Author: Whitney King

The Thursday, July 13, over sixty people from Colby, the Herring Gut Alternative Learning Center, and the Up-East foundation hosted members of the Maine press to a celebration of the Colby-Herring Gut-Up East educational collaboration.  

Attached are some of the press postings:

Colby College students using islands as a classroom.  Story by Rob Caldwell

On private Maine island, hands-on learning meets high-level education

Incoming Colby students get education in island life

Wyeth family island a treasure trove for students

Herring Gut Learning Center and Allen Island – Maine. The Magazine.

Allen Island: A living lab where students can learn from fishermen, scientists, historians and artists, Maine Biz.

Colby College Comes to the Coast

The wind and rain did not dampen our enthusiasm for the current programs that the collaboration supports.    The day started at 10 AM at the Herring Gut Learning Center with remarks by President David Greene and Chair of the Herring Gut Board of Trustees Peter Harris.   We then toured the aquaponics systems and saltwater labs at Herring Gut before walking from the school to the docks in Port Clyde.   

The group boarded boats for Allen Island and were met on the island docks by Jamie and Phyllis Wyeth.   Island activities included a dedication of a new classroom on the ground floor of the bunk house, tours of the sail loft artifacts and art, and a traditional shore lunch in the island barn.   Jake and his crew had the island in perfect condition for the day.  It was a great opportunity for faculty, students, staff, Herring Gut and Up East staff and trustees to share our current work, imagine new initiatives, and simply spend some time visiting this exceptional part of Maine.

Jessica Lyon’s edit of the “Lobstermen of Maine” screened at the MDOCS Student Film Festival at Skidmore College in early June.  Jessica edited and submitted the video. The footage was shot by Erin Murphy  and Palmer Taylor.

Other videos by students shot on Allen Island, Muscongus Bay, and at local Maine food produces are available on the CI245 page.  

Dates: June 19-21, 2017

Participants— From Colby: Cathy Bevier, Bonje Obua, Corin Balan
From Unity College: Cheryl Frederick, Matt Chatfield, Greg LeClair, Rachel Bidek

Brief Description:

Our focus was to complete “official” sampling of adult male green frogs from three ponds on Allen Island for the amphibian health project. We sampled each frog’s skin using cotton swabs and rinsing to investigate the frog microbiome, skin secretions, and the presence of two frog-specific pathogens. We also are collecting water and sediment samples from the ponds to test for different heavy metals and pesticide residue. The first shift, a crew of four researchers, arrived bright and early Monday morning. Even though it was overcast and foggy for much of the day, we managed to reach a half-way point by evening. The rest of the crew arrived in a blustery downpour Tuesday morning, but “out came the sun and dried up all the rain” by late morning. We achieved our sampling goal by early afternoon while keeping up a rate of about four frogs an hour. Everyone and every critter survived, and the first shift crew departed Tuesday afternoon with all the swabs, tubes, agar plates and sampling gear. Matt, Cheryl, and Rachel stayed behind to complete the water and sediment sampling. As of June 29, we’re also done sampling green frogs in ponds from the Unity and Waterville areas. We’re anxious to dig into the data and results are starting to trickle in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
One potential measure of health we’re quantifying is the amount of yellow coloration male green frogs have developed for the breeding season. As you see in the photographs, this can be quite variable. These two frogs from Allen Island populations are showing off their colors, but one has extensive yellow extending from the vocal sac of his throat, while the other has only pale yellow patches on his vocal sac.  We found the same degree of variation in frogs from the other sites back in central Maine.

June 7, 2017

David Angelini, Fini Just and James Gonzalez.

We postponed our original plan to visit Allen Island the previous day, when even Jake Ward, the Archangel’s captain agreed the weather was terrible. The weather on this visit could only be described as gorgeous.

 
Our goal was to survey bumblebee diversity. Islands often harbor an eclectic assortment of species, and last August, I’d found that Allen had a higher frequency of some species that are typically rare on the mainland, including Bombus borealis. The appropriately named Northern Amber Bumblebee is a big, fuzzy, caramel-colored bee. Last August half the bees we’d seen on Allen were B. borealis. However, they emerge relatively late in the spring, so wasn’t sure if we’d find any on this visit in early June.

Two students, Fini Just and James Gonzalez, and I started the day by driving the golf cart to the island’s center and hiking the southern coastal trail in search of flowering plants and bumble bees. We had mostly missed the bloom for red maples, a favorite of bumblebee in the early spring, but not many other plants were in bloom. The hike was beautiful. We saw an eagle, a sex-spotted green tiger beetle, and a killdeer protecting her nest of eggs. But no bumblebees.

Finally we returned to the houses at the northern end of the island. In the garden, the ancient crab apple tree was in full bloom. This had been our fall-back plan. We staked-out the tree and within a few minutes, we began to catch bees as they came to the tree. Maybe this was less satisfying than hunting them down, but letting them come to us was certainly easier!

By the end of the day, we had logged 17 bumblebees. Most were workers of Bombus vagans, a common species on the mainland that nests in forested areas and gets an early start building colonies in the spring. We also found a queen of B. terricola, a species that was once among the most common in Maine, but it has declined dramatically in recent decades.

