Pleasure Beach Training
The Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History and Audubon Connecticut teamed up to instruct and ready our new WildLife Guards Crew Leaders, Alivia Sheffield and Emily Allen, from June 22 through June 26 in preparation for our WildLife Guards (WLG) program, which trains, mentors, and employs ten local high schools students. This is RTPI’s first year participating in the very successful education and outreach program. Teaching the teachers is a very important task, especially when they and their students will be reaching tens of thousands of people this summer! The students and...
Read MoreEastern Bluebirds
We are at the time of year where Eastern Bluebirds are already teaching their first brood of fledglings the ins and outs of every day life outside of the nest box. The young bird on the post here looked almost self-sufficient at this point, and its parents may be having another family soon enough. The female with her bill filled was making a food run back to the box on a gray day, with the tiny peeps of a second brood calling in the background. Thankfully there does not seem to be any lack of food this year! How have the bluebirds in your boxes been doing?
Read MorePurple Martin Wire
There are precious few moments for Purple Martins (Progne subis) to rest at this time of the year with so many hungry mouths to feed back at their gourd. All of the cool butterflies and dragonflies that we regularly post are prey for these birds, and if you visit an especially populated gourd colony you will end up finding parts of them on the ground underneath. They used to be billed as mosquito eaters to help sell those apartments (ain’t marketing grand?) but the Purple Martin relies on much larger prey. If you ever have the chance to watch them feeding their young be prepared for...
Read MoreFamiliar Bluets
Here we have a pair of Familiar Bluet (Enallagma civile) damselflies in a “wheel”, a male and female joined together for mating. They are perched at a pond in this case but they can also fly this way. The male will likely remain with her until she lays the eggs. We are about to enter the prime flight time for our odonata – get out there to any local bodies of water to see what you can find. We will continue to survey for them across the Northeast to gain a greater knowledge of their distribution and abundance plus the health of our waterways.
Read MorePiping Plover Hatchlings & WildLife Guards
A Piping Plover pair at Bridgeport, Connecticut’s Pleasure Beach became new parents to four tiny hatchlings either very late on the night of Thursday, June 18 or early in the morning of Friday, June 19. Our work in the Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds makes them our responsibility. These birds are the City’s one pair for the 2015 season, and with Pleasure Beach being open to the public for a second year after being off limits for nearly 20 years and overrun with predators. I visited them with Audubon Connecticut’s Important Bird Area Program Coordinator Corrie...
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