 Hello everyone. This is Nick Lund from Maine Audubon and welcome to the virtual book launch for Birds of Maine, the beautiful new book. Here we go. I am honored today to be hosting the celebration of the completion and publication of Birds of Maine, the gorgeous comprehensive overview of Maine bird life, as well as the life of its lead author, the legendary Maine birder and ornithologist, Peter Vickery. Peter spent decades researching and writing this book only to have cancer cut his life short in 2017. Before he passed, Peter assembled a team of some of the best ornithologists and writers working in Maine and some of the best bird artists in the world to help see the book through to publication. And here we are today. This moment tonight has been decades in the making and today's event tonight's event is truly meant to be a celebration of Peter and of the other authors of this incredible new book, as well as the Maine birding community itself. So, thank you all for joining. Before I get too far along I want to introduce the other panelists who will be joining me tonight. Starting with Barbara Vickery. Barbara is Peter's life partner of nearly 50 years. She was a conservation biologist for the Nature Conservancy in Maine for 33 years. Upon Peter's death and her retirement, she became co-managing editor for Birds of Maine with Scott Weidensal. Hi, Barbara. Hello, everybody. Lovely to have you here. Scott Weidensal is a field researcher and the author of about 30 books on birds and nature, now living for some reason in New Hampshire. Good to see you, Nick. Hi, Scott. Welcome. And co-author Charles Duncan, who counted Peter as a close friend for 35 years, changed careers some 20 years ago from teaching chemistry to conserving migratory birds, most recently shorebirds across the western hemisphere. Hello, Charles Duncan. Hi, Nick. Hi, everybody. Lot of friends names on that list in on the chat. Good to see everyone. And raised and continuing to reside in northern Maine, co-author Bill Sheehan was called early to share his knowledge of the state's northern Ava fauna for Peter's Birds of Maine project. Hey, Bill. Hey, Nick. Hello, everybody. And finally, Jeff Wells first met Peter and Barbara in the early 1980s as a high school birder. A few years later, he became Peter's field assistant studying grassland birds with him for many years at Kennebuck Plains. Peter's mentorship played a major role in shaping his career to pursue a PhD at Cornell and to work as a conservation scientist. Today, Jeff is the vice president of Boreal Conservation for the National Audubon Society. Hello, Jeff Wells. Hi, Nick. Hi, everybody. Great to see so many names of old friends on there. All right. So just a few housekeeping issues before we get started. So the way things are going to work tonight is we have a really cool and innovative mix of live discussion and video pre recorded video. And so we're going to be sort of cycling through different aspects of Peter's life and the book's production and conservation in Maine. So hang on as we sort of cycle back and forth. We are going to be saving all of the questions till the very end. We're going to aim to end at eight-ish. So we're going to have sort of, we're going to take as many questions as we can in that time. Importantly, do not put your questions please in the chat. Please put them in the Q&A box. If you see down along the lower part of the screen there, there's the two speech bubbles that say Q&A. That's where we want your questions to go. They'll get lost if they're in the chat. So please do that. Also at the end, we're going to be raising a toast to Peter. So if you have something around that you'd like to invite, please get that ready for the end. A note about the book. So this book is out now. It's published and it is a hot item. So much so in fact that the first printing is already sold out. So there is another run underway, hopefully for release in about mid-January. So thankfully my colleague Melissa Kim at Main Audubon has put the link to Princeton University Press down there in the chat where you can order a copy from the next printing of Birds of Maine and she's ahead of me as usual. If you enter Birds ME at checkout, you get 30% off the book. So we did want to say you won't get it in time for Christmas. That's just, that's okay. But there's no bad time for a present, right? No bad time. Even better surprise when it's in January. So please go there if you'd like to order a copy of this book. But I should say we do have one copy here in this untouched cellophane wrapper that is going to be raffled off to one lucky viewer tonight. So stay tuned to the end for that raffle. And then finally, and you may have heard at the top, we are recording this program right now and it'll be up on Main Audubon's website probably tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. So now we're going to get started with our first video here. This is going to be Barbara narrating a video about Peter. Take it away, Melissa. When Peter came to Maine and became a passionate birder in the early 1970s, Ralph Palmer's Maine Birds was his Bible. He was thrilled to meet and become friends with Palmer. But Peter soon found that however authoritative, Palmer's book written in 1949 was significantly out of date. In 1978, Peter wrote an annotated checklist of Maine Birds as a start on that needed update. He also began a decades long effort to gather all back issues of Maine bird record periodicals and personal journals to glean information that along with Peter's own observations and so many others all over the state became the grist for birds of Maine. By the time Peter got his diagnosis of terminal cancer in 2015, he had compiled the pertinent data for nearly all of Maine's 464 species and written 350 species accounts. A kind doctor advised him to assemble a team to take the book over the finish line. Peter had already recruited Bill Sheehan to draft waterfowl accounts and provide a northern Maine view. He asked Jeff Wells, who had been Peter's field assistant on his graduate work, now an expert on boreal bird conservation, to complete the warbler accounts, and Charles Duncan, with whom he had taught seabird workshops at Maine Machias and who had become head of Manomet's shorebird reserve network to write seabird accounts and update his shorebird accounts. Peter asked his friend Scott Wydensal, with whom he had taught ornithology at Hog Island and whose books Peter greatly admired, to