Thanks to Maine Audubon’s Eric Topper for a great program this week on Bringing Nature Home. He described the many ways in which native plants and animals benefit our environment. Here’s a great list of resources and links: 2018 Links List
Continue reading →Adapted from an article by Jessica Bloch. Rebecca Holberton was the presenter at our 2011 Annual Meeting. It was 8:10 on a mild, clear October 2009 morning on Metinic Island in Penobscot Bay, and a group of University of Maine researchers was already several hours into a shift collecting, banding and analyzing songbirds migrating off the Maine coast. During the fall and spring migration seasons University of Maine graduate student and bird bander Adrienne Leppold lives on Metinic Island off the Maine coast, conducting research there as part of the Northeast Regional Migration Monitoring Network. Through her research, supported by … Continue reading →
Last time I wrote that in 2010, birders using eBird had reported seeing 298 species in York County. Since then, I’ve discovered a quirk in that data: In eBird, “species” is more than species. The tally is not as close to 300 as I thought! Most birders have spotted birds that they couldn’t nail down to species, but many still make note of them. Rare is the field notebook without any “accipiter sp.” or “empidonax sp.” to account for those hawks or flycatchers that just didn’t reveal enough for a positive identification. Those entries and many similar ones are still … Continue reading →
The American Ornithologists’ Union published the 51st supplement to its check-list of North American Birds in July of 2010. Here is a brief summary of the changes of interest to ABA birders. The updated AOU checklist, now with 2070 species, can be found at www.aou.org/checklist/north. The following splits affected ABA area birds: Black Scoter (Melanitta nigra) was split into American and Eurasian Species. The American species retains the common name Black Scoter (M. americana) and the Eurasian Scoter becomes Common Scoter (M. nigra). The Eurasian species has not yet been reported in the ABA Area. Whip-poor-will (Caprimulgus vociferus) was split … Continue reading →
Each summer aerial dramas help define the sights and sounds of New England’s agricultural landscape. Male bobolinks, jet black with a bright yellow nape and white tuxedo-like markings on their backs, soar into the air singing so wildly they almost seem confused and then land like butterflies on the tall grass. Female bobolinks, golden and bronze, sleek, with delicate stripes on top of their heads, like to test their mates and neighbors, making a whine-like call and rocketing into the sky to see which male can keep pace. Unfortunately, these dramas are acted out less and less each summer. According … Continue reading →
How many bird species can be seen in York County in a single year? A dedicated birder can tally 200 or more with reasonable effort, but what if a bunch of birders ranging from casual watchers to serious listers contributed to a single collective list? They have, on eBird, and the 2010 total was 298. [Edit: Not so fast! See my followup on what eBird counts as “species.”] eBird.org is a real-time online checklist program launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society. It makes vast numbers of bird observations accessible and usable. We’re watching … Continue reading →