By Diane O'Brien

ragrugs@midcoast.com

789-5987

Municipal meetings

All meetings are held at Lincolnville Central School unless otherwise noted.

A special town meeting will be held Monday, Feb. 13 at 6 p.m. in Walsh Common.

That same night, the selectmen will meet in their regular room, B-5, at 6:15 p.m. or whenever the town meeting ends.

The budget committee meets both Tuesday, Feb. 14 and Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 6 p.m. to consider budget requests from provider agencies and other groups.

Town meeting

Article 4 of next week's special town meeting asks voters to transfer and appropriate $95,000 from the Capital Investment Reserve account to the Municipal Building Committee amount. These funds will allow the building committee to commission a preliminary design for a new town office, to get environmental permitting in place for a septic system, and to map the town-owned wetlands, all in preparation for a November vote on the building.

Other items include allowing selectmen to negotiate a lease of the Dean & Eugley land to the Historical Society, an ordinance to regulate medical marijuana and methadone clinics in town, an amendment to the Home Occupations part of the land use ordinance, and authorizing the sale of a tax-acquired property on South Cobbtown road (Map 29 Lot 25). Details of the above articles can be read at the town office or on the town's website, town.lincolnville.me.us.

School

Congratulations to January's students of the month: kindergarten: Gracie Moody; first grade: Lucy Cohen and Jack Miller; second grade: Tyler Lanphier; third grade: Ruby Cohen and Lydia Thompson; fourth grade: Natalie O’Neil and Kaylee Bragdon; fifth grade: Isabelle Lang; sixth grade: Lexi St. Clair; seventh grade: Tora Decker-Griffith; eighth grade: Jasmine LaGue.

In January the PTO and LCS staff started a walking/running program called the "Feelin' Good Mileage Club" for all students in grades K-8. The course is on school grounds; students who want to participate can do it during recess and physical education.

Sympathy

Condolences to the family and friends of Helen Small Smith, longtime Lincolnville resident. Helen worked at the Knox and Seabright mills as well as Seacoast Eggs in Hope. She and her husband, Jim, lived and worked at Iona Poultry Farm for many years, as well.

Helen, who was near 90, was out and about and feeling well until just a few weeks before she died, in her own home and with family by her side.

Birds

Apparently bluebirds are visiting several yards this year: Sue Chapin of Liberty wrote that she and her husband have them at their place this winter, checking out the bluebird house and flying out of the woods toward the feeders as Sue drove up their lane, a way of saying, I guess, "Well, here you are. Isn't it time to feed us?"

The Chapins are birdwatchers and have never known bluebirds to stay all winter, though since they are in the same family as robins, she says, and she sometimes spots them "this time of year on a sunny day in the orchard looking for an apple left on a tree, [perhaps] the bluebirds knew this would be a milder winter than most!"

Hope Coates writes from Searsmont: "... earlier in January I was out feeding my birds and noticed that there were bluebirds, about eight, hovering around my bluebird houses. They too were eating regular bird seed. They were around for about three weeks, and then they took off. I could not believe what I was seeing at that time of year. I guess they flew to [Lincolnville]. I did not think to feed them the fruit. Next time I will."

All this bird talk prompted my friend Joan Tibbetts to call from Camden. Joan's a lifelong birdwatcher, as was her mother, Doris Heal. Doris grew up in Lincolnville Center, attended the Center School and loved birds from an early age. Thanks to Joan's wonderful memory for detail and for the stories her mother told her, I was able to write about Doris' childhood in "Staying Put"; much of what we know about the Center School in the early 1900s is thanks to Joan.

Joan said a recent article about screech owls by Kristen Lindquist reminded her of a lifelong mystery: as a little girl living on Harden Avenue in Camden, Joan was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of a screaming child, or that's what she first thought. There were no houses then between Harden Avenue and the Park, just woods. Finally, she decided the scream must have been a bobcat and went back to sleep. But reading Kristen's description of the screech owl's cry settled it, a 70-year-old mystery solved — it must have been an owl she heard that long-ago night.

Meanwhile, Joan's been delighted to finally have birds visiting her yard again after this winter of scarce birds. A big flock of robins cleaned off all the holly berries one day, and then the cedar waxwings made short work of her large mountain ash tree's orange berries. Five male cardinals and several females are visitors as well. Watching the birds is like taking a vacation, she says. I say, when someone finds so much pleasure looking out her own window, that's a life well-lived.

Kristen sent me an article she'd received called "Where are my birds?", the question so many of us have been asking this winter. The simplest answer, it says, is that it's been too nice out, and nature has provided plenty of food. So not only is the weather mild with little snow covering up the food sources, but this past fall was a high production year for several common tree species.

The spruces are bursting with cones (Corelyn Senn noticed their seeds all over the ground yesterday while walking our dog, Sammy; the cones open up and drop them). Yellow birch is having a "mast year," the name for a year when trees produce so much seed the predators can't possibly eat them all, leaving plenty to germinate. Trees north of us had such prolific seed crops that the redpolls and pine siskins we usually see at our feeders haven't had to come down our way. However, acorns, after last year's huge production, are so low this year that blue jays, turkeys, deer, squirrels and shrews are suffering.

Must be why the squirrels have been such marauders this winter, knocking down our feeders, doing impressive tightwire walks and breaking into our hen house. I wonder if flying squirrels eat acorns too; that would explain their moving into my kitchen. Poor things, maybe they're just hungry...