The Wrack

Last week we set up acoustical equipment in 12 locations throughout the reserve, typically about 40 feet off the trails. The equipment will create an ecological soundscape of habitats… mapping sounds of animals and other living things (biophony), sounds coming from wind in the trees, rain, and the ocean (geophony), and sounds of jet planes, people talking, trains, gunshots, and lawnmowers (anthrophony). Together, these recordings will help describe our environment over time… who is there, who is missing, what is disturbed, what has changed.

Will these soundscapes reveal habitats of vitality or quiet? What changes happen over time? Is the food web diminishing or increasing with new animals, returning animals? Are the sounds different from year to year, day to day, month to month, season to season?

Often showy but frequently cryptic, butterflies are an attractive challenge. At least 45 species have been documented at the Wells Reserve.

Punkinfiddle is our last big event of The Busy Season and it always makes the fourth week of September feel like a the turning point  exit summer, enter fall. Frost threatens, jackets are located, the kids are ensconced once more in school.

A botanists perception of time is measured by the coming and going of flowers. We cant stop it, but we have the ability to rewind it.

Encountering thousands of itty bitty jumping bugs on a lunch jaunt.

Doing a butterfly sit instead of a bird walk.

Fellow Research Intern Tim Dubay and I have been working with Jeremy Miller this summer to expand the Wells Reserves ongoing larval fish project. We're "Team Larval Fish!"

Dragon's mouth is a perennial herb in the orchid family that blooms in the bog along the Muskie Trail.

When birder Brian Harris photographed a Barnacle Goose on the Moody marsh, he documented a new species for both the Rachel Carson refuge and the reserve. For the reserve, this would be species number 265.

A quick lunch-time trail hike turned into an exciting wildlife tracking adventure.