Discover fascinating facts about the spiders in your backyard! The Kennebec Estuary Land Trust (KELT) welcomes Dana Wilde, author of A Backyard Book of Spiders in Maine, to speak about Maine’s diverse and captivating spider species on Thursday, April 29 at 6 p.m. The virtual evening lecture will provide curious observers of arachnids with insights into their biology, ecology, behavior, and natural history. Wilde will read pieces that explore spider bites, arachnid cognition, as well as nursery web and fishing spiders. Participants are welcomed and encouraged to ask questions during the Q&A portion of the lecture.

Registration is free and required in order to receive the Zoom link for the presentation. The Zoom link will be sent out to registrants before the event. For more information and to sign-up, visit KELT’s website at www.kennebecestuary.org/upcoming-events or call (207) 442-8400. 

Dana Wilde lives in Troy, Maine, and writes the Backyard Naturalist column which appears regularly in the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel and occasionally in the Sun Journal newspapers, and originated in years past as the award-winning Amateur Naturalist column in the Bangor Daily News. He has been a college professor, editor, Fulbright scholar, and NEH fellow. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Maine and doctoral and master’s degrees from Binghamton University, where his doctoral dissertation was recognized as the Distinguished Dissertation in the Humanities and Fine Arts for 1995, in part for its efforts to bridge the “two cultures” of science and the humanities. His writings have appeared in The Maine Entomologist and many popular, literary, and scholarly publications; his books include “Summer to Fall: Notes and Numina from the Maine Woods” and “Nebulae: A Backyard Cosmography.” He is a member of the Maine Entomological Society, the International Society of Arachnology, and the National Book Critics Circle.