If you’ve been getting out in the woods at all lately, you’re aware that it’s been an especially good season for chipmunks; indeed, perhaps because of the late frosts and dry weather, it’s been a chipmunk kind of fall. They seem to be everywhere, and with their incessant chattering series of chips, chucks, and squeals they’re all but impossible to ignore.

By Michael Beadle

Peter Bates inspects a trio of cucumber trees growing closely together on a 20-acre tract of woods in the Balsam Mountain Preserve in Jackson County.

He checks to see if one of the trees died from a chainsaw cut known as “girdling,” in which a partial cut is made around the tree trunk. It’s a forestry management practice used these days. The idea is that some trees have to die so that others will survive, thus maintaining a healthy and productive forest.