be the chief editor and team captain. Peter also reconnected with his friend Lars Johnson, a world-renowned bird artist. At Peter's invitation, Lars made three trips to Maine to prepare studies for the book's paintings, visiting Marginal Way, Ogunquot in Winter for Harlequin Ducks, later Monhegan Island, northern Maine, and Morse Mountain. Barry van Dozen, a colleague while Peter worked at Mass Audubon, kindly agreed to allow Peter to use his drawings that had already been published without charge and to make additional drawings as needed. This was the all-star team that Peter needed to complete his vision when he could not. Great background here. Let me bring Barbara up. Hopefully her video is popping on. There she is. Hey, Barbara. What a lovely video. I wanted to ask you about Peter's history with the book. How long he had been working on it and how much of the book was completed when he passed? Well, in a way, Peter had been working on it ever since he came to Maine, as you all heard. But more specifically, Peter worked for Massachusetts Audubon for decades, and Peter and Mass Audubon separated in 2001, and that became an opportunity for Peter to turn his attention full-time to the book. It wasn't exactly full-time because he still had contract work, and of course there was always more fieldwork to be done. But he did start really focusing on the book at that time. And I think he wrote his first species account in about 2008. So that's when it got started. The way I know when it really got started, when he kind of came out with his intention to do this, I found a letter from Ralph Palmer to Peter written in 2001 in which Ralph comments acknowledging that Peter had clearly told him, I'm going to update your book. Ralph said, there's been so much change. Nobody's going to be able to document it all. Sounds like a challenge. Absolutely. So although Peter was, of course, the driving force behind the book, he was not the only partnership or organization involved, correct? You had some other partnerships. Do you want to talk about those? Yes, absolutely. Very important. Many of them. First of all, I need to acknowledge that although Princeton University's Press is where you go to find order copies of the book, Notal Ornithological Club is also the co-publisher on this book. And they were important because in two ways. First of all, Alan Keith, who used to be in charge of publications for Notal, would call or write Peter at least twice a year for the previous 10 years saying, how are you coming on that book, Peter, and promising to publish it? So that was terrific that Peter knew he had a publisher there. And they also paid for the layout, the indexing, the copy editing, etc. And they provided a significant subvention, I think that's the proper word, to Princeton, which is part of what is why this book, this great big book with a lot of gorgeous color plates, is as reasonably priced as it is. So that's one important partnership. Another one, of course, is Maine Audubon. And Maine Audubon's role was that they were the provided the fiscal sponsorship, which meant that we had a nonprofit that could receive donations for the book, and allowed us to do a pretty significant fundraising. So the partners here are all those wonderfully generous people who gave contributed to the Birds of Maine Publication Fund at Maine Audubon, along with the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund. So we couldn't have done it without them. That's how we paid for the artwork, the wonderful maps by Bill Hancock, the graphs by Ian Carlson, etc. Yep. And what a beautiful book it resulted in. And I should say that Peter is still giving back to Maine and Maine Audubon. The proceeds from this book will go to support Maine Audubon's work, protecting wildlife and wildlife habitat around the state. And that includes loons and piping plovers and Maine Bird Atlas and climate change and renewable energy. This book will continue giving and protecting birds around Maine. So thank you, Barbara, very much. I want to bring on Scott Widesaw now to talk a little bit more about the book itself. It is a master work with a lot of beauty to it. And so I want to bring on Scott to talk a little bit about that and cue up his video in a moment. Thank you, Barbara. Nick. Hey, so before we get there, I wanted to talk about your history with Peter a little bit. How do you remember when you met Peter? Yeah, probably the first time that I taught field ornithology at Hog Island, which would have been more than 20 years ago. And, you know, a couple of things, you know, Peter, Peter was not a was not a wallflower. Peter had strong opinions. He was almost always right. And just amazing in the field. And he and I hit it off immediately. It was just, you know, we bonded over a shared love of a good single malt scotch in the evening after a good day of birding. And the times, the weeks that I got to spend with Peter usually, you know, two or three weeks a season at Hog Island every year were the highlights of the of the birding year for me without question. And, you know, and so I'd been hearing for a number of years about about the book in capital that he'd been working on. And, and knew what a what a herculean and task he had taken on and, you know, was, you know, terribly disappointed to find out that, you know, that he was was in all likelihood not going to make it to see the completion on this and it was very honored when he asked me to step in as, as managing editor, and I was deeply relieved when Barbara agreed to serve as co managing editor and, and let me tell you right now I think everybody else in the team will agree with this. This book would not exist as much for for barbers input as as for Peters Barbara is the one who kept us on task and on budget, and on job for four years and carried us across the finish line, exactly on schedule and a little bit under budget which is absolutely and I'll tell you in 40 years of publishing that's something I've ever seen before. You're here. Cheers. Cheers to Barbara. Did you discuss with Peter how you know his ideas for the layout and the look of this book. