Seals, Herons, Marriage Proposals — Anything’s Possible on a Moonlight Canoe Tour of Scarborough Marsh

SCARBOROUGH, Maine, July 6, 2005

Wildlife is the focus of the full moon canoe tours that Southern Maine’s Scarborough Marsh Audubon Center offers each month throughout the summer, but once in a while a little romance can creep in.

"Out under the full moon, paddling quietly through the still water and sensing life all around you, it’s easy to feel a little romantic," concedes Linda Woodard, director of the Audubon center.

One year, Woodard says, a paddler proposed to his girlfriend midway though the tour. She said yes.

The tours are not just for swooning couples, though—families and singles as well as summer visitors and longtime Maine residents enjoy watching and listening to black-crowned night herons along the bank, snowy egrets flying back to a nearby island for the evening, and harbor seals and muskrats playing in the water during the naturalist-led, hour-and-a-half tours that start and end at Scarborough Marsh Audubon Center on Pine Point Road in Scarborough.

This summer, the full-moon canoe tours are from 8-9:30 p.m. on July 19, 20 or 21 and August 17, 18, and 19, and from 7-8:30 p.m. on September 16 and 17. Cost is $11 per adult, $9 per child 12 and younger for Maine Audubon members and $12 per adult, $10 per child for nonmembers. Participants can deduct $1.50 per person if they provide their own canoe. Preregistration is necessary.

Scarborough Marsh Audubon Center, which features exhibits, a nature trail, canoe rentals and a Maine Audubon Nature Store, also offers a variety of other guided and self-guided programs and tours, including early morning canoe tours, edible and medicinal plant walks, and a nature art program for children.

For details and registration for full moon canoe tours or other Scarborough Marsh Audubon Center programs, call (207) 883-5100.

Owned and managed by Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the 3,100 acre estuary known as Scarborough Marsh is the largest salt marsh in the state, comprising tidal marsh, salt creeks, freshwater marsh and uplands. The marsh is particularly important for wildlife as a resting, breeding and feeding ground.

MAINE AUDUBON works to conserve Maine’s wildlife and wildlife habitat by engaging people of all ages in education, conservation and action.

With a 160-year history of connecting people with nature, Maine Audubon is the only organization in Maine working to conserve wildlife in three ways: providing hands-on environmental education for people of all ages, conducting research and wildlife conservation projects statewide and taking action to help shape effective science-based conservation policy.

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