Bird Club plans February events
The Stanton Bird Club of Lewiston and Auburn will hold two field trips and its monthly meeting in February. All three events are free and open to the public. For more information, find them on Facebook or see www.StantonBirdClub.org.
The first field trip will be a Leader’s Choice on Saturday, February 4. The group will meet at 8 a.m. in the Staples parking lot at 855 Lisbon Street in Lewiston for carpooling to the destination. Trip leader Dan Marquis will stay abreast of interesting bird activity in the area as he decides on a destination. The trip will return to Lewiston at about noon. Call him with any questions at 513-8213.
If the trip goes to the coast, the group may see such birds as the Common Eider, Bufflehead, Black Guillemot, and a variety of gulls. If it goes to a woodland site, birds seen could include the Evening Grosbeak, the Pine Grosbeak, and even the Snowy Owl, which has been sighted in the Brunswick area recently. It is not unusual to see more than thirty different species on a club field trip.
The second field trip will be Winter Tracking at Woodbury Nature Sanctuary in Monmouth on Saturday, February 18 from 8 to 11 a.m. The group will meet at the Staples parking lot in Lewiston for carpooling to Woodbury, where it will walk the trails to discover tracks left by resident animals. This is a good opportunity for a winter hike in a beautiful setting. Dress warmly and bring snowshoes or winter boots. The trip leader, Steve Reed, can be reached at 319-6630.
The club’s February meeting will be on Monday, February 6 at 6:30 p.m. in Room 285 at USM’s Lewiston-Auburn campus, 55 Westminster Street in Lewiston. Guest speaker Michael Perry, photojournalist and founder-director of Dreams Unlimited, will present “Summer on a River: Maine’s Allagash Wilderness Waterway.”
A graduate of Bowdoin College, Perry founded and managed the L.L. Bean Outdoor Discovery Program, which offers instruction in outdoor sports for L.L. Bean customers. An experienced and accomplished outdoorsman, he has climbed Mount McKinley (now called Mt. Denali) and paddled his sea kayak from Maine to New York City. His latest venture, Dreams Unlimited, specializes in multimedia programs about the outdoors.
His presentation will offer a vicarious approach to experiencing the run of the river. This slide show journey along the Allagash will begin in the shadow of Mt. Katahdin and end at Allagash Village, at the junction with the St. John River. Along the way, travelers will pass an abandoned locomotive, steamboat, log haulers, and lumbering operation, all signs of a bygone era.
Also highlighted will be the Allagash Falls as they thunder over a series of drops, churning and twisting through a narrow cut in the bedrock. With sightings of beautiful summer sunsets, brilliant wildflowers and majestic moose, the event will remind viewers that our current Maine winter will not last forever.