Back by popular demand! Enjoy a fun and creative summer evening at Bylane overlooking the native garden and sanctuary as you paint your own nature-inspired masterpiece. Charlotte Holden will lead this summer’s Paint Night, going back to the roots of her relationship with Bedford Audubon, and places are sure to go fast so make sure you register early! Charlotte will guide the group in creating a beautiful painting on personal canvases. Sign up with friends or make new ones on this special evening!

Thursday, July 11, 6:30-8:00pm. Cost: $35 (includes all materials and refreshments): click here to register.

Do you know the difference between a moth and a butterfly? Enroll in our Butterfly Workshop with Naturalist Tait Johansson to learn this and much more! Indoor instruction will include the natural history and identification ofour local butterflies followed by an outdoor butterfly walk in our native garden and surrounding sanctuary. Some of the butterflies we will be looking out for at this point of the summer are Red-spotted Purple, Great Spangled Fritillary, Mulberry Wing, Black Dash, and possibly Dion Skipper.

Bring binoculars, close-focusing ones if you have them, and lunch if you wouldlike.  If you would like to borrow a pair of our binoculars, please ask whenregistering.

Saturday, July 13,10:00am-1:00pm. Cost:$20 for members, $55 for non-members (this includes a year's membership). This workshop is limited to 8 participants who will each receive handouts from the instructional session: click here to register.

Meet our flock! Join us for Birds, Blooms & Botanicals, an evening with us on the patio,  and meet fellow Bedford Audubon members, staff and Board over cold drinks and nibbles while learning about the birds that call Bylane home. Our Summer Field Biologist, Arden Schenider, will be on hand to help with using citizen science apps such as Merlin, Seek and iNaturalist to help you identify what we see and hear, and our Native Garden Intern, Diansen Zhang, will be there to show you round our newly-restored native garden. Talk shop with fellow birders or simply relax and enjoy the sights and sounds of Bylane on a summer evening.

Thursday, July 18, 6:00-8:00pm. Cost: Free. Pleaselet us know if you would like to come: info@bedfordaudubon.org

This is a trip not to be missed! Join Naturalist Tait Johansson and incoming Board President John Hannan on a Field Trip to the Coastal Center at Milford Point. Milford Point is part of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge and is adjacent to CT DEEP’s 550-acre Wheeler Marsh Wildlife Management Area.Together, they provide some of Connecticut's finest wildlife viewing opportunities. The site is a haven for year-round and migratory wildlife with nesting species like Piping Plovers, Bald Eagle, and Peregrine Falcon while annually supporting between 10,000-20,000 migrating shorebirds, including the Semi-palmated Sandpiper, Sanderling, and Dunlin, offering extraordinary opportunities for wildlife viewing. Purple Martins nest just yards from the parking area, and we will be looking out for American Oystercatchers, Willets, along with Least and Common Terns which should still be watching over fledging birds that are just beginning to fly and hunt on their own.

Saturday, July 20, 9:00am-12:30pm. Cost: Free. Level of Difficulty: Easy. Email Susan to register: info@bedfordaudubon.org. Parkingis limited at Milford Point so carpooling is an option - cars will leave fromBylane at 7:30am: please let Susan know when registering if you are interestedin sharing a ride.

Part field guide, part history, part ornithology primer, and altogether fun. Join us for the discussion of our July pick for the Bylane Book Club: A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching by Rosemary Mosco.

Pigeons are amazing, and until recently, humans adored them. We've kept them as pets, held pigeon beauty contests, raced them, used them to carry messages over battlefields, harvested their poop to fertilize our crops—and cooked them in gourmet dishes. Now, with A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching, we can rediscover the wonder. Pigeons coo, peck and nest all over the world, yet most of us treat them with indifference or disdain. So RosemaryMosco, a bird-lover, science communicator, writer, and cartoonist, is here to give the pigeon's image a makeover, and to help every town- and city-dweller get closer to nature by discovering the joys of birding through pigeon-watching.

Monday, July 22, 6:30pm. Email Susan to register:info@bedfordaudubon.org

Many adult butterflies have a life-span of one month, with the smallest living only a week or so, and a few, such as the Monarch, can live up to nine months. Learn even more about these beautiful insects by joining Naturalist Tait Johanss for a summer Nature Walk to explore The Butterflies of Bylanein our newly-restored native garden and surrounding sanctuary. We will be hoping for sightings of Viceroy, Mulberry Wing, Black Dash, and Zabulon Skipper. Bring binoculars, close-focussing if you have them, or you can borrow ours!

Wednesday, July 24, 10:00am-noon. Cost: Free. Level of Difficulty: Easy. Registration required by emailing Susan at info@bedfordaudubon.org