Mass Audubon Blogs

Great news for birds and for all of us who care about them! A federal court ruled yesterday that the legal basis for the Trump Administration’s rollback of the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) is inconsistent with the intent and language of the law. U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni found that the Administration’s […]

Over the course of the 2020 Photo Contest, we will be highlighting 5 photos from the previous month’s entries on Facebook and asking fans to select their favorite. This is just a fun way of sharing some of the amazing entries and doesn’t have to do with the official judging process. You can pick your favorite by “liking” it on Facebook. Not […]

The Great American Outdoors Act has been signed into law! The law includes long-awaited permanent funding for the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to protect our public lands. LWCF helps protect invaluable wild spaces across Massachusetts and the United States. Although LWCF was permanently reauthorized last year, its annual funding still wasn’t guaranteed […]

Tropical Storm Isaias arrived in Massachusetts on August 4, 2020, pushing heavy wind and rain through the Berkshires in the early evening before continuing northward. The storm also brought a slew of rare seabirds into the state, with sightings of at least 34 Sooty Terns, 2 Brown Boobies, a Franklin’s Gull, and a handful of […]

About 4 years ago, I received a call from a landowner in Hampden about a possible donation of some land next to Laughing Brook Wildlife Sanctuary.  We talked about the process and the costs involved. It was helpful information for the landowner to have, though not the right time for him to act. In the […]

Summer is a great time to explore new places. Two beautiful nearby locations are Little Farm Pond, in Sherborn, part of Broadmoor, and Waseeka Wildlife Sanctuary in Hopkinton. Little Farm Pond is a 23 acre kettle hole pond formed as glacial ice melted millennia ago. Fragrant sweet pepperbush is in bloom along the pond edges. […]

The First Winter Squashes It’s looking like fall in the greenhouse with the arrival of the season’s first winter squash: Sunshine orange kabocha. We harvested them last Thursday as soon as we saw the vines dying back leaving the fruit exposed. If we can detect orange in the field, so can the deer, and the […]

We held two sessions of Wednesday Morning Birding this week, co-led by Dave Weaver at 7:30 AM and Dave Williams at 9:30 AM. The path of the tropical system that we knew would bring amazing rarities inland this week did not promise the same for the coast. So, we kept to an original plan to […]

Keep a lookout for the many amphibians that live at MABA! Although all amphibians spend part of their life in water, each species lives in a different habitat. Because of this, you can find them all over the MABA property! I have seen them by the vernal pool, pond, brook, as well as by the […]

Julia is a teacher-naturalist at Moose Hill who has been with Mass Audubon for over four and a half years and at Moose Hill specifically for the last year and a half. Julia is passionate about conservation and protecting the environment so future generations have the same resources that we have today and she loves […]

Before the pandemic, a highlight of the Wellfleet Bay field season was the diamondback terrapin nesting cycle. Terrapins are a Threatened species in Massachusetts and Wellfleet is the northern edge of their range. In a normal year, small crews of volunteers regularly patrol nesting hot spots in Wellfleet, Eastham and Orleans to find and protect […]

Join us in summer 2020 for a physically distanced family getaway at Wildwood! Wildwood is turning our camp into a campground for camp families from July 10–October 15. We will provide families with a space to sleep and relax while being physically distanced from others. You can choose from any of the following lodging options: […]