My name is Jane Sender and I love birds. After I retired I watched them, learned to identify them by sight and sound, took courses, and joined local field trips. I now teach classes for Mass Audubon on all kinds of birds. I am a volunteer for Tin Mountain Conservation Center and the Loon Preservation Committee, monitoring breeding Common Loons on a number of lakes in Carroll County, New Hampshire. I am also an active member of the Mountain Garden Club and a member of the 2023-2024 UNH Extension hybrid Master Gardener Class.
Before the pandemic, I co-led Mass Audubon birding trips throughout the United States. I monitored seabirds for NOAA on Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and helped to maintain the Purple Martin colony at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. Before retiring I practiced law in Massachusetts.
A big part of birding is understanding habitat. Every species is found in a specific habitat which provides food, shelter and a place to raise their young. Unfortunately birds are in serious trouble, mostly due to habitat loss.
I was an avid gardener before I became a birder, but birding and the work of Professor Douglas Tallamy changed my entire perspective about gardening. While I love my garden for the beauty of its plants, it’s the whole picture – the habitat the plants provide for birds, caterpillars, moths, butterflies and other animals -that makes the garden truly amazing to me.
In 2020 my partner and I bought a beautiful house in Glen, New Hampshire. As gorgeous as the house and its views are, the yard and surrounding 2 acres were neglected and sad. As soon as I saw the property I could hear Doug Tallamy telling me what I would be doing over the next few years. This blog is that story.
About the Mount Washington Valley
The views from hiking summits in the Whites are breathtaking and majestic, but their beauty and the regrowth that has occurred hides what happened here. Evolutionary relationships between plants and animals existing here for millennia are damaged. Protecting what remains of the heathy eco-system depends on preserving native plants, especially alpine plants, from further degradation.
A short description with pictures of the devastation brought about by logging from the 1880’s into the early 1900s can be found here. There is much to be celebrated in what was accomplished in the recovery from the initial period of logging. But it is now 100 years later, and only six areas with approximately 148,000 acres within the White Mountain National Forest are protected as wilderness areas. The remaining 652,000 acres are subject to logging, development pressure and overuse. Protecting the Forest by making thoughtful decisions is vitally important to maintaining the habitat needed to sustain the plants and animals here.