Whip-poor-wills, swallows and other birds that feed on flying insects are rapidly disappearing throughout the northeast. The same is true of too many other animals and plants, says Maine Audubon board member and Bowdoin professor Nat Wheelwright. Once you pay attention to nature and come to care about it, you can hear the loss of […]
Maine's Naturalist
Nature Moments: Parade of Frogs
How can so many frog species co-exist in the same pond without competing for food or accidentally mating with the wrong species? One solution is to reproduce at different times of year. From mud season until the first autumn frosts, you can witness a parade of different frogs. Nature Moments�are produced by Nat Wheelwright and […]
Nature Moments: The Buzz About Bees
Bumblebees have tiny brains but extraordinarily sophisticated behavior. If you follow a bee as it forages for pollen and nectar, you’re likely to find that it specializes on only one type of flower. In this latest Nature Moments video, ecologist Patty Jones explains that bees’ choices are influenced by plant chemicals and the behavior of […]
Nature Moments: Herbivory in Moderation
Those holes, rips, folds and tubes that you find in leaves? They’re mainly the work of larval beetles, moths, flies, sawflies and other insects. In moderation, herbivory is a sign of a healthy environment because it indicates that our native insects have not been decimated by pesticides or climate change. Nature Moments�are produced by Nat […]
Nature Moments: Stripes Between Tides
In animals, stripes serve to provide camouflage or warn predators. At the scale of landscapes, stripes reveal differences among plants in animals in their ability to deal with difficult environments, predation, or competition for space, as marine biologist Amy Johnson explains. Look for stripes the next time you climb a mountain or visit the beach. […]
Nature Moments: The Songs of Trees
If you close your eyes on a breezy day, you can identify trees just by the rustle of their leaves. Are they singing to each other? For David G. Haskell, ecologist and author of The Songs of Trees, listening closely to the distinctive voices in a forest “can ignite our curiosity and get our minds […]
Maine’s First White M Hairstreak
One of the big draws for me getting into birding when I was a high schooler was the opportunity to make contributions to ornithology through citizen science. I found eBird early on and seeing my sightings fill in gaps on range maps or bar charts provided the instant gratification I needed to stick with the […]
Nature Moments: Getting to Know Bug Spit
You never know what you’re going to find inside a gob of spit in a meadow. If you’re lucky, it might be a young spittlebug. As Bowdoin professor and Maine Audubon trustee Nat Wheelwright explains, the “spit,” which is left over from feeding on plant sap, protects these harmless insects from predators and parasitic wasps. […]
Celebrating Moths with Maine Audubon
Moths are an underappreciated, relatively little-known group of insects. They aren’t just little brown bugs that come to your porch light! Varying from leaf miners (at barely 0.1 inches long) to the Atlas Moth of Asia (with a wingspan of over 12 inches — around the same size as the world’s largest butterfly!), they are […]