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, the thing is, I mean, Peter Peter knew for, you know, for a couple of years after his diagnosis that, you know that he was, he was going to need help getting this thing done and so there were long conversations with everybody on the team about how this book was going to look and one of the things that Peter was was adamant about which we all felt very strongly about is that we wanted a book that you know that looked really good as well as being really rich. And I think one of the things that we're proudest of is that it's it's a it's a damn good looking book. Barbara likes to say she's getting a little tired of people commenting on its beauty it's also got brains but it's got both. So let's learn a little bit more about both beauty and the brains of this book and listen if you want to queue up the video. Let's do that now. What's in the birds of Maine, a whole lot. The book synthesizes everything we've learned in the past 70 years about the status and distribution of all 464 species of birds that have ever been recorded in Maine. And we think we've done it with some style and pizzazz. In terms of structure major introductory chapters provide a detailed look at the distribution of mains birds through the lens of the state's topography climate and land. Maine's ornithological history from the time of European settlement to the present, including such notable figures as Theodore Roosevelt and Cordelia Stanwood, and a deep dive into the status and conservation needs of mains birds, which species are thriving which ones are struggling, the threats they face and what actions we need to take to preserve and restore them. The majority of the book is made up of extensive species accounts, including for those species like Robert Dorduck and Great Ock that are now extinct. It details the bird status in Maine, both today and historically, and provides notes on its conservation status, but the meat of each account lies in the highly detailed seasonal sections covering migration timing breeding high counts late dates rare records, an incredibly complete summary of pretty much everything we know about that species in Maine. Touching on such subjects as the importance of downies blueberry barons for migrating wind bulls, or how dam removal on important rivers is restored migratory fish ones and the birds that feed on them. And how the massive old cell whirlpool and pass McQuaddy Bay creates a seasonal magnet for enormous numbers of gulls. I guess why a book on the birds of Maine includes an island administered by Canada. Well, there's a sidebar about the centuries old boundary dispute over much higher seal island and how despite the disagreement, the US and Canadian governments cooperate to protect the seabirds that nest there. It was the team's goal to produce a book that was as aesthetically attractive as it was ornithologically rich. The photographer bill Hancock created stunning maps for the book, including and paper showing the full main coast and all the seabird breeding islands, as well as detailed regional maps showing all of the states important bird locations and range maps for every species of bird that reaches a range limit in the state, including many showing how a species abundance or distributions changed over time. We were thrilled to work with two of the best bird artists in the world to illustrate the book. Maine native Barry Van Dusen, who provided more than 130 black and white drones for the project, and water colorist Lars Johnson of Sweden, who was widely acknowledged as perhaps the world's greatest living painter of birds. Both were longtime friends of Peter Vickery's and our artwork adds tremendously to the book. Reading birds of Maine will come away with a sense of how dramatically the state's bird life has changed in recent decades for good and bad. For example, since Canada geese were reintroduced in the 1960s, their populations have increased by 46,000%, which has had both positive and negative consequences, obviously. While turkeys have done even better, since they were brought back to Maine in the late 1970s, they've exploded in range and abundance increasing 810,000% in Maine. By contrast, though, bank swallows, which were once common summer residents throughout the state, have declined so badly that today only two tenths of 1% of their 1966 population is still in the state, mostly in the southern counties. Some changes are simply a mystery. Every autumn through the 1980s, up to 2 million redneck fellow rogues gathered on Passamaquoddy Bay during their migration. Then, in a matter of a few years, their numbers dropped to near zero and have remained there. No one still fully understands why or knows where the fellow rogues went. The birds of Maine is full of these fascinating windows into the state's bird life and the dynamic changes that Maine's apophon has undergone over the past seven decades. Scott, I'm going to bring you back here. Beautiful video. Welcome back. Was there a particular aspect of the book that you really enjoyed working on? Well, there are an awful lot of them. One of the things that we're most excited about with this book, and I think that sets it apart from a lot of state bird books, is the fact that we've included migration tracking matters. We think about the birds of Maine, most of them don't spend their whole annual cycle here in the state. They're migrating from Maine to more southerly wintering areas, or in some cases they're simply passing through here. You know, wind bulls that are nesting in the Northwest Territories and wintering in South America, the lesser Antilles, but are stopping off on the down east blueberry barrens of the way. So we've included maps in the book that show, you know, based on some of the newest tracking technology where these birds are going and what their migration routes are. And in fact, I know we've got a video from Charles Duncan, who was instrumental in getting a lot of these maps put together to talk a little bit more about that. Sure, let's let's jump into that video and then we'll come back and talk with Charles for a moment. Good evening. I'm Charles Duncan. I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the migration maps that we include in the birds of Maine. This is quite an innovation. I don't believe there's any other state bird book that includes maps like these. I think that the maps are really helpful to us to understand how our birds, that is, Maine birds connect with the bigger world. Where do they come from? Where do they go to? And importantly, what are the conservation implications both here in Maine and elsewhere for what needs to be done to make sure that these birds have healthy populations here and now and in the future. I'm going to look at three examples, one using an old