Do you enjoy feeding and watching our most beautiful birds the ruby-throated hummingbird? I have been reading a book with my book club titled The Fastest Things on Wings by Terry Masear. She is a Hollywood-based wildlife rehabilitator who works only with hummingbirds. In her fifteen-year career as a hummingbird rehabber, rescuing thousands of hummingbirds,…
Are you a birder? If so, are you a contributor to eBird? This interactive birding website was developed by Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and launched in 2002. Anyone can join free of charge. The website describes the program this way: “eBird transforms a global birding community’s passion for birds into critical data for research, conservation,…
Now that May has arrived and our spring trees, shrubs and wildflowers are blooming, we should give some thought to bees, our most important pollinators. Without them, we would have very few plants. Or as a recent USDA report states, “The world as we know it would not exist if there were no bees to…
Who’s top bird at your feeder? An interesting thing to observe while you are identifying birds is who is displacing whom at the bird feeder. This displacement behavior in birds is called a “dominance hierarchy”. For instance, we think of doves as peaceful and jays as aggressive. Cornell Lab of Ornithology set out to study…
President’s Message Important Land Conservation CPC funding requests at Annual Town Meeting Abbot Elementary School Gym Saturday, March 24th, 2018 starting at 10 am A request to fund the conservation of two historic, beautifully diverse and undeveloped properties are on the warrant at this Saturday’s Town Meeting. CPA Funds are being requested to: Secure a permanent…
The Community Preservation Committee (CPC) funded stone wall restoration project at Pageant Field on Hildreth Street is underway. Dave Tibbetts, of New England Landscape Design, is a stone mason who is doing the work. Dave is on the left in the picture. For this WCT project, several hundred feet of the wall is scheduled to…
Thanks to trust board member Dave Ebitson, six bird boxes have been installed at Pageant Field on the Westford Conservation Trust property at Prospect Hill (off of Hildreth St). The boxes built by Dave are designed to attract Bluebirds and Tree Swallows. This field is also noted as a pollinator habitat per Xerces Society Bring…
Of all the winter birds, seeing a snowy owl is the most exciting to me. We don’t see them in Westford; the habitat just isn’t right for them here, they are tundra dwellers. But, I have been lucky enough to see them on Plum Island and at Salisbury Beach most winters. Some years are better…
Of all the winter birds, seeing a snowy owl is the most exciting to me. We don’t see them in Westford; the habitat just isn’t right for them here, they are tundra dwellers. But, I have been lucky enough to see them on Plum Island and at Salisbury Beach most winters. Some years are better…
On those frigid days of winter when the wind is high and the temperatures plunge below zero on some nights, I’m sure you feel as sorry for the birds as I do. How do they stay warm in winter? It seems something of a miracle when we see them at our feeders in the morning….
Happy New Year! At this time of year, I like to review all the flora and fauna reports for the past year. In 2017, we had 32 reporters, who sent in 1294 reports on flora and fauna they had seen. This is a smaller number of reporters than in the past few years, but these…
Happy New Year! At this time of year, I like to review all the flora and fauna reports for the past year. In 2017, we had 32 reporters, who sent in 1294 reports on flora and fauna they had seen. This is a smaller number of reporters than in the past few years, but these…
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