Daily Archives: October 8, 2022

Wednesday, October 12, 7:00 pm – Genius of the Swamp, Live and Online

by

The Athol Bird & Nature Club is excited to announce the speaker series for our ABNC monthly meetings. The meetings occur on the second Wednesday of the month @ 7:00 PM. We hope to be providing a hybrid opportunity for most of these webinars where you can participate in person at the Environmental Center or watch online via zoom. January and February are exceptions as our speakers will be joining us from across the Country and those of us locally can avoid driving at night in potential snowstorms. A special thanks to all the scientists and naturalists for including ABNC in their lives. On Wednesday, October 12, photographer Dale Monette will present Genius of the Swamp.

Secrets of the Quabbin Watershed is a book released by Dale Monette and Haley Publishing in September of 2017. Dale has spent over 4 years and many thousands of hours on the 82,000 acre Quabbin Reservoir watershed in central MA photographing wildlife and 130 of his best photographs were released in a beautiful book. . Monette is an expert in the nature and history of the Quabbin; he worked 25 years as an educator and a naturalist at the Quabbin Reservoir. Dale’s website: http://www.northquabbinphotography.com.

For more information and directions, visit  www.atholbirdclub.org

Saturday, October 15, 3:30 pm – Mardi & The Whites Screening

by

Native Plant Trust, the nation’s first plant conservation organization and the only one solely focused on New England’s native plants, is pleased to announce that it will screen the documentary Mardi & the Whites on Saturday, October 15, at 3:30 pm at Garden in the Woods in Framingham.  A film made and directed by Paula Champagne, featuring Dorchester resident Mardi Fuller, Mardi & the Whites chronicles the deep relationship that outdoorswoman Mardi Fuller has built with New Hampshire’s White Mountains, which has also been complicated by the overwhelmingly white hiking and outdoors community.  

Mardi says that she is “thrilled to share my experiences as a Black outdoorswoman with this audience, at such an iconic local garden venue, and in partnership with Native Plant Trust, an organization committed to land stewardship and community education. My hope is that my story will shed light on patterns of exclusion in outdoor institutions and lead audience members to consider ways they might participate in the movement to improve access to nature for marginalized groups. I’m looking forward to a meaningful conversation and I know I will be inspired by the setting.” 

The screening will be followed by a conversation and reception with Mardi, and attendees are welcome to arrive early at Garden in the Woods and enjoy a stroll through the garden before the program. To register for this event, please visit www.NativePlantTrust.org.  Garden in the Woods is located at 180 Hemenway Road in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Tuesday, October 11, 7:30 pm – Ecology and Evolution of Interactions Between Insect Herbivores and Plants, Live and Online

by

The first Cambridge Entomological Club meeting of the year will take place Tuesday, October 11th at 7:30 in the Gilbert Room of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and online on Zoom HERE. Mayra Vidal of UMass Boston’s Department of Zoology will speak on the Ecology and Evolution of Interactions Between Insect Herbivores and Plants. Nature can be seen as an ‘intertwined web of interactions’, where species directly or indirectly influence each other. Interactions between different species can drive the evolution of traits and potentially lead to the formation of new species, thus contributing to the diversity of organisms we have on Earth. Insect herbivores are one of the most diverse groups of organisms, and the interaction with their host plants is arguably a major driver of their diversification. In this talk, Mayra will explore how host plants and natural enemies influence the evolution of a generalist herbivore, and how global environmental changes affect the interaction between insect herbivores and their host plants.

For those able to attend in person, the Club will have an informal dinner at 5:45 pm at Cambridge Common Restaurant with the speaker, followed by our formal meeting (7:30 – 9:00 pm) in the Gilbert Room (there will be signs to help direct). The meeting will begin with club announcements, followed by a 60-minute presentation by the invited speaker and Q&A. Membership is open to amateur and professional entomologists.