technology to others more recent technologies. And I'll illustrate each of these with artwork from the book. First is American Woodcock, then Snowy Owl, and third Arctic turn. The Woodcock here is a beautiful black and white drawing by Barry Van Dusen. Maine is an important breeding area for Woodcock. There are 100 species, only one of two shorebird species that are legally hunted. And of the birds that were banded here in Maine, 55 have been recovered elsewhere, most typically by hunters. These were banded at the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge. That's the large triangle in the upper right of the map. Smaller triangles proportional to the size of the number of Woodcock that were banded there recovered elsewhere. Let's look where those recoveries came from. And we find 11 different states where, quote, our Woodcock have been recovered. That is, bands taken by hunters as far to the southwest as Texas. The quarter of these are from what are called the central management region, the US Fish and Wildlife Service manages hunted species regionally. So what we realize is that these birds may not respect those boundaries and that as we think about the overall management of the species we may need to think about a broader geography. My next example is Snowy Owl. I love this painting by Lars Johnson of a Snowy Owl. The F Snowys were fitted with GPS transmitters of much more recent technology on northbound migration in 2016 and 2017. Interestingly, they all moved through a fairly narrow corridor in western Maine, and then dispersed each going their own direction. Subsequently, there's large wind farms in that migration corridor. And what we realize is there's so much we need to know about the movements of birds as we think about how to implement the healthiest energy strategies that we can. Arctic Turn, black and white drawing by Barry Van Dusen. Arctic turns are well known as perhaps one of the most migratory animals on earth. Let's follow the track of one of them. We start from Maine in the upper left, the little green hard to see perhaps, and then fall migration is the red track bird flies out over the north Atlantic, down the middle of the Atlantic off Africa, and then down to southwest Africa. And before doing something completely unexpected. It goes all the way back across the Atlantic to the coast of Uruguay and Argentina and area known as the Patagonian shelf, and continue south down to the Antarctic spends its biological winter in the Antarctic off the Antarctic, and then in yellow heads back north does a little loop to loop off northwest Africa and comes right back to Maine for the breeding season again. So these are some examples from the book. And I find them fascinating I find each one worth studying, and I hope you'll enjoy them too. Great Charles let's bring your video up here. You know, when you get a chance to look at that book you see that every single page is filled with those stories each bird has its own unique background and habits and stories. This this, it is, you know, as pretty as it is I think barbers right it's it is more brains than even than even the prettiness of it. But hello Charles I want to ask you first, you know about your history with Peter you've known him a long time you knew him a long time. Do you want to let us know when that started. Sure, we met Peter and I met aboard the ferry from Port Clyde to Monhegan for a Christmas count in 1982. I just moved to Maine a couple of months before the friend who had invited me to participate in the Christmas Count pulled a no show. And so here I was with all these people I didn't know, and sat next to Peter Vickery, who among other things told me how we love to keep coming back to Monhegan and I remember thinking, Oh man the world is so big you know there's so many places to explore why would you keep going back to one place. Well as throughout 35 years of friendship Peter was right I was my pre conception was wrong. And we formed a great friendship and I loved the work he was doing learn so much from him hope I shared a little bit of my knowledge with him. But we had an awful lot of good times together and it was a real honor to be part of this project honoring Peter and honoring mains birds. That's awesome what I wouldn't give to be on a 1982 Monhegan CVC that sounds fantastic. Thank you so much and thank you for your work on this book, and we will speak to you a little bit more when it comes time for questions. But I want to watch in the clock here and I want to make sure we're moving along and I want to bring Bill Sheehan up. So, Bill, hello. There he is a bill how you doing. Hi Nick. You were brought on early on in this book is that right can you tell me about how you got started your involvement got started. Yeah. I wasn't real early but you know back in the, in the mid 2000s the mid odds. Peter had begun writing and was was putting together this, the beginnings of the species accounts and, of course he had to say things about northern Maine and there really isn't a lot of information about northern Maine and he'd call me up and ask me, you know what does this bird do in northern Maine and lots of times I didn't know and I had to have to go out in the field and I'll let you know Peter. And, you know, query people up here but later on, you know, Peter started sending his drafts of write ups and asking me to comment on them and then asked me, you know, well, you know, let's stop sharing drafts why don't you just write the damn thing. So I'd put in a paragraph here in a paragraph there and then Peter asked me 2007 ish to, to, because I'm kind of a duck head, he said why don't you do the waterfowl. And, you know, Peter, Peter didn't find a lot interesting with the waterfowl and I did so that's how that started. That's great. And we have a video here where we talk a little bit about the work that went into researching and organizing and producing this book. So, let's, you saw a sneak preview of it a minute ago, but we're going to dive back in now and Bill, I'll see you on the other side. Okay. So, you know, birds of Maine required sifting through the record and spending a lot of time pouring over big data dumps, but there was a lot of time spent in the field as well and these these times are really fun. Peter would often organize and agitate especially at the end of winter. Typically, Peter would call for an owing expedition somewhere. I had a dream of finding boreal owls. We would go into places typically