Natural History Journal

Instantly recognizable by its prickly appearance and known for its [mistaken] reputation of throwing dangerous barbed quills toward would-be attackers, porcupines are perhaps simultaneously one of North America's most and least well-known mammals.   How well do you actually know this large rodent of the forest?  Read on to find out, and to learn the official term for baby porcupines (which is probably my favorite fun fact about this amazing creature)!  Members of the order Rodentia, North American Porcupines ( Erethizon dorsatum ) are North America's second-largest rodent, after the American Beaver.  Measuring between 2 and 3 feet in length and weighing 20 pounds or more, they are fairly sizable mammals!  As rodents, they are characterized by a set of strong, continually-growing incisors that must be worn down by daily gnawing on the plant material that makes up the entirety of their diet.  Like beavers, these front teeth are orange in color, thanks t...

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...

One of my favorite groups of birds, and certainly one of the most entertaining to watch, is the woodpecker family.  The Picidae family is represented in North America by twenty-two extant species, and as of last year, I have managed to see them all!  (Although, I have not successfully photographed them all yet!) Acorn Woodpeckers on a granary tree, Pinnacles National Park Sixteen of these twenty-two species are found in California, though some are fairly rare or have a limited range within the state.  Really, twelve species can be expected with a reasonable degree of confidence in the right habitat within California.   ( *California's twelve most common species of woodpeckers are marked with an asterisk below .) *Lewis's Woodpecker (California and the western U.S.) One of our most unique-looking woodpeckers, the rosy pink and dark, oily green Lewis's Woodpecker is regularly spotted in California's blue oak woodlands around the edges of the Central Valley....