Past Events

We will meet at Fields Pond and carpool to the scenic Schoodic Peninsula via Ellsworth and Coastal Route One, stopping at numerous hot spots to scan for year-round resident birds and winter migrants on both sea and land.  This is a great trip for novice birders and new residents who want to learn more about Maine’s winter bird populations, and good places to look for them along the Downeast coast.  More experienced birders can help us locate and identify unusual…

Silent Spring was first published over 60 years ago.  Rachel Carson warned her readers that DDT, a widely-used insecticide, was disrupting ecosystems and endangering native species. DDT accumulates in the tissues of any creature that consumes it, so it builds up over time as more and more DDT-contaminated prey are eaten.  Thus the toxicity gets biomagnified at each successive level of the food web, compromising the health and reproduction of the top predator species. The bald eagle population was reduced…

Trip Leaders:  Bob and Sandi Duchesne We will meet at Fields Pond and carpool to Pinkham Bay and Pigeon Hill Bay in Steuben via Ellsworth and Coastal Route One, stopping at various hot spots (including many on the Schoodic peninsula) to scan for year-round resident birds and winter migrants on both sea and land.  This is a great trip for novice birders and new residents who want to learn more about Maine’s winter bird populations, and good places to look…

PVC board member Ellen Campbell will share photos, videos, and intriguing tales of her adventures and misadventures as a member of the statewide volunteer “animal ambulance” network for Avian Haven.  Ellen picks up birds in distress that have been rescued, and occasionally has to figure out how to safely capture a bird herself, in order to drive them to Avian Haven’s wildlife rehabilitation facility in Freedom, Maine.  She says that it’s  an honor to participate in Avian Haven’s mission, “...dedicated…

This will be an indoor program at FPAC. Pre-registration required, space is limited Co-sponsored with Fields Pond Audubon Center The display of male American woodcock, termed the "Sky Dance" by Aldo Leopold, is one of the first hallmarks of spring when they migrate back to Maine from their wintering grounds in the southeast US.  Field surveys suggest that woodcock have declined over the last half-century. Using new GPS tracking technology, researchers at the University of Maine have been leading efforts…

  PVC board member Bob Milardo will present a travelogue about his recent birding trip to the Falklands, South Georgia, and Antarctica.  Species highlights will include footage of multiple penguin colonies, albatrosses, prions, giant petrels, and snow petrels, along with the sheer magic of the Southern Ocean. This will be an indoor program at FPAC.

Leaders: Gloria Vollmers and Paul Markson.  This perennial Bangor birding hot-spot has earned the nickname of “Little Penjajawoc,” since it is part of the larger Penjajawoc-Caribou Marsh wetlands ecosystem that covers a huge swath of the greater Bangor region.  No matter what you choose to call it, this is always a lively place to look for puddle ducks, marsh species, year-round residents, and early-returning migratory species.  Meet in the Essex Woods parking lot at the end of Watchmaker Street, off…

Leader: Bob Milardo. Join Bob for a leisurely walk through portions of the Caribou Bog Conservation Area (CBCA), an Orono Land Trust property where volunteers have been rehabilitating the former Taylor Bait Ponds to provide improved habitat for ducks, shorebirds, wading birds, and other species that breed and feed around ponds and freshwater marshes. We’ll keep an eye out for species that typically migrate through our region, resting and feeding up before flying on toward their Canadian breeding grounds. The…