up where I live in northern Maine. And just spend several evenings going out until we just couldn't take it anymore, listening and playing recordings. We found a lot of saw wet owls. We didn't find a boreal owl. When we cook, Peter was interested in the old records of breeding bone apart skulls on Allagash Lake in that area, and there were no new records. So we, we went in on a June day, we ended up camping out, and we canoeed the entire shoreline of Allagash Lake, which if you know it is a sizable lake. And we poked into every cove and nook and cranny. We had some notes from Don Mares and Chuck Whitney on old records where bone apart skulls have been seen. We didn't find any of those either. Peter really admired the work of Lars Johnson, the Swedish writer and bird illustrator. And he was absolutely thrilled when Lars agreed to consider providing illustrations for the birds of Maine. Through that winter, Peter organized a very busy 10 day visit to Maine to happen in late May and early June. Several of those days involved a visit to Monhegan Island. We spent three days there during what turned out to be one of the best migration flights we had seen with just wave after wave of warblers, verios, some fly catchers, sparrows. It was fabulous. Truly one of the most memorable times I spent in the field. In September 2017, Lars returned to Maine with his wife, Reynald, and I joined them for a four day whirlwind tour of eastern and northern Maine. We watched shorebirds feeding through most of the tide on the mudflats of Lubeck. And we did a long boat ride through the old sow and had a harbor passage with Chris Bartlett and his boat. The gull show was fabulous. In northern Maine, we visited the north main woods, the farming country, and spent a long, fabulous day in the boreal woods of Baxter State Park. We hiked trails into the bogs and wetlands and spent an hour on the shore south branch pond, scoping a pair of loons that slowly fished their way from the southern most end, and eventually popped up within 50 yards of us at our location. That's amazing. And we're going to bring Bill back here. I want to say that the amount of research that went into this book is absolutely staggering. And I was not involved at all, of course, in the production of the book, but I was a birder those times through these years. And the way I knew that this book was going on was that Peter would occasionally send these messages to the listserv, the email group for birders in Maine, asking for information. He was doing research on a species. And it was always amazing to me because it was the most arcane, tiny detail. He would send these messages like, as anyone's, I'm looking for records of Philadelphia Virio on Wednesdays in Hancock County on the north face of the, you know, this the most detailed stuff. But it sounds like, you know, you live that with him a little bit right. Yeah, I did. And, you know, I got a lot of those questions a day before the listserv did. And it's specificity. He did like the drill down on, on, you know, real, you know, timing and abundance and, you know, what season and what what they were doing then. And it kept it kept me busy and really got me digging deep. And it's remarkable and it's all there in the book and I should say to, you know, to any Maine birders watching, you know, if you've ever seen a rare bird in Maine, you your name might be in this book, because he collects all these records. And my name is in there a bunch of times just because I, you know, chase some bird that someone else had seen so if anything, you can at least tell your family that you're in print now, if you're a Maine bird. But I want to talk a little bit more about the art in this book as well. And in this book is is absolutely top notch. Do you remember discussions with Peter about the artwork or any other things. Absolutely you know he was, he was really excited about Lars, being the painter that he was and Lars attention to detail. And I'm back and forth several times, because he, the painting of the Wimbrill he wanted to make sure he had the appropriate number of blue blueberries, because he wanted to know if they were ripe or not when the juveniles were showing up. And you know, I wasn't kidding when I said we spent a tide at blue back got there at high tide and we sat down and he watched the light and he painted any photograph. So I go out and back out and then certainly Barry's drawings, you know, were just spectacular and Peter to talk a lot about them and, and you know he had his eye on Barry early for the book as well. Great and we have another video here showing a little bit more about the artwork for the book. Well, of course it was the Peter Vickery connection for both Lars and me. I've known Peter for many years he worked for Mass Audubon as you know and there's been some of his earlier years. And I worked with Peter on some projects he did a book on grassland birds and I designed that book and contributed. Many of the illustrations for that book, and there was a Lars Jonson on the cover of that book also so the two of us have been teamed up on a Peter Vickery project before. There are two different types of techniques that I use for the, for the line art in birds of Maine. And one of them is a very simple I'm going to hold this up I hope this reads well. This is an illustration of a blue headed Virio, a custom illustration done for the birds of Maine. And here I used a very simple pen and ink approach. This one's called speedball pens this is a very common pen style that artists use for line art. It's got sort of a polish tip it's really nice hasn't really flows across the page very nicely. I am using in addition there are some black solid areas in the in the illustration. Those are done with a very nice, you know nice new watercolor brush that comes to a sharp point, and just straight ink with a brush. I'm using the brush and the speedball pen to produce an illustration like this. The other type of illustration that I did for the book is is done on a specialty paper that the old time illustrator used to use quite a bit. It's called coquille paper coquille means scallop in French and coquille paper has a texture to a slight like a doubled texture to it. And when you run a black crayon over the surface. It makes this sort of a pebbled finish. And when this is photographed and used in a book, you get that pebble texture and that those that granulated texture without having to break the illustration