Harris Center for Conservation Education

05/30/2026

🌸❄️ May flowers bring... June snow showers?!? Only in New England. 😳

📸: Michelle Aldredge

05/28/2026

🌳 Spend a spring morning immersed in birdsong, habitat exploration, and good company at Stone Fence Farm in Unity! Join Matt Tarr, Phil Brown, Ignacio Oreamuno, Catherine Coverdale of the Xerces Society, and others for the 5th Annual Bird ID, Ecology & Habitat Management Workshop, featuring easygoing birding walks through forests, wetlands, and fields, conversations about habitat and pollinator conservation, wood-fired fruit pies, and shade-grown Costa Rican coffee. Beginning birders are welcome! Optional camping onsite and pizza dinner on Friday evening. Continuing education credits for foresters are available.

📍Saturday, June 6 • 5:30–10:45 a.m. at Stone Fence Farm in Unity
🌺 $35/person • Scholarships available
🔗 Learn more & register at https://tinyurl.com/stone-fence

📸: Phil Brown

05/27/2026

🌿 A huge thank-you to everyone who helped make the Monadnock Region’s first-ever City Nature Challenge such a success! The results were extraordinary.

In just four days, 93 local observers documented 3,829 observations on iNaturalist.org representing 974 species — including 10 species never before recorded on iNaturalist in New Hampshire and 15 never before documented in the Monadnock Region.

From gray tree frogs and painted trilliums to rare insects and trail-cam coyotes, this regional BioBlitz revealed just how much biodiversity is thriving right here close to home — and how powerful community science can be when people come together to document and care for the natural world. (A special shout out to Harris Center ecologist Nate Marchessault and Steven Lamonde from Moosewood Ecological for their vital contributions to the project!)

👉 Read the full story and see highlights from the challenge on our website: https://tinyurl.com/city-nature-2026

📸: Virginia Ctenucha Moth © Jack Forrester | Eastern Bluebird in flight © Tom Momeyer | Black bear sign — fur and scratch marks on a telephone pole in Nelson © Brett Amy Thelen | ​Yellow​ Trout​ Lily​ © Kate​ McKay​ (all photos courtesy iNaturalist)

05/27/2026

🌿 Herbalism doesn’t have to feel mysterious or intimidating.

Join Vermont-based author and herbalist Erica Marie Coston at the Harris Center on Saturday, May 30, for two immersive programs designed to help adults and families connect more deeply with the healing qualities of plants.

Erica will guide participants through an all-senses exploration of herbs and the ways plants can support balance in the body and mind. Families will create their own custom herbal tea blend to take home, while adults in the afternoon workshop will learn how herbs can support digestion, mood, energy, and emotional balance and create a dried herbal sachet.

For nearly a decade, Erica has taught herbalism to families, schools, and community groups throughout Vermont and beyond. A trained clinical homeopath, master Reiki practitioner, former educator, and founder of Dog Herbalist, she creates approachable, evidence-informed programs that make herbalism feel accessible, practical, and grounded in everyday life.

🍃 Herbalism for Families
10–11:30 a.m. | Ages 6+ with adult
$15 for Harris Center supporters / $20 for all others
Learn more & register: https://harriscenter.org/events/herbalism-for-families

🌱 Introduction to Herbal Energetics
12:30–2:30 p.m. | Adults
$20 for Harris Center supporters / $25 for all others
Learn more & register: https://harriscenter.org/events/esi-course-introduction-to-herbal-energetics

Come taste, create, learn, and discover how the herbs growing all around us can support health, balance, and a deeper connection to the natural world!

05/22/2026

Thank you to Access Conservation for this trail cam postscript to our Exploring Stream Restoration program with Distant Hill Nature Trail earlier this week! 🏞️

05/21/2026

🐸 A DEBUT PERFORMANCE!
We are delighted to share the premiere of an original musical composition by Kimberly Clark, elementary band director at Franklin Elementary School, which was inspired by the spring amphibian migration — and by our Salamander Crossing Brigades!

