After having missed a summer kayaking, I was overjoyed when I finally slid my little blue otter into the waters of North Pond for the first time this year. It was a blue and gold day when I paddled out to see if the rose pogonias were still in bloom in the bog at the […]
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Mahoosuc Bird Notes: Watermelon Tourmaline
BETHEL — One of my great pleasures is sitting on my back deck with a cup of tea early in the morning. The best way to wake-up is by watching and listening for my wild neighbors as the day breaks. It was on one of these mornings when I was visited by a flying bit […]
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Open Air: Deer History and False Claims (Part I)
Unfortunately, most people are uninformed when it comes to wildlife history but that has never stopped anyone from making claims about wildlife that is incomplete, false, and in some cases dishonestly misleading. Deer in Maine have a complicated history and making broad statements about habits, distribution, and density is too often crafted for political gains […]
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A Bird of Summer
Spring mornings are the best time to hear and see the largest variety of songbirds. Male songbirds arrive as early as possible to set up and defend their territory. Song is a tool they use to attract mates. Though both male and female songbirds have a variety of calls they use to communicate with each […]
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Toads
I heard the astonishing hum around the second week in June coming from the bog on North Pond. The Eastern toads were singing – advertising that it was time to mate. I knew from earlier years that within a few days long strings of eggs would be laid in shallow waters, soon to hatch into […]
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Ellis Pond Sidekicks
We made it! Ellis Pond Sidekicks was able to meet its 4th of July goal of 550 members with a few days to spare. As I write this, the ticker shows 552 members. New members are always welcome. Our next goal is 600 by Labor Day. If one in ten of our members finds a […]
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Backyard Reflections: Living with Black Bears/Replacing Myths with Facts
As a Naturalist/ethologist I am compelled to keep on speaking out on behalf of Maine’s Black bears because they are so misunderstood. A person has a million to one chance of being killed by a black bear. We are 32,000 times more likely to be murdered by another human. Black bears are primarily vegetarians. Black […]
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Mahoosuc Bird Notes/Eastern Phoebe
For the past few weeks, we’d been avoiding using our front door. It’s because the resident Eastern Phoebes (Photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren) have returned. In the past, I had watched them build their moss-covered nest. I recently learned the female does all the nest building. The male often follows her back and forth […]
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Mahoosuc Bird Notes
There is a bird that slips into our forest at night each spring. He comes dressed to impress with a scarlet red head and body and with a black tail and wings. In spite of this bird’s dramatic color, many people may never see it. The male Scarlet Tanager (photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren) […]
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Open Air/ Nuisance bears signing their death warrants
There’s a black bear that has become quite a nuisance in the Bethel area. I arrived at my camp on Bailey Road around mid-May. Within hours I cleaned and put out my bird feeders. In only a handful more hours, all feeders were destroyed and cleaned of seeds and sweet nectar from the hummingbird feeder. […]