Great Duck Island is a notoriously tough place to land a boat. There’s no dock, just a steep, slippery ramp on the island’s exposed south side, which can only be approached in a Zodiac on a day when seas are under four feet. But one afternoon late last September, a pair of students from Bar . . .
It’s bedtime, 10 o’clock, but I can’t sleep. Something is tugging me outside on this cool autumn night. I get out of bed, grab a down sleeping bag, and settle into the hammock in the backyard. Jupiter gleams over the silhouette of a spruce tree at the edge of the field. Constellations shimmer and the . . .
My parents never smiled with their mouths open for pictures when we were kids. Their teeth were crooked, and a few were missing. My brother and I had crooked teeth, too, riddled with cavities. We learned early to close our mouths for the camera, but sometimes, we forgot. Dad’s dental insurance from the Maine State . . .
Follow the lives of a resident family of American oystercatchers as you explore the diversity of an estuary, where rivers meet the sea, in Matagorda Bay. Celebrate the unique ecology of the bay as its own little world of Texas estuaries, the “nurseries of the sea.” . . .
A stream narrates its own natural history as it flows from its headwaters in the mountains to its mouth in the lowlands, introducing the plants and animals that line its banks and live in its waters. . . .
Wild Design reveals the wonders of the natural world as never seen before, through the stunning, extraordinary, and functional forms created by animals, plants, and other organisms all around us. . . .
What do the horseshoe crab, chambered nautilus, goblin shark, tuatara lizard, velvet worm, lungfish, tadpole shrimp, and the indestructible beasts called tardigrades (which look like bears but are the size of the period at the end of a sentence) have in common? . . .
Estuaries form where river meets sea and fresh water mixes with salt. Teeming with life, these places of salt marshes, mudflats, and tidal backwaters serve as nursery areas for oceangoing fish, migratory stopovers for shorebirds, and homes for an amazing diversity of snails, bivalves, fish, mammals, horseshoe crabs, fiddler and blue crabs, terrapin turtles, plankton, and many others, all of whom we meet in the pages of this delightful book. . . .
You might walk right by a vernal pool and not notice it. Often mistaken for mere puddles in the woods, vernal pools are the source of life for many interesting creatures. If you look carefully you can find them—and be amazed! These secret pools form every year when low places on the forest floor fill up with rain and melted snow. They soon become home to hatching wood frogs, spotted salamanders, and fairy shrimp. Even in late summer and fall, when many vernal pools have shrunk to mud holes, creatures such as turtles and snakes rely on these places for shelter and food. . . .