As monarch butterflies and hummingbirds headed south this fall, I dreamt of following my favorite snowbirds to Mexico and Central America. But I stayed home instead, where I have a window onto the spectacular world of winter wildlife: northern flickers tossing maple leaves with their beaks in search...

On a Sunday evening in June, camo-clad men chat and laugh by pickups next to a restaurant near Billings, Montana. There is a faint but unmistakable odor of decay coming from a large trash bin across the parking lot—the just-weighed bodies of 29 coyotes, some of them rotting for two days in 90-degree...

Decaying logs and miniature bogs, hollowed stalks and piled rocks, nutritious pollen and leaves fallen: They’re not the stuff of traditional nursery rhymes and baby showers. But if wild mothers-to-be had gift registries, these natural supplies would top the list. Though the basic elements for...

Grizzly bears began arriving in northwestern Montana’s Blackfoot Valley in the late 1990s. Their population in surrounding mountains multiplied and gradually spread out, coming down from higher elevations into the green pastures of cattle country to search for food, returning to habitat bears had...