Though these butterflies are known to hang around for New England winters, It isn’t always easy to spot one – when its wings are folded, it looks like a dead leaf.

Ticks. The bane of a hiker’s existence. But did you know that the black-legged tick or deer tick, as it is more commonly called, eats only three times in its life?

The hermit thrush is a close relative to the American robin and eastern bluebird. Although less colorful than either, the hermit thrush makes up for its lack of color by its flutelike song, for which it is renowned.

More than half of killdeer nests fail. To combat this, they’ll draw away an intruder by feigning a broken wing and flopping along before suddenly flying away.

Leopard frogs, like all amphibians, need water or a damp environment. They breed in marshy wetlands, hunt in damp meadowlands and overwinter in deep ponds.

Massachusetts is at the northern edge of bluebirds’ winter range, so overwintering is more common. If cold weather returns, it’s to the birds’ detriment.

Kestrels can be seen locally, but the best migration site in Massachusetts is on Plum Island. Birders counted 402 on a single “massive” day there in 2022.

A group of finches is called a charm, and house finches are one of the more charming bird species. Once popular as pets, their adaptability has allowed them to thrive in many environments to which they have been introduced.

To control the porcupine population, logging companies in Northern New England released fishers into the region. As you might imagine, porcupines, with 30,000 barbed quills, are difficult to kill, but fishers have developed techniques that help them in this battle.

Wherever humans grow food or cook it, rats follow, and killing them may be a losing battle: The remaining rats reproduce more as their population declines.