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 the [...]

My final summary report on the groupings of organisms and the people who found them during Walden Biodiversity Days in 2009 and 1998 is finished and can be downloaded here (5.7 MB).
These events wouldn’t have been possible without hundreds of experts and helpers of all sorts deserve our gratitude for their time in the field [...]

In the run-up to Thanksgiving this week Shannon Mullen of National Public Radio interviewed me and Martha Stewart about Oriental Bittersweet, one of the most aggressively destructive invasive plants in the North East US and a staple of holiday decorations. Not surprisingly we come to different conclusions about it’s place at the table.

On July 3rd and 4th I’ll be leading the second Walden Biodiversity Day, a gathering of top naturalists and field biologists — many of whom participated in the first Biodiversity Day in 1998 — who will fan out to find, identify and photograph over a thousand species of mushrooms, plants and animals in a day. [...]

This October I’m leading a trip to the Galapogos for Road Scholar, with several more departures planned for next April and May.
There’s no doubt the Galapagos Islands provide one of the most thrilling wildlife experiences in the world. Without natural predators, the endemic species of the islands live fearlessly, so curious humans can observe the [...]

Here it is: I’ve written my first holiday letter since the Sox and Patriots started winning series and super bowls!
Among many highlights of the year, Manny Ramirez signed my “We Love NY but in the 21st its Boston 2, Yankees/Mets 0” sign along the duck boat victory parade. And after six years as chair of [...]

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 [...]

Americans seem to know less and care less than ever about the natural world in their environs. As evidenced by the popularity of “action-oriented” nature shows and films about far away places, they are more interested in the cats of the African plains, the penguins of Antarctica, or the crocs and reefs of the tropics [...]

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 [...]