, and most notably, spruce.  At such high latitudes, long, cold winters are characteristic of the boreal forest, but even so, these often-snowy forests are vital to the health of our planet.  Boreal forests are massively important on a global ecological scale, as they hold more surface freshwater than any other biom...

While we began our trip across the UK last June in London, we certainly didn't stay there!  Though the city offered a surprising amount of birds and other wildlife , and was a convenient base for a trip out to wetlands in the Thames estuary for even more encounters with nature, we were eager to travel north, where we would spend time rambling through the quiet countryside and impossibly picturesque villages of the Cotswolds and Yorkshire Dales.   Mute Swan, an iconic British bird, in front of Bibury's idyllic Arlington Row. We stayed in a few different small villages as we made our way north to Scotland, and greatly enjoyed the UK's delightful network of footpaths that wind endlessly through the countryside linking one charming hamlet to another.  From Bourton-on-the-Water, in the Cotswolds, we followed parts of the Monarch's Way; in the Yorkshire Dales, we trekked along the Dale's Way from our base in Grassington; and near Haltwhistle, we climbed steep sections of...