Peter Alden Wild Life

A hundred brave souls in 20 parties endured a morning snowstorm and afternoon frosty winds on the 50th Concord Christmas Bird Count. Rosita Corey participated in her 50th straight count! Smaller birds and some hawks congregated at feeders, waterfowl huddled in open stretches of the Assabet, and snow attacked our binoculars.Sixty species were noted despite [...]

My thanks go out to many people for helping make Walden Biodiversity Day II in July a success. Our report and checklists are complete and now combine data from the historic 1998 Biodiversity Day with this summer’s event. The total number of species seen in 1998 and 2009 now stands at 2,579. For more information [...]

Since Biodiversity Day in July I’ve been working on a combined species list for the 1998 and 2009 events, and beginning to assemble an online gallery of all the photos we’ve received. Here’s a preview:

I was interviewed about invasive species on the December 1st edition of Chronicles on WCVB-TV. From their program guide: Invasive alien species arriving by air, land and sea. Their goal: total domination. And if we don’t act soon, it will be too late. If that sounds like the description of a cheesy horror movie – [...]

I’m returning to my roots in January 2009 with a series of tours out of Mazatlan, Mexico before, during and after the new Mazatlan Bird Festival. There are now hundreds of annual birds festivals, big and small, across North America and the Mazatlan Bird Festival promises to become the most important event of its kind [...]

Democratic Candidate for U.S. Congress Niki Tsongas invited me to provide color commentary on environmental issues during her “Rolling Down the River” campaign on the Sudbury River in July. Along the way I pointed out birds, turtles, and native and invasive trees, shrubs, vines and wildflowers, particulary the invasive plant (and animal) challenges affecting us [...]

The Smithsonian Magazine has a an excellent article this month, Teaming Up With Thoreau by Michelle Nijhuis, that does a beautiful job of conveying what’s so special — and what’s changing too fast — in my small part of the woods. An excerpt follows or you can read the whole article on Smithsonian.com. “Even in [...]

Interest in penguins, their lives and their homes (in this era of climate change) is at an all time high. Having lectured on the sex lives of penguins and all sorts of Antarctic topics since 1986, I will be returning again this February 22 – March 16 for the final cruise of the 2007 southern [...]

A rash of new trees, shrubs, vines, creepers, wild flowers, grasses and fresh water aquatic plants are in the process of taking over vast areas of our remaining wild lands. These “new” plants evolved thousands of miles away across oceans and continents, but in a corner of its continent with a climate similar to ours. [...]

From July 17 to September 10, 2006 I was bird lecturer and part-time charismatic megafauna spotter on Quark Expedition’s Kapitan Klebnikov from the Chukotka Peninsula to the Thule area of NW Greenland. We traversed the NW Passage south of Victoria Island, then counter-clockwise around Baffin Island, around Devon Island, west side of Ellesmere, then east [...]