Museum will be open to the public two nights a week

TURNER — The May meeting of Turner Natural History Club will be at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 19, at the museum, 442 Turner Road, Turner Center, across from the Leavitt Institute Campus. Program speaker Bob Duchesne wrote “Maine Birding Trail Guide,” a book that gives directions and descriptions to more than 1600 birding trail sites in Maine. It is available in a smaller brochure size also. Duchesne will do a walkabout and will identify bird calls for the group. He will also give a slide presentation.

Refreshments will be served and the public is invited. The club meets once a month, usually the last Thursday at 7 p.m. and the public is welcomed. A complete listing of programs for 2011 is available at turnernaturalhistoryclub.org.

At the April 28 meeting, times and dates were nailed down for opening to the public two evenings a week during June and July. The museum will be open on Tuesday and Thursday evening from 6 to 8:30 p.m. The museum is home to thousands of natural exhibits such as seashells, birds, more than 1000 different bird eggs, cone, needle and wood specimens, samples of sand from all over the world, snakes, insects and more than 25,000 mineral specimens. It is of special interest to children who each get a free seashell to take home.

The program for April was presented by Lois Stack who works for the University of Maine at Orono. She talked about the use of and definition of native plants in landscaping. She pointed out that many of the plants we consider to be native were imported from other places or brought here by the original settlers and have been here so long they are thought of as native. She told of two brochures that are available online from the University of Maine about using native plants and shrubs in landscaping and showed pictures of plants and where to get them.

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