The nature group will take a field trip this week to Sabattus Pond to do some birding with our own expert birder, Joe Scott, and two guest birders. We’ll meet at the Charlotte Hobbs Library parking lot at 9 AM. Participants should pack a lunch and bring binoculars. We will be back around 3 PM.

Here’s what we might see at this remarkable site:

From October until freeze-up, anything can happen. Regulars include mallards, American black ducks, ruddy ducks, hooded mergansers, common goldeneyes, green-winged teal, American wigeons, northern pintails, ring-necked ducks, both species of scaup, and American coots. Even saltwater migrants such as scoters, grebes, buffleheads, long-tailed ducks, and red-breasted mergansers are possible. Bald eagles find this abundance appetizing. Late in the season, flocks of common mergansers gather and the mud flats again become populated with small numbers of American pipits, snow buntings, horned larks, and Lapland longspurs.