Peatlands - Maine's Sunkhaze Meadows Refuge

BirdNote^®  

Peatlands: Maine’s Sunkhaze Meadows Refuge

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote.

[Bobolink song] 

Listen as a Bobolink sings a rapid jangle of notes, like a meadowlark backed by a banjo. [Bobolink song] 

This Bobolink is singing in central Maine, just north of Bangor, at Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. Sunkhaze refuge – the name comes from the Abenaki tribal language – protects one of the largest peatlands in the region. Peatlands, or peat bogs, are wetlands containing great masses of ancient, waterlogged plants – much of it sphagnum moss – that moisture and high acidity keep from decomposing. 

Peatlands have great conservation value, as Sunkhaze Meadows illustrates. The refuge’s multiple habitats are rich with bird life -- peat bogs, streamside meadows, shrub thickets, cedar swamps, maple forests and more than 20 kinds of warblers nest here. There’s one now. [Song of Nashville Warbler]

Yellow-bellied Flycatchers return to these bogs each year, all the way from Panama [Yellow-bellied Flycatcher song/call]. 

And that singing Bobolink? [Bobolink song] Well, he covers an even greater distance to return to Maine, migrating north to the meadows of Sunkhaze, from as far off as Bolivia. [Bobolink song] It’s gotta be good to fly all that way!

For BirdNote, I’m Mary McCann.  

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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Song of Bobolink [112084] recorded by C. Duncan; song of Nashville Warbler [85229] recorded by W.H. Hershberger; song and call of Yellow-bellied Flycatcher [100878] by W.L. Hershberger.
BirdNote’s theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson

© 2015 Tune In to Nature.org  July 2015 / 2021  Narrator: Mary McCann

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