The Wrack

Rain didn't dampen spirits during the ceremony for the new exhibits! About 50 people enjoyed locally made refreshments before touring the rooms.

A small envelope in the Laudholm archives holds two postcards dating from the early 20th century. They were passed along to Mort Mather by Ellie Carberry perhaps around 1992.

To celebrate the summer season, natural resource outreach leaders held a meeting atop Mt. Agamenticus on the first day of summer, June 21st. Mt. Agamenticus covers about 30,000 acres in Southern Maine and proved to be the perfect meeting place to discuss the watersheds of the area. Subjects such as riparian buffers, sustainable development, and water health were?discussed?in the learning lodge on top of the small mountain. Ideas were shared and traded such as concept mapping. Concept mapping is starting with an idea, such as healthy water, and then branching?connected?ideas from that main subject. It is a unique activity that shows how others may think. What comes to your mind first when you think of a healthy watershed?

Last Tuesday, June 7, the Reserve's education team made a morning low tide?visit to Laudholm Beach as part of new staff training. They were treated to a most amazing sighting of a bright red, approximately 15 inch long Sea Raven! David Word, a Wells Reserve visitor from Kentucky, was nearby and had his camera. Below are two images of the fish?that?David so?generously emailed today. …

In planning for new Visitor Center exhibits, it was pre-determined we would not make significant changes to the historic farmhouse that contains them. But it also became clear early on that something needed to be done to improve the "flow" through exhibit rooms. Before long, a simple solution arose: Move the main entrance to another door.

My first day on the job as an intern at the Wells Reserve included a field trip tour of my new home with fellow new interns, Veronica Spolarich and Kathryn Rosengren. Coastal Training mentors Annie Cox and Chris Feurt drove us all across York county to talk about the history of the watersheds in the area.

Teacher Edward Tivnan chose trout rearing as his Teachers on the Estuary (TOTE) classroom project. Eggs were delivered to?Notre Dame?High School (Lawrence, Massachusetts) in November and his students got a lot of hands-on learning over subsequent months. The fish were later released into a local trout stream.

Read a newspaper article about the project

Our first International Migratory Bird Day event was a big success on Saturday, with?200 people in attendance!?Scott Richardson led a bird walk on the trails of the Reserve, where?participants were treated to a white-eyed vireo sighting.

For the past few years, the staff at the Wells Reserve and Laudholm Trust have taken a springtime day trip to places with missions similar to our own. It's great to get out together to see how others meet challenges big and small. Yesterday's focus was on the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in New Hampshire. Our two Reserves are constantly collaborating, but this was a good chance to broaden and deepen the relationship.

Alison Doucette, a teacher at Nashoba Regional High School in Bolton, Massachusetts, was the first to report on the stewardship project that all TOTE participants committed to as part of their involvement in the 2010 Teachers on the Estuary workshop.