In Portland, where they know their lobsters, a calico lobster is on display. Click here to see the Portland Press-Herald story with the photo; it looks like a “tortoise-shell” calico cat (orange and brown, no white).  From the story:
Calico lobsters are one of the rarest of miscolored lobsters. A blue lobster is one in [...]

If you need more evidence of the successful return of wild turkeys to New Hampshire - and anybody who drives doesn’t need much evidence, since slowing down for turkey families wandering down the road has become commonplace - then consider this: Turkey population growth is so vigorous that the state is expanding the fall shotgun [...]

The advocacy group center for Biological Diversity is pushing for endangered-species protection for the Bicknell’s Thrush, which breeds only in the alpine portions of mountain ranges in northern New England and Quebec. Here’s their statement.
From the laymen’s point over view, the interesting thing about this bland-looking songbird is its parenting: All males and females take [...]

We know how bad White-Nose Syndrome has been in its effect on bat populations. Well, a study in Science (read the article here) says it’s even worse than we feared: “Mortality associated with WNS is causing a regional population collapse and is predicted to lead to regional extinction of the little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus), [...]

A yellow lobster, of course. One was found in Rhode Island last weekend (here’s the Providence Journal story). The story says an estimated 1 out of 30 million lobsters are yellow (at least, of those caught along the eastern U.S.), while somewhere around one in 4 million lobsters are blue.
I want a plaid lobster, personally. [...]

A few weeks ago I wrote about barn swallows that had built their nest on the first floor of our former chicken house, where the sheep live, instead of up on the third floor, where nests usually are built. Well, the babies finally hatched - here’s a photo. Feel free to say “awwwww” but please don’t add a misspelled caption and upload it to LOLBirds.

There’s an interesting auction taking place in Vermont to help conservation efforts, according to this Burlington Free-Press article:
The Landscape Auction for Vermont’s Working Landscape will be the first such event to be held in the United States. The new conservation fundraising tool has been used in Europe to raise hundreds of thousands [...]

I’m not typing so well today; I was stung by a wasp/hornet yesterday (something that came out of a big nest in one of our apple trees) and my right arm is swollen from elbow to knuckles. It’s like I inflated it with a bicycle pump. It’s not exactly attractive, but the smooted-out skin does [...]

Sometimes it seems that the list of environmental problems never stops growing - it’s the “wet blanket” effect that, I think, makes a lot of people anti-environmentalist; they’re so tired of hearing bad news that they just pretend it’s all “tree-huggers” and can be ignored without feeling guilty.
Anyway, here’s another problem to add to the [...]

The Obamas allowed a beehive to be set up on the south lawn of the White House, which is pretty cool. I must say, however, this online video from Whitehouse.gov (screen shot above) indicates that their hive is a whole lot nicer looking than ours, which you may recall from this post, or this post.
(UPDATE: [...]

Lots of people are familiar with efforts to bring back the American elm, which was wiped out by Dutch Elm Disease, but fewer (including me until recently) know about similar efforts to bring back the American chestnut. That program, spearheaded by the non-profit American Chestnut Foundation, is using a multi-generational set of cross-breeding to create [...]

Our bees have varroa mites, a parasite that looks like a little, tiny horseshoe crab. One method of controlling them is to open the hive and sprinkle powered sugar on all the bees; in the process of cleaning each other, they knock off the mites (which get stuck on a special sticky board we put under the hive). This picture shows my wife doing this weird little practice last weekend.

Perhaps not surprisingly, bees don’t really like being sprinkled with powdered sugar!

If all goes well, this morning (Monday morning) I will accompany folks from the American Chestnut Foundation as they hand pollinate a “mother tree” found in Hudson, N.H., near the Mass. border. These trees have the blight that has virtually destroyed the American chestnut, but still flower - they have some sort of natural resistance. [...]

A group called the Center for Biological Diversity reports that the bat-killing White Nose Syndrome has been found in a ninth species. Here’s the press release. The report says the disease, which was first spotted in central New York state and has devastated bats throughout the Northeast, has now been found all the way in Oklahoma, as is shown in the above map (taken from the Center’s web site, via the New York Department of Environmental Conservation).

I can’t say I’ve noticed much problem with pine trees where I live, but this McClathy News Service story (read it here) says two species of fungus - white pine needle cast and brown spot needle blight - are thriving due to the wet winter and spring, causing many pines to drop their needles and [...]