Mass Audubon Blogs

Go for a nature walk, build a nestbox, look for tracks, learn how to work with wool, tap a maple tree, attend a climate cafe, and more at a wildlife sanctuary this weekend. Berkshires During the hands-on Build a Bluebird Nestbox Workshop at Pleasant Valley in Lenox get crafty while finding out where and how […]

Have you ever asked a friend for the ID of a plant or animal you didn’t recognize? Are you the friend who gets asked? Do you ever snap a photo of something you don’t recognize to research later, but you never get to it? Do you have hundreds of pictures on your phone or computer […]

Our Shaping the Future of Your Community Program is excited to welcome Paige Dolci as our new Outreach Assistant. She’ll be helping to develop materials and engage communities about the value of “ecosystem services” provided by our forests and water resources.   Paige joins us after serving with TerraCorps at Sudbury Valley Trustees. Over the span of a year, she coordinated native pollinator plantings with local […]

Black hawks are hefty, Buteo-like hawks not too distantly related to the widespread and familiar Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). There are several species, but most common are the Common Black Hawk (Buteogallus anthracinus) that sparingly nests in the extreme southern portions of the southwestern U.S. south to northern South America, and the Great Black Hawk […]

Land Conservation has a spring intern for the third year in a row, and we are very happy to announce that it is Mary-Ellise Schiffer!  A Class in Conservation Restrictions For this internship, Mass Audubon is thankful to have a working relationship with John Baker of Clark University who advertises it to his current students.  […]

After temperature extremes in January as low as minus 17 windchill, Broadmoor is having a brief thaw. Trails are mostly free of ice and ponds have some open water. These are perfect conditions to look for river otters. Otters swim up and down the Charles River and streams that flow into it. At Broadmoor, Indian […]

The daily news doesn’t often focus on science, but for a day or two last November, scientific exploration took over the headlines as the InSight Lander arrived on Mars. The first mission designed to probe the interior of another planet, InSight traveled more than 300 million miles over seven months. Watching the livestream of those […]

In my message about returning to Plum Island this week, I noted that it has been very interesting birding there lately. This week, Dave Weaver, our 30 companions, and I found that the excitement continues! Arriving at the north end of Plum Island on February 6, we found a good-sized gyre of sea ducks and […]

Rarely does the moment arrive when everything seems to fit together perfectly and converges at just the right moment, but that’s probably why transcendent moments are so rare and special and our vacation campers had this type of moment this morning. Over the past few weeks, we have been keeping tabs on a pair of […]

Trees are tapped and now we have the hardest job of all…waiting. We watch the temperatures so closely this time of year looking for temperatures to drop below freezing at night and days that warm above 40 degrees. That formula is the key to our sugaring season and signals our collection of sap to begin […]

We often say that the sea turtle necropsies we conduct each Saturday in winter at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are not for everyone. It’s a long day, there’s a lot of standing, the lab is chilly, and there are dozens of dead turtles being cut open. But those conditions have not discouraged sea turtle […]

“I seriously don’t think I’ve ever been happier than when I’m at camp. I don’t worry about what’s going on at home or at school. I do things I know I wouldn’t normally do like the ropes course, boating, and Scottish dancing! I am not addicted to my phone like I used to be and […]