To many Mainers, spring hasn’t officially arrived until we’ve heard the “peent” of a woodcock.
Creature Feature
The Natural Resources Council of Maine works to protect important wildlife habitat for our vast array of animals that live in our state. Our Creature Feature is a way to highlight those animals and share "cool facts" and other important information about them.
NRCM's Creature Feature highlights birds, fish, mammals, and other wildlife that play an important role in the nature of Maine. We have featured "creatures" that are directly affected by our work to protect our clean waters (sea lamprey, Atlantic salmon, lobsters, etc.) and protect wildlife habitat in Maine's North Woods, including in our new Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument (moose, Canada lynx, black bear, etc.)
Creature Feature: Spruce Grouse
The Spruce Grouse is one of many “boreal specialties” for which Maine is famous among birders.
Creature Feature: Brook Trout
Mainers are lucky. Very lucky. Almost all of us live within a bike ride of streams or ponds where brook trout live.
Creature Feature: Snowy Owl
For many people, their introduction to the Snowy Owl came from the cultural phenomenon of the Harry Potter series.
Creature Feature: The Maine Lobster
To many of us who live in Maine year-round, the hundreds of thousands of multicolored buoys…
Creature Feature: Spiders
Come October, the edges of forest, field, and lawn are strewn with spider webs—and not all of them are fake. Especially when the season has been wet and fat insects abound, spiders proliferate. Spiders have become a symbol of Halloween, dread and fear embodied by fangs and eight creeping legs dangling by a nearly invisible thread. Yet Read More
Creature Feature: New England Cottontail Rabbit
The New England cottontail rabbit, also known as the brush rabbit, woods rabbit, or coney, occupies only 14% of its native range from southeastern New York to southern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. To the north is the domain of the snowshoe hare; to the south lives the Eastern cottontail, which was introduced to New England in the early twentieth century and is now more common.
Creature Feature: Rainbow Smelt
Rainbow Smelt Osmerus mordax Cool Fact: Smelt have been fished commercially since the 19th century, with most being landed in Maine waters. One of the great rites of winter in Maine is renting a shack in a smelt camp on the Kennebec River and fishing for smelt through the ice. Warmed by the wood stove Read More
Creature Feature: Wood Duck
One of North America’s most beautiful waterfowl species is the Wood Duck. They are so colorful, and their shape so distinctive, that they are difficult to confuse with any other duck species. Males are especially colorful—a combination of iridescent greens, blues, tan, and chestnut. Their bold white chin strap and facial stripes adds to their distinctive beauty.
