Hog Island shoreline in summer. Photo courtesy Hog Island Audubon Camp.Where will you be in June? If you've got June 19–22 free, why not consider spending it watching birds on an island off the Maine coast, accessible only by boat? We'll be helping to teach a week-long session for adult birders with the theme "The Joy of Bird Watching" at the Hog Island Audubon Camp.
Our buddy Scott Weidensaul has been a regular instructor at Hog Island for several years and he raves about the place and the experience. So when we were asked to help out as instructors for a session this summer, we did not waste a lot of time pondering.
Photo courtesy Hog Island Audubon Camp.Hog Island has been hosting summer nature camps under the auspices of Maine Audubon and The National Audubon Society since 1936! Besides the glorious setting of the Maine coast in Muscongus Bay, there's lots of natural-history history on Hog Island. Roger Tory Peterson was an instructor there. Rachel Carson mentioned it in Silent Spring. Olin Sewall Pettingill and Allan Cruickshank were on staff, too. These days the likes of Stephen Kress, Kenn Kaufman, Mark Garland and many other experts on subjects as diverse as wildflowers, nature writing, and yoga teach courses on Hog Island for campers young and old. An overview of the camp is available here.
We're looking forward to getting back to Maine and to making new friends--feathered and otherwise. Hope to see you there.
Atlantic puffin adult returning to nest burrow with food. Photo courtesy Hog Island Audubon Camp.
9 comments:
Bill: Hog Island looks really awesome! Hope to see you there someday.
ah Maine....I'll be on Deer Isle listening to black throated greens and juncos singing while watching the nesting eagles just the week before this program....it's so wonderful there. maybe next year I'll check out the Audubon program, too. Thanks for the heads up.
Don't you ever stay home?
I may have to retire so we can go to all the neat places you're blogging about.
For birders who are also history buffs and/or literary buffs, Hog Island was owned by David Todd and Mabel Loomis Todd -- the Mabel Lewis Todd who brought us the first posthumously published editions of the poems of Emily Dickinson (and may or may not have been having an affair with Dickinson's brother Austin).
Oh, I'd like to go. You're talking about MY territory now! I'll probably be too busy getting work ready for shows here in Maine and elsewhere.
But I have to say...the top photo looks so much like a painting I did years ago. It wasn't of Hog Island, though. I'll be with you in spirit anyway.
I meant to add this. I'm not that far away (Rockland) from Hog Island. Maybe I'll see you then.
How neat to hear about this blog from a freind at church!
I'm so glad you spolighted the Audubon Camp in Maine. Our local Audubon Miami Valley gives camp scholarship to educators who work in Bulter and Preble Countiesin Ohio. Many other Audubon Chapter have similar scholarships available. One could go for next to nothing that way!
Love the puffin photo! Can't wait till you make the Allegany Nature Pilgrimage!
I'm not in the least surprised at the co-operativeness of the Canada Warbler. (grin)
Dea
Victoria, BC
CANADA
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