On a beautiful fall day with 70 degree temperatures, Maine Audubon educators took our conservation program, Stream Explorers, to Sanford Middle School. The week before our visit, we went into the classroom and practiced using the nets and identifying macroinvertebrates. By sampling the stream and …
Community Science
Four Lessons I Learned from Working with Piping Plovers this Summer
Hello! I’m Emma Sloan, a biologist with Maine Audubon’s Plover Crew. We have spent this summer protecting the endangered Piping Plover along 22 beaches in southern Maine. As a new graduate and new resident of Maine, I have learned so much through this work. So, before the season ends, I wanted to …
Guest blog post: Stream Explorers Opens Doors
“The door will be opened to those who are bold enough to knock.” (Tony Gaskins) My name is Aroha Walsh, and the Stream Explorers has done many things in the past few months that inspire me to be a better person. The Stream Explorers program aims to test the pollution in streams by looking at …
2021 Annual Loon Count Shows Importance of Long Term Studies
Adults up, chicks down, but what does it all mean? As Maine Audubon releases the data from its 2021 Annual Loon Count, it underscores the importance of long-term studies and highlights the need to look beyond the one-day count to understand the data. The annual loon count takes place on the …
Nanotagging Monarch Butterflies — Very, Very Carefully — at Fields Pond
Once inside the front door of the Nature Center, summer visitors to the Fields Pond Audubon Center have been greeted by a display of Monarch Butterflies. Beginning as either eggs or small caterpillars, we collected these from the plethora of milkweed plants that grow all around the Nature Center. …
It’s Mayhem: Maine Audubon is busting out all over
In the same way that blossoms started to unfurl and migratory birds began to appear, so too did restless Maine Audubon staffers, tentative at first, and then all at once in a glorious riot of activity. May was the busiest month we’ve seen in ages, in terms of our interaction with the public. …
Snapshots from Christmas Bird Count Weekend 2020
Not even a pandemic and a fresh 19 inches of snow stopped Maine birders from taking part in the Christmas Bird Count this weekend. The official season for the 121st annual Count, or CBC, runs between December 14, 2020 and January 4, 2021, though many of the regions held their event this Saturday, …
Stream Explorers . . . explore streams!
Kick net? Check. Ice cube tray? Check. Tiny paintbrush to help pick up tiny water bugs? Check! Armed with these tools, volunteers embarked on treasure hunts as part of the Maine Stream Explorers, a community science project that Maine Audubon launched in partnership with the Maine Department of …
Notes on the 2020 Loon Count!
This year marked the thirty-seventh straight year that Maine Audubon has engaged volunteers, early in the morning on the third Saturday of July, to count loons on lakes across the state. The 2020 Maine Annual Loon Count stands out in this long-running tradition for a few reasons. Falling this …