into a half tone. To start with, I think it has everybody else is saying as well. I think the book came out beautifully and and sometimes when you have such a heavy book with so much information it could come out a bit boring from the layout side I think they did a great work with both the artwork and the layout of the book. It's something you want to go through. I always wanted to go to a lake to look at common looms, because there's something about Maine and common looms that stayed in my mind. So we did that I think one of the first first visits at the first days in May when I came. I went there in the winter and I went there in the spring and in the fall. Barbara and I discussed very much and I had an input they they were suggesting species. One thing that was a suggestion that I think was wonderful actually was the the Great Orc. All the pictures and images of the Great Orc it looks like it's an extinct species it never came alive and so I took some effort trying to figure out what it may look. How it you know how the impression may be in the field and I thought that was a wonderful little project on its own because all the mountings and pictures they have their limbs out because they're so small but looking at some specimen and some photographs of mounted birds and and also I'm quite familiar with the racerbill which is I think it's the closest relative. It was fun to tuck the wings in under the feathers on the flanks. But there are so many more birds that I wanted to do actually but I think one that I think both Peter and Barbara was very anxious to get was the Wimbrough the Hudsonian Wimbrough on the blueberry fields and I think Barbara and I had some discussion of how vast these were and how big they were and I thought it was difficult to find that I saw in front of me really vast areas of blueberry fields but it's a very special habitat for Maine I guess. And there were really, even if people have cultured the area, there's still wild blueberries the way I saw it at least. All right, absolutely beautiful stuff. Some great interviews with some incredible artists there. I'm going to bring Jeff Wells on to, you know, talk about the other big piece of this book which is conservation avian conservation in Maine, you know this book chronicles some of the ups and downs of the various species and there of course is still a lot of work to do. So, Jeff, I wanted to start, you know, again with that with a question about your background with Peter you mentioned that you met him as a, as a high school birder. Tell me about that, and you're on mute to say no. Thank you for saving my embarrassment. Yeah, I know I think the one of the very first time I actually ever saw Peter and sort of slightly met him was I was, I don't know if I was even might have been in junior high when he was going around doing presentations on the great gray owl eruption of the late 1970s, he really had gotten into into that and really studied in detail. But the one of the first times I got to spend some time in the field was actually and I haven't actually, I don't think shared this with Barbara I don't know if she remembers it but I was on what used to be the Penobscot Valley Audubon's annual boat trip around Isla Ho to look for Harlequin ducks and Peter and Barbara were both on that trip and and I got to meet them and sort of see Peter in the field and you know that was part of, again part of his you know, work to try to document the birds of Maine and, you know, he sort of helped, I think encourage I think it was a woman named Gail freeze who was a major figure in the in those days and in the field up in the area who always organized that and she always made sure Peter was aware of it and and on on board and and you know and then from there I got to spend time with Peter. I remember I used to call him once a week this was before listserv days you know and he would let me you know answer my calls and I tell him what I had seen and he'd tell me about what was being seen around the state and kind of developed a rapport that eventually ended up where I was his field assistant for work on the kind of planes when it was still a commercial blueberry Baron on and and so he got to spend a lot of time there and kind of got me started on on birding and ornithology. And now you're drafting the conservation section of the book so that's that's a wonderful honor to for Peter. So tell me a little bit about the conservation chapter here you know there there's a lot to talk about in Maine different habitats changing different species up and down. Do you want to start by maybe talking about how it's broken down in the book. Well, so, you know, again, one of Peter's legacies was, you know, his great passion for conservation and so I think that's one of the things that we're all proud of to have been able to put together a chapter that's something that you won't see in any other state bird book anywhere you know that really talks about the ups and downs of birds, you know what birds are declining and increasing the birds that are on various kinds of, you know, that are in various categories of conservation concern why they're declining, you know what is some of the major issues and also some of the great good news stories about birds that are that are increasing from, you know, concerted attention you know Scott mentioned some of those in his video piece but really pretty comprehensive look at the whole story of bird conservation in Maine. Did you touch so we are to stay on track only have you for a couple more minutes before we're going to jump into the question and answers, but could you maybe touch on some of those success stories and, and what drove the success. Yeah, you know, we can get we get easily get overwhelmed with all the bad news stories and there's enough of those but when we can put concerted effort and we see these, you know, great rebounds you know piping clovers one example you know where, you know East Coast populations overall of something like quadrupled over about 30 years, you know, turkeys that were gone by about 1840 in Maine, and now you know it's got recounted in his videos, you know, some massive increase. Gulls that were almost gone from the main coast in the early 1900s and now we consider them a nuisance you know this this story like that so you know it's one of the you know bald eagles again almost gone. Now hundreds of nesting pairs ospreys you know so there's lots of stories of you know when concerted effort