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2 days ago | 
townline.org | Roland D. Hallee
by Roland D. HalleeWhile driving through the countryside, you may have noticed some small bodies of water that are there in the spring, but disappear as summer proceeds. These vernal pools are essential to our ecosystem. Vernal pools provide important breeding habitat for select amphibians and insects, spiders, and crustaceans. Vernal pools are typically small, temporary wetlands – often less than one acre.
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1 week ago | 
townline.org | Roland D. Hallee
by Roland D. Hallee“It’s that time of year, again.” Probably one of the most over used phrases in the English language, and one that I loathe to hear. Why? Because when you come right down to it, everyday is that time of year for something. Anyway, here we go. It’s that time of the year again when snapping turtles appear everywhere to lay their eggs. Snapping turtles, Chelydra s.
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2 weeks ago | 
townline.org | Roland D. Hallee
by Roland D. HalleeOver the last several months I have been receiving emails, doing research and gathering information on the possibility of mountain lions in Maine.
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3 weeks ago | 
townline.org | Jude Hsiang |Rix Quinn |Mary J. Grow |Roland D. Hallee
Issue for April 24, 2025On Friday, April 4, 2025, Erskine Academy students and staff attended a Renaissance Assembly to honor their peers with Renaissance Awards…VASSALBORO – Vassalboro select board members have not been asked to sell the town transfer station, merely to consider sharing a small part of it…from Michael Cox (Somerville Resident) – The letter portraying Somerville as a ship cast into chaos after a “mutiny” overlooks some critical truths. There was no mutiny.
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3 weeks ago | 
townline.org | Roland D. Hallee
by Roland D. HalleeIn 2024, University of Maine Cooperative Extension Tick Lab processed 4,776 tick submissions including samples from 398 towns, representing all of Maine’s 16 counties. The majority (3,650) were identified as deer ticks, also known as blacklegged ticks, while American dog ticks accounted for 1,045 samples.
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1 month ago | 
townline.org | Roland D. Hallee
by Roland D. HalleeRecently, LiveSportsonTV.com sent along this statistic. It’s truly disturbing that Americans have gone to couch surfing as their national pastime. I used to participate in many sports in my younger years – softball, golf, tennis, table tennis, hockey, volleyball – to name a few. One of the more interesting games was walleyball, where you play volleyball in a handball court using the walls – pretty intense. Today, I only play golf, for various reasons.
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1 month ago | 
townline.org | Roland D. Hallee
by Roland D. HalleeA couple of weeks ago a friend asked me about the songbird, Bobolink, and are there any in Maine. Well, bobolinks and other grassland birds are true agricultural allies to central Maine farmers – they eat large quantities of insects that damage crops. The Bobolink is one of the world’s most impressive songbird migrants, traveling some 12,500 miles to and from southern South America every year.
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1 month ago | 
townline.org | Mary J. Grow |Roland D. Hallee |Peter Cates
Issue for April 3, 2025 Due to budget cuts by the Trump Administration, Good Shepherd Food Bank, which distributes food to more than 600 partner-organizations including Winslow Community Cupboard food pantry, and China Food Pantry, is receiving, effective April 1, 2025, a 50 percent reduction in the amount of food it usually receives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)… VASSALBORO – Vassalboro Budget Committee members began their first 2025 meeting on March 18 by re-electing Peggy...
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1 month ago | 
townline.org | Roland D. Hallee
by Roland D. HalleeLast week while looking out my kitchen window, I observed a flock of starlings that had settled in a nearby tree. There were so many, it looked like the tree was completely leafed out with its summer dress. There had to be dozens of them. It reminded me of many years ago when I had some thick brush in my backyard. Dozens of starlings would show up to feed.
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1 month ago | 
townline.org | Roland D. Hallee
by Roland D. HalleeRecently, someone showed me a photograph of an insect they alleged bit one of their children. They wanted to know what it was and whether it was harmful. It didn’t take long for me to identify it as an earwig. Earwigs are a relatively small group of insects. Earwigs often upset people when discovered indoors. Their forcep-like tail appendages make them look dangerous, but they are quite harmless.
