From time to time I get the question, “Hey James, what’s that bird?” This happened recently. A regular reader emailed with details about a bird she had seen. I love this type of challenge, and she did a good job describing her bird. Even so, neither of us were confident in the end. It was […]

The Prime Time Ski Club membership has reached an all-time high — 164 members. That means there are fewer older people skiing by themselves and more “seniors” enjoying an active social life. Although some of our new members are the result of this column, I won’t take full credit for the membership increase. I think […]

Editor’s Note: This is Part 1 of “Voices” I have just finished “Thus Spoke the Plant” by Dr. Monica Gagliano. In her pioneering book on bioacoustics (sound) Gagliano demonstrates for the first time that plants emit sounds that are heard by their neighbors who then respond to their environment in ways that are beneficial to […]

The Age-Friendly Community Initiative (AFCI) mission is to explore ways to make the community more supportive of healthy aging and to enable people to stay in their own homes and communities as they age. Current research confirms that older adults are happier and feel better to the extent they remain active. It also identifies loneliness […]

In promoting Senior Week (formerly Go50) Jan. 27 – 31, Sunday River’s website says: ‘We have an exceptional senior crowd. We don’t know whether it’s Maine’s chilly air that helps keep our aged contingent spritely or whether Sunday River skiers are simply a heartier group, but we are damn proud to have such a loyal […]

The Bethel area has become one of the fastest growing areas when it comes to the use and development of recreational trails. With little or no guidelines to develop, expand, or limit use, perhaps now is a better time than later to closely examine the effects of increased use by people and pets on trails […]

In May of 2018, the Mahoosuc Land Trust (MLT) kicked off a new birding program at Valentine Farm Conservation Center (VFCC) with its very first bird walk. Seventeen people showed up and helped us find 25 different types of birds that morning. A year and a half later, a growing group of birders have identified […]

Scientist Susan Simard is a professor of Forest Ecology at the University in Vancouver, British Columbia, who has been studying the below-ground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate underground inter-tree communication and interaction. Over a period of more than thirty years this field scientist and her students have learned how fungi networks move water, […]

What do you call a ski club for people who don’t ski? Prime Time Ski Club, of course. For various reasons the ski club has a number of members who are not skiing this winter. I’m one of them. While recovering from a ski accident I had last January (broken left leg and right ankle) […]

I learned a couple of new words when researching Bohemian Waxwings. The first – Holarctic. This word is sometimes used to refer to plants and animals that seem to have spread around the planet during times when the Asian, European and North American continents were connected by land bridges. During these connected times, some plants and […]