and action is paid to turn these things around we can bring the populations back if we really want to. Is there a message for the future about looking ahead about what comes next for main birds. Yeah, you know we have a few different parts of the book where we talk about ways people can get involved, both with you know monitoring things like the breeding bird Atlas that's happening now the main bird Atlas as a way to help monitor what's coming next but also ways you know to support organizations like main Audubon and and other organizations that are working on bird conservation and and you know land trusts and supporting various things like you know a new land for Maine's Future Bond Act you know some very specific ideas like that. Amen. Well, fantastic. Thank you so much. I'm going to turn to some questions now and to do that I'm going to bring everyone back in. So if I could have everyone turn their videos on and unmute themselves. My plan now is it's 750 I think we're going to take questions until about just a few minutes before the hour, then we will raffle the book off to one lucky attendee. We'll raise a toast to Peter and then if folks have time and want to stick around, we can return to questions if there are more questions and answer them after that so again before we get to questions I do want to encourage everyone to put their questions in the q amp a section and we will, we will go to it. Now I'll start with this question from Lance Bender. What about the use of e bird records in the book, presumably e bird was or you know it was around in the early 2000s. Was that that factor in the production of the book at all. Not sure who I'm asking but Jeff why don't you take that one. In the species accounts that I worked on. We certainly incorporated a lot of e bird records and I think I speak for everybody that that was always, you know, a piece of, well, even if it was updating something, you know, Peter had done a number or a newer account, you know, we would usually do a download of e bird data and we probably all had a massive mean e bird data set sitting on our computer that we were struggling to, to pull that out of all the time, I know I was doing it. So, yeah, no, and, and we usually, I think we always cite e bird, you know, with those records when we, when we did so so it's easy to tell, you know, where those came from. Great. Thanks. And also, I'd also say that e bird played an important role in making sure that the range maps were as up to date as possible, especially those that showed changes over time. So e bird really made that possible. Great question here from Michael. You know, as I was always in mains, you know, we worry about southern main dominating everything we know bill made sure that northern main was represented, but Michael asks, how much of the book focuses on down east main is there special attention paid or or it's covered accurately. Well, having lived in down east main for my first 17 years here. I feel that that a good job was done there there down east main is a very special region for distribution of birds. There's a whole issue around Machias seal Island, the wonderful maps of the old South, and, and lots and lots of bird records I remembered, I working on updating some of the shorebird accounts and the Lubeck flats and the area around Campobello and down east Christmas counts featured very heavily in those. I think it I think it got good treatment. Although, although more people including me should bird there more. Amen to that. I have a couple questions here about the artwork from Adrian and from Michael Boardman, of course, incredible artists in his own right. Who, you know, how were the species chosen was it, did Peter choose the species or Lars choose them, and then maybe, you know, how did they decide illustration versus paintings, and then was anybody, anybody know how they landed on razor bill for the for the for the cover. You hear that story. Robert, why don't you talk. When you talk about the selection. Yeah, so the. For sure. Many of the species that you've seen today that Lars painted were once that Peter had suggested explicitly. I think this was a meeting after Peter had died. And the suggestion was made that it be a puffin. And there was a general It wasn't just a murmur. When we were talking about the cover of the book, the team was gathered around our dining room table here in Richmond. And the question came up which painting should go on the cover. I think this was a meeting after Peter had died. It wasn't just a murmur around the table. There was broad agreement. Not what that. Some gagging noises. Pretty strongly that puffins had been so iconized if that's a good word for Maine that they had become cute and no longer really meaningful. And that was one of his very favorite birds. And there was a painting on the cover of that annotated checklist that he did back in 1978. So it didn't take long for the group to agree that razor bill was the right one. And I will say that original that puffin suggestion came from the publisher. They were from a marketing perspective. That sounds like a publisher, not a bird or suggestion. Absolutely. That's great. So I have a quick question for, you know, for maybe everyone is if there's a special or our favorite species profile. No one that particularly stands out or ones that you have a fond connection to anyone wants to, if anyone wants to jump in. I'll just say that the great book account is actually one of my favorites. You know that's a bird that I've always, man, if I could wave one magic wand and bring one species back that would be it. You know, it's a it's an iconic it's an iconic species and there's a tremendous amount of information in that account about the great walk in Maine that I didn't know before I read Peter's account of it. Interesting. Anyone else got a one that stands out for them. You know, we have some similar similar questions here about, you know, was there a big surprise that was uncovered or something that you know people didn't expect during the research. David asked, was what was the greatest unexpected species change either positive or negative that you found when putting the book together. Anybody have a anything like that. I'll speak to that one. I find the information on the decline of insectivorous birds in general to be mind blowing, but the bank swallow decline is just it's inconceivable and I think many of us think oh I remember seeing bank swallows but then you try