by Roland D. Hallee This week, this tidbit came in my email inbox. According to Smith’s Pest Management, be ready for a summer invasion of pests in Maine, following the state’s mild winter. Maine’s mild winter may have been a welcome break from the cold, but according to one pest expert, it came with a […]
by Roland D. Hallee While driving through the countryside, you may have noticed some small bodies of water that are there in the spring, but disappear as summer proceeds. These vernal pools are essential to our ecosystem. Vernal pools provide important breeding habitat for select amphibians and insects, spiders, and crustaceans. Vernal pools are typically […]
by Roland D. Hallee “It’s that time of year, again.” Probably one of the most over used phrases in the English language, and one that I loathe to hear. Why? Because when you come right down to it, everyday is that time of year for something. Anyway, here we go. It’s that time of the […]
by Roland D. Hallee Over the last several months I have been receiving emails, doing research and gathering information on the possibility of mountain lions in Maine. Of course, the first question is “are there mountain lions in Maine?” Here is an email I received and published in the September 20, 2023 issue of The […]
by Roland D. Hallee In 2024, University of Maine Cooperative Extension Tick Lab processed 4,776 tick submissions including samples from 398 towns, representing all of Maine’s 16 counties. The majority (3,650) were identified as deer ticks, also known as blacklegged ticks, while American dog ticks accounted for 1,045 samples. Laboratory testing showed that 41.5 percent […]
by Roland D. Hallee Recently, LiveSportsonTV.com sent along this statistic. It’s truly disturbing that Americans have gone to couch surfing as their national pastime. I used to participate in many sports in my younger years – softball, golf, tennis, table tennis, hockey, volleyball – to name a few. One of the more interesting games was […]
by Roland D. Hallee A couple of weeks ago a friend asked me about the songbird, Bobolink, and are there any in Maine. Well, bobolinks and other grassland birds are true agricultural allies to central Maine farmers – they eat large quantities of insects that damage crops. The Bobolink is one of the world’s most […]
by Roland D. Hallee Last week while looking out my kitchen window, I observed a flock of starlings that had settled in a nearby tree. There were so many, it looked like the tree was completely leafed out with its summer dress. There had to be dozens of them. It reminded me of many years […]
by Roland D. Hallee Recently, someone showed me a photograph of an insect they alleged bit one of their children. They wanted to know what it was and whether it was harmful. It didn’t take long for me to identify it as an earwig. Earwigs are a relatively small group of insects. Earwigs often upset […]
by Roland D. Hallee More and more in recent days, I have seen and heard of the return of the red-winged blackbird. It is the first of migrating birds to return in the spring. A sure sign that spring is near. The red-winged blackbird is one of the most abundant birds across North America, and […]