The Natural World
How to Tell a Hairy from a Downy
The Outside Story
By Lee Emmons
On winter mornings, I often venture outside to photograph the assembly of birds that visit th...
A Timeline of Everything
from mprnews.org on 12/25/21
The world’s largest and most powerful space telescope rocketed away from planet Earth on a high-stakes ...
Snowy Owls
The Outside Story
Suggested headline: Snowy Owls Irrupting
By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul
Word count: 835
Here’s a quiz for Har...
Adapt or Abandon? Hard Choices in the Himalayas
By T.V. Padma
On a cold evening in 2012, anthropologist Jiban Mani Poudel sat sharing tea and snacks with mountain herders huddled a...
Leon the Lobster
Note: Here are a couple of tips for getting the most out of Silverback Digest. If you receive email notifications of new posts, you sho...
Copulating in the cold on the shortest day of the year
A moth species marks the solstice in a reliably procreative way.
By Bryan Pfeiffer
Updated December 18, 2021, 4:05 a.m.
P...
Self-Medicating Chimps
The master of self-medication | The Chimpanzee | Pan troglodytes
These great apes are primates, like us. Sure, they’re a little ...
Everything You Wanted to Know … about Bowling Balls
The insides of pro bowling balls will make your head spin
They're way cooler than the ones at your local alley.
No matter how...
Juncos
The Outside Story
By Susan Shea
Most winters, the dark-eyed junco is one of the most common birds at my feeder. While I rarel...
Snowball Fights in Art (1400–1946)
Detail from a color woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada (I), ca. 1825. — Source.
Few seasonal activities are as universal — across t...