to think about it and think well actually wait a minute when was the last time I saw a bank swallow and you realize it's been a really long time. So, I don't I that's the kind of decline that I think it would be really easy to not think about it's it's it's causes not obvious to us. And so I think this is one of the values of doing a book like this is that you surface things that we hadn't been paying attention to that we really need to be paying attention to. All right. Any other surprises that stood out for folks. I'm surprised so much but I think one of the, you know Jeff touched on this a moment ago with the recovery of bald eagles. You know that's an unalloyed good news story but that has had ripple effects throughout a whole host of other species you know they've had impacts on, you know, declining populations of great cormorants they're putting pressure in some places in name, especially places like miscungious Bay on Osprey populations. They're further decreasing the populations of great blackback and herring gulls that were already in decline after the closure of, of landfills but that means that there's less pressure on common eiders in some areas so either populations are coming up and, you know, it's really, having the 70 year window, you know this is, you know, from Ralph Palmer's 1949 book until now we've got the seven decade perspective and you see how really dynamic bird populations in a state like Maine can be how how one change with one species can ripple throughout the ecosystem. I agree entirely with Scott on this, and I want to point out that these data about population changes came from burgers. These came from 60 years of Christmas bird counts, and they came from an enormous number I've now blanked on the but about 60 years of breeding bird surveys. And those are all available. I did a lot of the analysis on those. And in Ralph Palmer's day 1949. There was data simply would not have been available Ralph couldn't speak authoritatively about the changes from 1900 to 1949, for instance, and, and here we can thanks to the kinds of people who are listening to us tonight. Last question I think before we pause and raffle and raise a glass is about looking ahead looking into the future have a couple questions here. I think the best summed up by Sarah's question here is what is your hope or maybe if we can, if we know what is what was Peter's hope for how the book will be used and what it will inspire. Well, I mean I can certainly see somebody new either moving to Maine or growing up in Maine, who like Peter finds Peter finding Palmer's 1949 book finds this and says, it's not bad, but it can be a lot better. It puts and puts us all in the shade with what we've done by doing something even more amazing. Yeah. And the, the other thing I think that Peter would be happy with is, is pointing out the spots where we can do more work. And, you know, encouraging us to think about what's going on with the birds and spend time in the field, maybe not going to the same top 10 spots that everybody goes. And but, you know, exploring new areas and paying attention to species that are happening and are in your patch and learning about them and sharing that data with everyone. Amen. The other thing about the book is that we when we started working on this the idea was that we didn't want this to become static. And when you publish your book obviously it's kind of in tuned for time, but our plan from the beginning has been, you know, within the next half decade to a decade to turn this into, you know, an living a living electronic continually updated version e version of birds of Maine And in fact we, we wrote aspects of that into our contract with Princeton University Press and our agreement with the Nuddle Club so that we have the opportunity within a certain number of years to be able to start to update that so we are not going to let the the birders of Maine off the book quite that good. Well that's a great place to Barbara. I was going to say there's a fantastic opportunity to coordinate with the current main breeding. Well, main bird atlas, because those folks will be ramping up in two more summers don't forget to keep on and winters for that matter. Keep on making your observations and then looking to figure out how to publish that work. So, there's a network of people here to be thinking who want to be thinking about how to share such information and keep it live. Right and as and as Nathaniel notes in the chat we have to update the rock run section already. So this is a great place. I think this is a great place to stop and go through the raffle first and so my colleague Melissa has randomized the names are everyone here and I and I think our plan is to go until we get someone who is actually watching so if we if we call your name and you hear it please type in the chat that you're here and we will figure out a way to get you this this beautiful book so Melissa do you have a name for us. The first name that came up was Jean and Keith Smith from Harpswell main Jean and Keith are you here. The Smiths are you here if so, let me hear it. This is going to be exciting going once twice. The next random generator number number 70 is Meredith Morehouse from Casco who I think is here I think I saw a Q&A from her so Meredith Morehouse if you're here. You've won the giveaway if you would like it. Suppose you could pass but I don't know who would pass on it. Yay Meredith Morehouse alright. We will be in touch with you Meredith. Congratulations. That's a lot of exclamation points I love it. Let me just say Meredith and I worked on shorebird conservation for quite a number of years together so wonderful. Congratulations. So it is eight just after eight so I want to be respectful of folks time. What I'm planning on doing now is if we could just raise a quick toast to Peter and to you all and to the birds of Maine and to birds in general and Maine in general. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Thank you everybody. What a job. Congratulations everyone. It's been such an honor to work with all of you. So thanks everyone for joining. If you have follow-up questions you can email me if you'd like. And I can get them to the right place. That's nlundatmainautobahn.org. Again, maybe Melissa if you could, well the chat's going crazy but please go to Princeton website to order the book. You don't have it already. And thanks so much for joining. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye.