Claim to fame: Cattails are one of the best-known aquatic plants in Missouri and throughout much of North America. These tall, shallow-water plants with their familiar brown cylindrical seed-heads can ...

Domestic cats are common in Leon County. Today’s couch ornament is a far cry from its immediate ancestors which were valued for their pest control skills. These feline predators prowled barns, ...

These lovely days of May have spurred me to spend significant time wandering the trails that wind through my woods and wetlands. It's been delightful to spot wee warblers on the wing and watch the ...

If you dare, take a peek at the reality TV test of human survival skills on "Naked And Afraid." On each show a man and a woman must greet each other buck naked to begin their 21 day struggle to stay ...

One of the more common wetland plants in our area that everyone seems to know are cattails. The scientific nomenclature for the common or broad leaf cattail is Typha latifolia. A now very common, ...

Laced throughout the Champlain Valley there are wetlands full of cattails. Beneath the tall grass-like leaves there are thousands of pounds of food and standing above the roots there is a potential ...

Cattails are the iconic swamp plant; most of us know that when we see cattails growing along a road or at the end of a meadow there will be the squishy muck of a marsh beneath. In the depths of winter ...

When it comes to cattails, I thought I had the subject pretty well covered. I had led many field trips to cattail marshes and conducted wetland seminars on the subject. And yet, totally by accident, I ...

I spent too much time this past weekend trying to get a great action shot of the red-winged blackbirds at my neighbor’s pond. You know how sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees? In this ...