🥁 Performed by the Keene Elementary Band, "Big Night" features musical themes inspired by slithering salamanders, peeping frogs, rainfall, and even impatient drivers waiting for amphibians to cross the road. What makes this composition especially unique is its structure: the piece is made up of many short sections that students rearranged during their rehearsals to discover what best told the story, as well as several improvisational sounds. The result is a creative, collaborative performance shaped by the students themselves.

🎼 “Many students have learned about the amphibian migration either at school or at home, and some have even attended Big Nights in the past,” Kim says. “I wanted there to be a connection between the music they were learning and their actual lives in this community.”

👉Watch the full performance at https://harriscenter.org/keene-elementary-band-big-night.

SAU29

05/12/2026

It’s not too late to register our free Zoom program on turtles happening at 5:30 pm today! Learn more here: https://harriscenter.org/events/making-your-turtle-sightings-count

🐢 Turtle season is here — and your sightings can make a difference!

As turtles emerge to bask, nest, and wander, it’s the perfect time to get outside — and help protect New Hampshire’s turtle populations while you’re at it.

Join NH Fish and Game turtle biologist Josh Megysey and Harris Center ecologist Nate Marchessault for this live Zoom talk to learn how your turtle photos can contribute to real conservation work. From snapping a quick picture to submitting data, you’ll discover how easy it is to turn a chance encounter into something meaningful.

We’ll cover how to report sightings through RAARP and iNaturalist.org, how that data is used by biologists, and how to share information responsibly to keep turtles safe from harm.

📅 Tuesday, May 12, 2026
🕠 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. via Zoom
🎥 Can’t attend live? Register anyway to receive the recording!

👉 Register here to get the Zoom link: https://tinyurl.com/turtle-sightings

💚 Let’s make this a great season for turtles — and for the people who care about them.

This program is offered through the Monadnock Region Turtle Conservation Initiative, a partnership between the Harris Center, the Cheshire County Conservation District, the New Hampshire Association of Conservation Commissions, NH Fish and Game, NH Department of Environmental Services, USDA NRCS, and Moosewood Ecological.

05/10/2026

🐻🌷 Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there — including this enterprising black bear, who arrived with THREE hungry cubs and immediately got to work liberating a backyard bird feeder.

With bears now fully awake across New Hampshire, this is your friendly reminder to take bird feeders down to help prevent bears from becoming attracted to homes and neighborhoods.

In the meantime, enjoy this impressive display of mother/cub teamwork. (Bonus points go to one ambitious acrobatic cub who took the whole operation to new heights!) 🌳

🎥: Michelle Aldredge

05/07/2026

🌼 At a time of year when much of the woods is still brown and gray, spring ephemerals offer a welcome burst of color. These woodland wildflowers make haste, sprouting, blooming, and setting seed all in the short-lived sunshine before trees leaf out and cast the forest floor in shade. Like so many other hurried joys of spring — the dawn chorus of birdsong, the toad's trill, the rush of spring streams — these wildflowers are a fleeting beauty. Now is the time to see them!

👉 Learn more at https://tinyurl.com/woodland-wildflowers.

📸: Brett Amy Thelen, Laurel Swope-Brush & Michael Nerrie

05/06/2026

🪱 The Harris Center's SuperSanctuary of protected lands encompasses more than 27,000 acres, and it’s brimming with biodiversity — from worms to warblers, boletes to birches. We’re using iNaturalist to document as many of these species as possible, and sharing one particularly interesting observation for each month.

🪶 From April, we bring you the Turkey Vulture, who gets its name from its bald head, which resembles that of the Wild Turkey. Turkey Vultures eat almost exclusively carrion — dead stuff — and are one of only a few bird species to have a strong sense of smell, which they can use to find their next meal from over a mile away. In addition to eating dead things, they’re also well known for regurgitating food at predators to startle them and for urinating on themselves to cool off. Beautiful in their own way, Turkey Vultures fill an important ecological role by minimizing the spread of pathogens and removing decomposing organisms from the environment. They are Nature’s Cleanup Crew! Tom Momeyer photographed this striking individual along our Hiroshi Loop Trail.

🔍 What will YOU discover? To learn more and add your own observations, visit harriscenter.org/inaturalist.

📸: Tom Momeyer