Happy New Year from Maine Audubon! At a time when many of us are making resolutions for the year, often for our personal betterment, I wanted to recommend a few that you can try making this year that will benefit both you and Maine wildlife. There is increasingly more research showing the health benefits from time spent in and connections made with nature, so these are the “feed two birds with one seed” resolutions I recommend.

First up is one of the easiest: download the Merlin Bird ID app (on a smart device) from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This free app acts as a field guide, with photos and audio of all the birds you can encounter, but also has several tools for helping you identify birds. You can use its “wizard” to answer five questions (where you were when you saw the bird, when, how big the bird was, what primary colors you saw, and what the bird was doing) and it does an amazing job narrowing down choices of what you may have seen. 

You can also upload a photo and it will suggest an identification. Even more popular is the audio recognition feature: let your phone listen to a bird and it will suggest an identification. I emphasize that it is giving a “suggestion” because it uses a machine learning algorithm that isn’t always correct, but it is still better than most birders. Just knowing what birds are around you is an important step toward building a connection with them, and the Merlin app democratizes learning birds. 

Next up, now that you’ve learned some of the birds around you, is to submit an eBird checklist. eBird is a database for bird sightings based on “complete checklists” submitted by community scientists. Anyone can contribute via their app or the web (ebird.org), and all data is valuable. Standing in your backyard or a local park for five minutes and reporting the chickadees and crows around is important, because who else is going to do that? It is possible to submit incidental lists, like the random red-tailed hawk you see along the highway, but I’ll challenge you to make birding your primary purpose, at least for five minutes, and try to submit a “complete” checklist of everything you can identify. eBird also keeps all your sightings organized for you, so if you want to generate a list of all the birds you’ve reported in your yard, it is there.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who started getting into birding during the pandemic, and a common question is “how can I learn more?” or “what are the next steps?” Learning from someone who knows more than you is often the best way to “level-up,” so joining a local bird walk is one of my top recommendations. I lead a bird walk every Thursday morning (8 a.m.) at Gilsland Farm in Falmouth but want to also plug the many walks we do around Portland (at other times) and those led by Maine Audubon chapters around the state. Check out maineaudubon.org/chapters and find your local group and its event calendar. 

There are also great bird clubs, like the Stanton Bird Club in Lewiston, the Augusta Birding Club (guess where), and two youth birding groups, one in southern Maine and one in Hancock County. Learn more about those at maineyoungbirders.com. 

Lastly, I’ll shamelessly plug my “Birding Basics” webinar series that covers many topics from how to identify birds to birding ethically. These are free to join, and each are recorded if you can’t make it live, but you do need to register at: maineaudubon.org/events/birding-basics-online/

My last resolution is one that you can probably put off until the snow is gone or the ground thaws, but that is to get your hands dirty and help enhance the landscape for wildlife. This can either be planting natives or removing invasive species. Winter is a good time for planning, so check out mainenativeplants.org and use the “plant finder” to pick some options for your yard. Or make removing invasive plants a priority this year. I’m in a constant battle with Asiatic Bittersweet around my house, and while I’d love to spend more time converting our front yard into a native meadow, I’m more focused on keeping what we’ve got healthy. If you don’t have a yard, consider connecting with a local land trust for trail work or other stewardship projects. Maintaining the habitat our wildlife needs, especially preserving that critical level of the food chain with native plants, is one of the best things you can do to support wildlife this year.

These are just a few of the many things you can do to help Maine wildlife and yourself in the New Year. Every little step helps, and I hope to see you on a birdwalk, on Zoom, or cutting back Japanese Knotweed this year!

Have you got a nature or wildlife question of your own? It doesn’t have to be about birds! Email questions to [email protected] and visitwww.maineaudubon.org to learn more about birding, native plants, and programs and events focusing on Maine wildlife and habitat. Maine Audubon Staff Naturalist Doug Hitchcox and other naturalists lead free bird walks on Thursday mornings starting at 8 am, at Maine Audubon’s Gilsland Farm Audubon Sanctuary in Falmouth.