The goldfinches in my back yard are a real treat this year, borrowing their brilliant yellow from the Maryland flag our Preakness winner will wear.     I’ve tried luring them with plastic, tube feeders in past years to no avail.     This year, I hung two white, mesh feeders, or socks, filled with nyjer seed, and watched the bright birds flock to them.     Goldfinches are attracted to sunflower seeds, but they prefer the nyjer seed imported...

Chesapeake Country has a Green Giant. Tuck Hines may not be green as Kermit or big as Andre the Giant, but his work to save the Bay’s blue crab population has earned him Washingtonian Magazine’s gigantic title.     When the Bay’s blue crab population fell to 255 million, Hines and his Smithsonian Environmental Research Center team convinced Maryland Department of Natural Resources to change harvest regulations.     His determination paid off....

During the coming summer months, chumming will be one of the easiest and most effective techniques for getting a limit of nice rockfish in your cooler.     Chumming is essentially putting a stream of small bits of ground-up baitfish into the tidal current flowing out behind an anchored boat. The smell and taste of the fish bits trails out and sinks down, attracting game fish, hopefully stripers, to your boat. As they seek out the source of the attractant, they will also find...

The moon is at first-quarter Thursday the 16th, when it appears high in the southwest at sunset and sets around 1am. Over the next week it shifts roughly 10 degrees to the east at sunset each night, until on the 23rd, the night of full moon, it rises as the sun sets and sets the next morning as the sun rises.     Along the way Luna makes some notable pairings. Saturday night you’ll find it trailing less than five degrees behind first-magnitude Regulus, the heart of Leo the...