The Wrack

Uncommon goose makes a brief visit to the Little River marsh and becomes the latest addition to the Wells Reserve bird list.

For seven years strong, the Reserve has partnered with Center for Wildlife and York County Audubon to offer Winter Wildlife Day during Maine's school vacation week. Last week, on a balmy February morning with 50 degree temperatures, nearly 200 people attended this family-friendly free event. Some even stayed into the afternoon to sled down the farmhouse hill on the fast disappearing snowpack, and observe a snow sculpture artist in action.

Every morning as I make my coffee, I watch the birds at the bird feeder outside my kitchen window. The other day I noticed, perched on the deck railing near the feeder, a brownish-greyish bird throwing a temper tantrum.

Yesterday, the picnic table under the copper beech was covered with clipboards, bird books, and banding supplies for the first time since last summer. Around the table, a bird-banding team kept busy with catbirds, veeries, waxwings, and other species brought up from the nets. This long-term monitoring and research project has entered its 29th year (28th on the Laudholm campus) — but it's got a new look for 2016.

Dovekies, or little auks, are sea-going plankton consumers who tend to stay to our north. You're most likely to spot one from a boat or, with persistence, through a telescope at a good "sea-watching" site. I've never been so lucky; dovekie's on my wish list.

The wrack is an "ecological treasure trove" as well as a thorny beach management issue. At the reserve's Laudholm Beach, take the time to look at the wrack community and appreciate its unique contribution to a complex environment.

Katrina Papanastassiou brought good news for her lunchtime talk about this summer's piping plover and least tern nesting season in Maine.

Not often you see a dude rounding a hedgerow, coming down the trail at a lilting half-run, tripod hanging off one hand, but that's exactly what I saw last Tuesday. It was Josh Fecteau on the chase. He had news I hadn't heard. Wilson's Phalarope. In the marsh. From the dike.

Yesterday, a foggy morning in Southern Maine made for some interesting perspectives.

I watch a lot of nature films. My favorite bit of animal cinema involves day-old ducklings emerging from a hole in a tree trunk and plummeting 50 feet down to the leaf-strewn ground below. Their mother guides them to a nearby lake. Their real lives begin.