Well, maybe not quite desperately, but we would love to have your help! Maine Audubon is looking for birders willing to travel to bird habitat “hotspots” throughout the state, and report back their findings via e-Bird, the on-line checklist program from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The goal of this effort is to expand Maine’s Important Bird Area program to include some of the many places we believe are important for species of high conservation concern, but for which we lack quantitative data.
With every new checklist added by birders, we’ll be able to build the case for the more than 20 sites that have been identified by the Important Bird Area Technical Committee as needing more information before they can be approved as Maine IBAs. See the map below for the sites we are focusing on this spring. If you have additional sites you’d like considered as IBAs, or if you have questions about the locations or using e-Bird to report your sitings, e-mail Susan Gallo at sgallo@maineaudubon.org.
Visit the IBA home page for more information about the Maine IBA program or to see a list of current, approved IBAs established in Maine.
Thank you for your help, happy birding!
Maine Audubon’s Brook Trout Pond Survey Coordinator, Amanda Moeser joined Jeff Reardon of Trout Unlimited in Rangeley this past weekend for the annual Fly Fishing in Maine Conclave. They are recruiting anglers to survey ponds in the Rangeley area for brook trout, part of a larger effort to identify previously-undocumented wild brook trout populations across the state.