The Readings From the Northside Calendar is here. 2021 is going to be a great year!

While I shouldn’t comment on the images because they are mine so I’ll sound like a jerk if I love them and a whiner if I don’t (I love them! Jerk!), I’ve got this thing sitting next me and it really came out great. It is a gorgeous 12×12, full color hanger. Nice and big and easy to write in. And I love it so much that we didn’t cheap out and instead got the professional spiral binding so it hangs nice and flat and doesn’t pop off the wall. I hate it when you have to smoosh the crease. It never gets perfectly flat.

As many of you know, because of the animals I came to love as a result of keeping this blog, I wrote a piece of software called NestStory to help biologists take better care of their data. Scientists are generally so busy dealing with the problems right in front them, they don’t have time to preserve all of their valuable data for the future. While every single one of them would probably chop off a toe to have data about their habitats from scientists working on them 50 years ago, almost none of them are working hard to preserve their own data for scientists working here 50 years from now.

NestStory solves this problem which is why it just keeps growing and being used all over the country to manage everything from tiny Piping Plovers to massive Bald Eagles, from Maine to Florida. Right here in NJ, NestStory manages the entire populations of Bald Eagles, Peregrine Falcons, Piping Plover, Least Terns, Black Skimmers, American Kestrel, American Oystercatchers, and probably more that I don’t even know about. They are now even using it to manage endangered beach plants.

And this past season, with all of the social distancing restrictions and government furloughs, NestStory wound up being an absolutely critical tool for endangered species, allowing wildlife managers to see real time status on our endangered coastal animals from generous volunteers, even when they were not allowed to work.

The Little Egg Foundation has taken over the project to help ensure that any organization can use NestStory, no matter how big or how small. And that’s also why the LEF is giving away this gorgeous calendar to anyone who donates to the project, no matter how big or how small.

It’s nuts. I trust that you fine Readers won’t rob Little Egg by donating $1.00. I’m sure this thing cost at least $10 to print, the envelopes are probably a few bucks, and it costs about $5 to ship them.

Grab one of these beauties before they are gone. I’ve promised so many people over the years that I wouldn’t do a calendar because it “cheapens the work” but screw it. NestStory is too important. And it came out so good. It gave me goosebumps!

This is a great chance to do something great for the future. Not just for the animals, not just for the biologists, but for you. Hopefully this collection of pictures gives the world something to smile about in 2021, especially you.

Check it out here, and thank you for your support. Please, please, please share widely. Anyone who loves the beach will love this thing.

https://www.little-egg.org/calendar/