Snowy Owl
A Snowy Owl joined us at Stratford Point today after showing up in neighboring Milford, Connecticut yesterday. The species is annual at Stratford Point with the coastal grasslands property, the mouth of the Houstatonic River, the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge and the mile-long Long Beach and Pleasure Beach offering various nearby feeding and resting areas. It is a very attractive section of the Atlantic Coast for Snowys on the move or looking for a place to spend a chunk of their winter. Hoping to keep it around all day (and we were successful!) I kept the picture-taking to a...
Read MoreHemlock Woolly Adelgid Training & Surveys
Call For Citizen Scientists: Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Training Do you enjoy the great outdoors and want to help protect it? Join us Thursday, January 7th at 6pm for a training session on the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA), an invasive insect that is threatening our local forests. Find out what damage this bug is causing, what is being done to combat this unwanted visitor and how you can get involved! Questions? Contact Elyse Henshaw, RTPI Conservation Technician, at ehenshaw AT rtpi.org. This winter season we will have a series of field surveys in which the public is invited to join and work...
Read MoreBags of Birds
Migrant bird sightings and captures finally started to pick up for RTPI Affiliate Sean Graesser and the crew in Costa Rica just after Christmas. We should be seeing some more beautiful photos with more exciting news coming from the tropical rainforest soon…and that is perfect timing as we are finally feeling some real winter here this January. Avian conservation is a year-round affair for us across our hemisphere.
Read MoreCrazy Climate Maps
One benefit of the continual and seemingly never-ending cold and snowy winter (also known as spring now!) is that it provides us a tremendous opportunity to engage and educate people. The topic of our weather invariably comes up in every day life, especially now, and when someone complains about their heating bill or their aching back (thanks, shoveling!) you can mention to them that all of this may likely be due to our changing climate. The above graphic shows our globe and the general temperature percentile categories for meteorological winter, December through February, via NOAA’s...
Read MoreRecord Shattering Cold & Historic Snow
To be entirely honest I meant to write this blog entry a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I have been busy during that time with meetings, gearing up for spring and summer projects, surveying, and much more. Nevertheless, I could not get myself too excited to write about the unbelievably and astonishingly historic cold we have had this winter, especially in February, or the feet of snow dumped on the region, rewriting more records for some locations. After feeling the first signs of spring in the past week I feel renewed, ready for the thaw and once again energized about our weather and climate....
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