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By JONATHAN STABLEFORD

Recently I received a text announcing that there had been an “unrecognized visitor” to our new bird feeder. Two clicks later a video helped me identify the species: Homo sapiens. This is a bird feeder with a camera and recorded sound, and it had captured my gloved hand and the sound of cascading sunflower seeds as I performed my daily ritual of refilling five bird feeders, no two of them alike, and one of them “smart.”

By JONATHAN STABLEFORD

Early one morning just after we returned our clocks to standard time, the eastern horizon from my kitchen window flared like a stirred fire. Just above these hot coals, pink clouds arranged themselves in the scalloped shapes you see on a sandy beach...

By JONATHAN STABLEFORD

About 80 yards from our front porch, on what some would call a lawn and others a field, there is an eruption that looks a little like a green wave breaking on a rock. It’s not an unusual sight for a Vermont hillside where the mowing has to stop for a...

By JONATHAN STABLEFORD

It happens every year, the physical arrival of spring; so why is it so astonishing? Haven’t you been begging for just this to dislodge the mud and despair of the past six weeks? Haven’t you been hoping each trip to the woodpile will be your last until...

By JONATHAN STABLEFORD

How many times have I heard someone say, “Books are dead, no one reads anymore”? It may be true that reading habits have changed (I’d argue that young people who spend a lot of time online are actually reading a lot.) and that there has been a steady...

By JONATHAN STABLEFORD

I’m staring out my window into the deep woods, where the trees are swaying like a gospel choir and releasing clouds of last night’s snow. The temperature is barely above freezing, but what I see looks like winter. January brought us a little of...