Dear PiPl Friends,
I hope you are enjoying these fleeting days of mild weather. Our local and migrating wildlife surely are! As many of you are aware, while developing the Piping Plover film, I have been filming the third documentary in the trilogy (loosely referred to as The Pond Film). Filming is taking place at area freshwater locations; ponds and marshes of every kind at a multiple of Massachusetts sites. Yesterday I was back at Niles Pond and saw a first at the Pond, a migrating Bobolink! He/she surfaced for a brief moment while foraging in the reeds, long enough to capture a few seconds of footage. During the spring and summer, we can see Bobolinks at a number of Greenbelt properties that manage their sites for grassland nesting birds. Bobolinks are one of the longest distance migrating songbirds, traveling about 12,000 miles every year. When migrating, they are usually seen in flocks and hope this lone Bobolink finds his way.
I want to again thank all who attended our premiere at the Boston Film Festival, and to everyone who couldn’t come but have championed the Plovers along the way. If you receive these email updates, you have been a supporter in one way or another and we are so grateful for your help. I am honored to share that we received the Eco Film Award from the Boston Film Festival! We are so appreciative of the tremendous gift provided by Robin Dawson and the BFF team for filmmakers to share their stories with the public. The Boston Film Festival is a stellar organization, in every way, and we are so proud to have been a part of the 40th annual festival. Congratulations to all the films and filmmakers for your beautifully crafted outstanding films!
We had a fantastic houseful and I was beyond delighted that the audience saw both the humor and the vulnerability of our tiny feathered shorebird neighbors. Thank you also to Michelle Akelson and her fantastic team at Rockport Music for sharing the stunning Shalin Liu. And a very special shoutout to Cape Ann’s incredibly dedicated Piping Plover Ambassadors, and an extra, extra shoutout to the Ambassadors who were at the Shalin Liu lending a hand. Thank you Deborah Brown, Jennie Meyer, Jill Ortiz, Paula Niziak, Barbara Boudreau, Kim Bouris, and Sandy Barry.
More good news to share for the film. We have been accepted to two festivals in Ontario, one headquartered in Toronto, and the other Brooklin. I have also applied to several additional festivals in eastern Canada as Plovers breed along the coasts of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, PEIsland, New Brunswick, the Magdalen Islands of Quebec, and on both the US and Canadian sides of the Great Lakes. I was so hoping there would be interest in our documentary from our PiPl Friends in Canada and there very definitely is!
We are currently raising funds to bring The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay to public television. If you know of an individual, organization, business, or foundation that may have a particular interest in Massachusetts, wildlife, birds, conservation, eco/environmental films, and would like to be an underwriter, please let me know. In our funding presentation deck, we provide a great deal of information showing how it works and the extensive benefits to the underwriter.
And please write and let me know of any interesting and unusual wildlife sightings you encounter during this beautiful fall migration.
Happy Sunday!
Warmest wishes,
Kim
