Todd Audubon Sanctuary

Located six miles southeast of Damariscotta on Muscongus Bay, Todd Audubon Sanctuary includes a 30-acre mainland parcel as well as 330-acre Hog Island, located a quarter-mile offshore and home to the Audubon Camp at Hog Island.

Operated by volunteers from the Midcoast Chapter of Maine Audubon, a seasonal visitor’s center on the mainland houses nature displays, a Maine Audubon Nature Store, and Project Puffin’s “Puffin Cam,” a remote-controlled live video link that provides up-close views of puffins and terns nesting on offshore Eastern Egg Rock. Three interpretive trails wind through meadows, woods, and along the shore of Muscongus Bay. Audubon’s Seabird Restoration Project (Project Puffin) is also based here, and each July and August, the Midcoast Chapter of Maine Audubon offers an environmental education program for children ages 5 to 10.

"Across the narrows" from the mainland is the Audubon Camp at Hog Island, which since 1936 has connected adults, young people, and families with nature through residential camp programs. Top naturalists and educators lead its weekend and week-long camp programs, many held at the same sites Roger Tory Peterson, Rachel Carson, and Andrew Wyeth declared favorites. The camp facilities are based in a campus-like cluster of late-nineteenth-century buildings on the island’s northern tip.

Habitat

The mainland portion of Todd Audubon Sanctuary features second-growth spruce and fir with mixed oak and large white pines. The diversity of trees along with understory shrubs such as huckleberry and blueberry provide habitat for thrushes, nuthatches, and several species of warblers, including Blackburnian, yellow-rumped, and black-throated green. Cavity trees are habitat for woodpeckers, raccoons, and flying squirrels. Other mammals include red fox, deer, and a variety of rodents. Low-light forest plants such as Canada mayflower, bunchberry, starflower, pink lady slipper, and hair-cap moss can be found among the stands of mature spruce.

Maintained for both habitat diversity and views of Muscongus Bay, the sanctuary’s meadows are filled with milkweed, goldenrod, and a variety of ferns. Home to green frogs and sunfish, a small pond is routinely visited by a variety of birds.

Common eider, black guillemot, osprey, and double crested cormorant can often be seen from the shore of the sanctuary. Tidal habitats teem with crabs, mussels, sea stars, and periwinkles among the rockweed.

Hog Island is dominated by white and red spruce, white pine, and birch trees. Hay-scented fern “balds,” or clearings, can be found on the island’s southern tip. More than 150 bird species have been identified on the island, several of which breed there.

Trails

Hockomock Point Trail (1 mile)

Beginning at the visitor’s center, the Hockomock Point Trail is an easy, one-hour interpretive walk through meadows, woods—including spruce and red oak—and along granite ledges, stone walls and the shore of Muscongus Bay.

Pinetree Trail (.5 mile)

Beginning just below the pond on the road to the boathouse, the Pine Tree Trail is an easy 25-minute interpretive walk that traverses a meadow and winds through a hardwood forest dotted with several large white pine trees.

Meadow Trail (.5 mile)

Beginning below the visitor’s center by the trailhead of the Hockomock Point Trail, the gentle, picturesque Meadow Trail reveals superb stands of milkweed—which attract monarch butterflies—as well as abundant insect life and other botanical interests.

Hog Island Trail (3 miles)

Visitors by boat may walk the three-mile trail around the perimeter of Hog Island.

History

Todd Audubon Sanctuary has a long history of human use. Attracted by the area’s abundant clam beds, the Abanaki people fished on Hog Island and Hockomock Point for many thousands of years. In the late 1600s and into the 1700s, European settlers cut the timber from the shorelands and established farms, pulling rocks from the fields and piling them into the walls that exist to this day. Hog Island is one of many Maine coast islands that bears the name of the livestock that roamed its new-world pastures.

The establishment of Todd Audubon Sanctuary was made possible through the inspiration of Mabel Loomis Todd, who purchased Hog Island to save it from logging in 1908. Following her mother’s death in 1932, Millicent Todd Bingham worked to preserve the island and establish the ecology camp in concert with Audubon in 1936.

A decade and a half after Hog Island was given to Audubon, Dr. Carl Bucheister, then director of the camp, arranged for the purchase of 30 mainland acres from Charles Nash, a farmer whose family had occupied the nearby mainland point from before 1900. In 2000 the sanctuary was transferred to Maine Audubon as part of its affiliation with national Audubon. To this day the sanctuary and its renowned camp continue to provide people from all parts of the country with opportunities to experience and learn about nature on the coast of Maine.