I was on a lovely walk with Chris last fall, just meandering around on a sunny day, crisp leaves, crisp air, two happy dogs. A mile or so from home I noticed a big non-native honeysuckle bush. They are blessedly rare around here, and when I saw that alien thug, I hit the ceiling and furiously addressed it in the most unflattering way...

Among the noisy throngs of blackbirds that are the earliest harbingers of spring in the Northeast, the rusty blackbird often escapes notice. Few birders encounter this enigmatic songbird during the course of spring migration, and because rusties rarely join the conspicuous flocks of red-winged blackbirds and common grackles that descend on our feeding stations from mid-March onwards, few come to know the bird well...

OK, gastronomes, what are they?

Every other week we run a photo of something unusual found in the woods. Guess what it is and you'll be eligible to win a copy of The Outside Story, a paperback collection of our Outside Story newspaper columns. A prize winner will be drawn at random from all the correct entries. The correct answer, and the winner's name, will appear in next week's column. 

Reader Ellen Snyder took this picture last weekend at College Woods in Durham, New Hampshire. What is this dark splotch?

We had a variety of guesses for this one, including frog spawn, black slime mold, vermicompost, staymat gravel, unused black powder, and our favorite, "Uncle Jed was out shooting his gun again and up come some bubblin' crude."

Of course, what you're really looking at are tens of thousands of springtails, also known as snow fleas. To learn more about these tiny hexapods, click here.

 Visit our What In The Woods Is That? contest archive.