The Wrack

Make more of your visits to the reserve by sharing what you see and hear through citizen science projects. Here are half a dozen ways you can contribute.

Keen observers of nature volunteer to track selected plants and animals through the seasons — and years — looking for signs of climate change.

Summing up the year for Maine's part in the Marine Invader Monitoring and Information Collaborative.

The Maine Bird Atlas has begun. Anyone can take part and we have some tips to share.

The Reserve held its sixth annual Monarch Rescue yesterday! Two education staff and seventeen wonderfully enthusiastic volunteers of all ages set out in search of monarch butterfly eggs and caterpillars in fields that will be mowed within the next couple of weeks. Select Reserve fields are mowed each year in an effort to maintain this vital habitat, rather than allow it to eventually grow into forest. The mowing also serves to keep invasive plant species in check.

Each year since 2010 (with the exception of 2011, when no rescue was conducted), the Monarch Rescue teams were tasked with combing the fields while inspecting individual milkweed plants to look for signs of monarchs. Any found eggs and caterpillars were then brought to a field not slated for mowing that year. Milkweed leaves with eggs on the underside were stapled to secure milkweed leaf undersides. Caterpillars were moved to secure milkweed plants. The graph below shows the number of eggs and caterpillars found during each of the six rescues.

World Listening Day is July 18. I'd never heard of it until this week, when listener extraordinaire Bryan Pijanowski mentioned it during his noontime talk in the auditorium. Dr. Pijanowski is in town for the Global Sustainable Soundscapes Network's coastal workshop, which includes a site tour here today.