A Year across Maryland

Book excerpt: A week-by-week look at the abundant wildlife and plants in and around Maryland—where and when to find them. When can you find ripe blueberries along the Appalachian Trail in Maryland? Where can you see the air filled with monarch butterflies as they migrate south each autumn? If you want to enjoy nature this weekend, where is the best place to visit? Bryan MacKay can tell you. Written as an almanac, A Year across Maryland invites you to explore the natural world throughout the year, from watching bald eagles nesting in January to harvesting mistletoe in December. Entries identify the best time and place to experience such wonders as wildflowers blooming, birds in migration, amphibians singing, and morel mushrooms ready to be picked, sliced, sautéed, and devoured. Color photographs of more than seventy species enrich and illustrate the text. Every week of the year has a recommended "Trip of the Week." Personal essays that draw from MacKay's field notes provide an intimate glimpse into a biologist encounters with plants and animals over the years. Whether you want to see snow geese and trumpeter swans pausing in their northward migration each March, or the mating "jubilee" of polychaete worms during the new moon in May, A Year across Maryland offers valuable advice for the spontaneous adventurer and the serious planner alike.