NRCM member David Small of Old Town, Maine, never disappoints with his beautiful Maine wildlife photos. This week, we are delighted to share some of his photos from Bangor, taken while he was enjoying time in the Essex Street Woods and Marsh. These photos are from springtime a couple of years ago.
birds
Something Fishy Going On
A week following a spring storm that left much of Maine blanketed in snow, we found ourselves at our son’s Bates rugby match vs host Bowdoin College. The wind had a bite to it, but the pitch was gleaming green. Soon, it, along with the players, turned muddy brown, and the air was filled with Read More
Robins in Every Yard
Before the big spring snow, on a recent morning walk around our neighborhood with our dog, Loki, spring seemed to have arrived overnight. “Pip-pip-pip”—the calls of American Robins seemed to sound from every yard. The lawns were just starting to regain some green among winter’s leftover brown matted grass but the robins didn’t care. They Read More
Consider the Bird Economy
Turn to any media outlet and you’re bound to hear news about the economy. As the countdown to November continues, we suspect this will intensify. Inflation, interest rates, GDP, stock indices, bond returns—it’s gonna keep coming at us fast and furiously. But what we won’t hear much about, at least from traditional news outlets, is Read More
Fifteen Years of Owl Hope Pays Off
Fifteen years is a long time. It represents hundreds, maybe as much as a thousand trips to one of our favorite local birding spots. Our visits aren’t specifically to look for owls, but just about every time we’re there, we say the same thing: “This is the perfect place for a Short-eared Owl.” If we Read More
My Maine This Week: Black Guillemot by David Small
This week, we are delighted to share some photos taken by longtime NRCM member and My Maine This Week photographer David Small of Old Town, Maine. He photographed this Black Guillemot in Northeast Harbor. David writes, “It’s always a fun shoot when the pelagic Black Guillemots begin showing up close-in along the shoreline. During summer Read More
Creature Feature: Black-capped Chickadee
Black-capped Chickadee Poecile atricapillus Cool fact: Studies have shown that the Black-capped Chickadee grows new brain cells every fall, in part to help it remember where it has cached the thousands of seeds it hopes to feed on through the winter ahead. The chickadee was chosen as the Maine State Bird in 1927. Although the Read More
Mysterious Murmurations
The mild temps on Saturday, December 16, had us wondering: is this really the Christmas Bird Count time of year? (It felt a little like Breeding Bird Atlas time!) But indeed, there we were, traipsing through the streets of our Gardiner neighborhood and beyond, binoculars around our necks, as part of the Augusta area Christmas Read More
Deciphering the Mystery of How the Turkey Got Its Name
To birders like us and, hopefully, you, the most well-known bird in the world may seem to be the Steller’s Sea-Eagle, given what a media darling it’s become. Well, it’s not. Neither is it a hummingbird, crow, peacock, the Perplexing Scrubwren, nor is it that famous, non-existent bird, the “seagull.” It is, in fact, the Read More