Of course, bumblebees sting, which makes catching them a bit of an art. Honeybees live in huge colonies, where only one queen reproduces, and all the other sterile workers live altruistically for the good of the colony. Honeybees typically only sting once, because they’re killed by harpooning their strings and venom glands into your skin. Bumblebees live in smaller colonies, and so they’re less willing to sacrifice themselves if they can avoid it. But they have smooth stingers, making them able to sting multiple times. Thankfully, no one in our group we stung on this trip. (No one’s been stung yet on this project this year!) But bumblebees advertise their painful stings with their distinctive black-yellow colors. Birds and mammals learn to avoid these patterns to avoid the pain of a sting.

Other animals can exploit the bumblebees defenses too. We caught a bee-mimicking fly, which sported the same yellow and black colors. — Actually, we caught the same fly about three times. It was not very smart, and it just kept coming back. Or maybe we were slow to learn that it wasn’t a bee — Interestingly, it looked like this fly might be modeled after B. terricola. Despite being rare these days, B. terricola, the yellow-banded bumble bee, was once widespread across New England. If an insect evolves a color pattern that can be mistaken by predators for the warning coloration of a toxic species (something called Batesian mimicry), then it makes sense for the model to be a common one.

While we were watching the tree for incoming bees, by chance, I noticed a bee flying low over the vegetation just over the fence. It ducked into a tuft of grass and disappeared. There was no mistaking that deep amber color though. I ran around the fence, to the tuft and gently prodded the grass with a collection vial at the ready. A tense second passed. An angry buzz. Got her! A beautiful B. borealis queen. I’m not sure why she’s ducked under the grass. It was a warm, dry space, but she hadn’t yet started building a nest, and B. borealis typically nest underground. Maybe she was shopping for real estate to start her family. We took as many pictures of her as we could and released her. That made my day.

After the ride back to Port Clyde we search the village for bees without finding any, despite several big apple trees in flower. Driving home through Spruce Head, we stopped as some honeysuckle and found a species we’d not seen on Allen, B. ternarius, another common mainland species.

Too soon yet to draw any conclusions for this year, but I’ll look forward to visiting Allen next month.

Date Start—May 31, 2017
Date End—June 2, 2017
Participants— Colby: Cathy and Louis Bevier, Bonje Obua, Corin Balan
Unity College: Cheryl Frederick, Tom Aversa, Greg LeClair, Rachel Bidek

Brief Description:   Our first research trip of 2017 for the Colby College/Unity College Amphibian Health project was a success; we are feeling confident about our sampling design to explore the intrinsic and extrinsic influences on amphibian health using Green Frogs (Lithobates clamitans) as our model. We spent Wednesday scoping out the 14 ponds on Allen Island, and these vary widely in size and habitat features. Most of the ponds support a healthy population of Green Frogs and ultimately we’ll designate three of these as our official sampling ponds for the Allen Island populations.  Wednesday and part of Thursday were somewhat overcast or windy for the majority of the day. This certainly influenced how obvious or easy the frogs were to find and capture. The males were a lot more vocal under sunny and warm conditions. In keeping up with overall phenology of wildlife, bird migration was winding down, and several species are in nesting mode. Early-nesting birds, such as Killdeer, American Robin, and Red Crossbill, already are feeding young.

Louis’s eBird lists:

31 May morning: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S37290356

31 May afternoon: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S37294294

1 June all day: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S37316216

Participants—Cathy and Louis Bevier

It was finally a warm sunny day, with a southerly wind encouraging migrating birds to the island. We expected and experienced an increase in bird diversity both in life and through vocalizations captured on the sound meters. Louis continues to post his bird lists on ebird.org (see below) where he reports 68 species from his morning walk. I spent some time recording a few birds calling while I retrieved both sound meters. Back at the bunkhouse I downloaded two weeks of hourly recordings, assessed some of the results, and re-deployed the meters to new areas. One unit was placed by a pond where green frogs were spotted. This will capture frog calls, in addition to migrating or breeding birds, in anticipation of the May 31 arrival of the amphibian health project crew. The other unit was placed on the northwest corner of the island, near a wetland where we heard lots of birds. The Kaleidoscope Pro software (Wildlife Acoustics) is working very well and I’m able to analyze full sets of recordings now. I will continue to learn about the full capacity of this software and am designing some exercises for students to use in labs in my courses next academic year.

Louis’s eBird lists:

Boat out: https://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S36960735

Morning walk: https://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S36960731

Afternoon walk:https://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S36967554

 

Allen Island Trip report for 3 May 2017

Participants—Cathy and Louis Bevier

Our goals for the trip were to retrieve recordings from the two sound meters I deployed last week and to observe changes in animal activity, primarily for birds as they engage in spring migration. We were successful in both, and I am currently working through the sound files using Kaleidoscope Pro software (Wildlife Acoustics). The demo version allows me to analyze all sound files from the week (though the demo version limits the number of files) and use the cluster analysis tool. The algorithm searches the sound files and matches up signals that share similar acoustic parameters. The system is very efficient as it ignores the silent parts of the recordings but creates a record of every recorded sound (including
rain). I re-deployed the sound meters, set again to record for 15 minutes every hour until I return around May 18. We enjoyed seeing more migratory birds, flushed the resident Great Horned Owl, and had a close encounter with a Northern Gannet.

Louis’ eBird lists:

Boat out: https://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S36514663

Morning foray: https://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S36514665

Afternoon foray: 
https://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S36514667

 

 

Colby College and the Up East Foundation have recently approved four projects for Allen Island during the summer of 2017.