A new preserve in Waldo hosts a section of the Hills to Sea Trail.

On August 3, 2023, I took a nature journaling workshop in Unity led by Cloe Chun.

Prairie warblers have returned!

Workshop: Trail Erosion Control with Edible Plants

May 13, 10 a.m., 181 Goosepecker Ridge Road, Montville. Free and open to all.

Sunday, April 30, was a breezy, partly cloudy, brisk day in midcoast Maine. My family had just arrived home the night before from a week of college visits in sunny California. Henry, my 17-year-old son, had National Honor Society volunteer hours to fulfill, and an opportunity had arisen that Sunday at MOFGA in Unity. He signed up!

***This event has been canceled.***

Birds and Breakfast at Goosepecker Ridge

Enjoy a bird walk and breakfast with Sebasticook Regional Land Trust (SRLT) and the Hills to Sea Trail Coalition on Sunday, May 28, from 7 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at 181 Goosepecker Ridge Rd. in Montville.

Eagerly anticipating the spring equinox, arriving at 5:24 p.m. EST on March 20, 2023, and having just met with the Hills to Sea steering committee, I find myself reflecting on the most perfect day in June 2022 …

We love hearing about hikers’ observations and experiences along the Hills to Sea Trail! Here are a few taken from a register at one of our trailheads.

An October 12, 2022, walk along the Hills to Sea trail was full of color. Here are a few shots from the section of trail between MOFGA and Quaker Hill Road in Unity.

On June 7, 21 students from 7th and 8th grade at Drinkwater School in Northport took a 6.5-mile hike on the Hills to Sea Trail in Unity. They started at the northwest end of the 47-mile trail, beginning a tradition of Drinkwater-Hills-to-Sea, to be hiked in increments each year until the school makes it to Belfast.

Head for the Hills to Sea Trail now to enjoy an abundance of woodland wildflowers, such as the pink lady's-slipper show here. One of four Cypripedium species native to Maine, the pink lady’s-slipper (C. acaule) is the most common.

Barbara and Linnie Curtis live in Waldo on Moosehead Trail (Route 7). We met them when a group of us starting the trail bushwhacked our way from Belfast, hoping to get to Frye Mountain, which we eventually did after a few years. We got lost that first day and didn’t know how to return to where we had parked. Finally, we saw a house and a man working in the yard. We asked him, “Where are we?”

The prairie warbler is a recent immigrant to Maine, having spread north as conditions warm. Its avenue has been power line cuts, which resemble its habitat of dry brushy clearings, forest margins and pine barrens. “Prairie” is a bit of a misnomer, first documented by Wilson in a Kentucky barrens locally called “prairie.”

The conspicuous male, if tiny birds can be called conspicuous, hops around on bushes growing up in the power line, singing a distinctive song, which is a series of fluid, ascending buzzes, “Zee-zee-zee-zee-zee-zee.”