Scarborough Marsh

Today, the estuary is 3,100 acres and it is considered the largest salt marsh in Maine. It was once much, much larger. Imagine auburn grasses and countless birds flying over the myriad pools reflecting the mood of the sky from dawn to dusk and then at night, reflecting the stars.





The waters, influenced by the moon, cause the pools to fill and empty like giant lungs making the marsh a place of constant change. Food was plentiful for the Sokokis Indians who hunted, trapped, clammed and fished on the wetland. Then, in the 1600s, white men came and pushed out the native people, they used the salt hay to feed cattle and sheep and used the marshland as summer pasture for livestock.





With the 1900's came an apparent increased need for the destruction of the natural world, especially places that were the most beautiful and important for wildlife. True to form, ditches were dug, pannes were filled and tidal gates were installed, thus preventing the tides from doing their eternal duty by flooding portions of the marsh and bringing nutrients to the wetland. Deciding that not enough damage had been done, it was determined that channels were to be dug to allow boats built inland to float through the marsh out to sea. When haying declined in the 1900s, people began to view marshes as sacrifice areas for airports or cheap space on which to fill and build. Finally, the most brilliant plan of all for this gorgeous piece of earth - make it a town dump! That very plan was proposed in the mid 1950's, as was an airport.


Evidence of plans, now foiled, to destroy the marsh

Then some humans, apparently lacking the destroy the earth gene, decided that an important coastal wildlife habitat was threatened, and in 1957 the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife began the twenty-year process of acquiring the marsh. In 1972 Maine Audubon initiated a partnership with the state to convert into a nature center an old clam shack at the edge of the marsh. Now, fast forward to 2009 and Lisa and Mike arrive on the scene at Scarborough Marsh and are awe struck by the vastness and beauty of this huge wetland.


The painter in his natural habitat



We saw egrets, herons, grassland sparrows, buffleheads (Mike's new name for me). On a previous scouting mission to visit the outskirts of the marsh, Mike saw thousands of American Eels congregating around a deep pool, writhing and wriggling all over, he said it was awesome to see! Apparently, muskrat, mink, otter and snowy owls frequent the marsh but we weren't lucky enough to see those this time.