Try the fun new smart-phone app 
Discover Stillwater!

This GPS-guided app takes visitors on a behind-the-scenes nature discovery of Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge by using an Android or iPhone.

Start by downloading the Discover Stillwater app for FREE at either the Google Play or the iTunes App store, then head to Stillwater NWR to start your scavenger-type Clue Hunt. The closer you get, the app signals and displays on your screen a fun trivia question about the plants, wildlife, cultural history or habitats that make this refuge so unique. Earn points as you answer questions on the tour route, paths and viewpoints. 

Along the way, take pictures, post sightings and share with family and friends on your Facebook account, or create a new DNA account. Even if you don't have cell service, no problem, the app stores your information and scores then automatically uploads the information when you do have service. 

So get outside and Discover Stillwater today! For more information, call 423-5128 or visit the DNA website at discovernatureapps.com to learn more.

Someone shared this great article about bird-watching from home. Hope you find it useful!
Click here: Bird Watching from Your Window 

To see our bylaws, click on the following link to access the PDF: Friends of Stillwater NWR Bylaws.

The Audubon Society regularly publishes several interesting and informative articles highlighted with incredible photography. Here's the link if you'd like to find out more information or subscribe to publications from their magazine: Audubon Magazine Link. We always enjoy what they have to share so we thought we'd share it with you.

A student in Maine was conducting research for his class and shared the links from our page in his "show and tell" project as he and his father are avid birders. He was then assigned the task of sharing another page with us. This is the one he picked: Design 55 Bird Watching.

It's based out of the UK and has some interesting links for beginning birders. It may be something you'd like to share with people you're trying to attract to birding or it may provide you with lists of birds present in the location of your next travel destination. Whatever the case, we'd like to acknowledge this student's hard work and continue his interest in birding.

Thanks for thinking of us, buddy!

Whether you're a bird person or not, this is stunning!!! Not to detract from the sheer magic of it, but in practical terms, how M A N Y trips would a bird have to make with that tiny little quantity of mud/clay it could carry? If you take the construction of a circular bowl in your stride as instinctive, consider how the Ovenbird comes up with the windbreak/entrance design that shields the eggs/chicks from the elements and at what point in fashioning the bowl do they start to construct it?


Watch the slideshow here: Youtube Slideshow of OvenBirds Building Mud Nest

Photos by: Daniel Carbajal Solsona.
Video by: fabianno de Lucca.
Text by: Daniel Carbajal Solsona

Check out this fascinating video of Great Blue Herons hatching in the wild:
Great Blue Herons Hatching

Below is some additional background information provided from the website www.allaboutbirds.org

About the Herons

This Great Blue Heron nest is in a large, dead white oak in the middle of Sapsucker Woods pond, right outside the Cornell Lab's Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity. Herons have nested here since summer 2009, hatching and fledging four young each year and raising them on a steady diet of fish and frogs. Though neither bird is banded, you can identify the male by the absence of a hallux (the rear-facing toe) on his right foot. Adult herons can be up to 4.5 feet tall, with a wingspan up to 6 feet. Despite their large size, they typically only weigh around 5 pounds.
Herons usually lay 2-6 eggs and share incubation duties for 25-30 days. Incubation begins with the first egg, and the young hatch asynchronously (not at the same time) over 2-5 days. After hatching, it'll take 7-8 weeks before they fly from the nest for the first time.

About the Nest

In 2009, the herons brought in the first few twigs that would become the first known Great Blue Heron nest in the history of Sapsucker Woods. Early in the spring of 2012 we installed two cameras to bring the hidden world of their nesting habits into full view. The nest itself is nearly four feet across and a foot deep, and wraps almost entirely around the trunk of the tree. The birds have slowly built up the nest over the last three years.