Lake Andrews and its environs are lush and teeming with life these spring days. So whether you’re an alum here for Reunion weekend or a daily Puddle walker, here are 16 animals we’ve seen both recently and over the years — and that you might see whenever you swing by the popular �ֲ���ý pond.

With a perimeter of a third of a mile, Lake Andrews features about 3 acres of habitat. For the purpose of our accounting, we offer animals within the perimeter of the Burgoyne Lakeside Walkway, which is about a quarter of a mile.

Name: Painted turtle, Chrysemys picta

The following is a sequence of events that created a hay-bale haven for painted turtles at Lake Andrews this spring:

First, Facility Services placed bales of hay over storm drains around the pond to prevent ducklings from tumbling in (which they do, all the time). Then, students (we assume) tossed a few bales into the pond (just…because). The bales floated, and painted turtles discovered the little rafts, and turned them into sunning spots. This gathering was seen on May 20, 2024.

Name: Red-winged blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus

Puddle walkers are accustomed to being dive-bombed by noisy red-winged blackbirds that nest around the pond.

They’re very territorial, behaving like someone who moves into a college town and then gets really annoyed when students appear.

Name: Muskrat, Ondatra zibethicus

A semi-aquatic rodent, muskrats are good for the Puddle because their feeding habits prevent shoreline overgrowth. This guy was seen swimming (and ultimately diving) on April 11, 2024.

Name: Bald eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalu

These two above Lake Andrews on Nov. 16, 2023. They’re also seen by �ֲ���ý rowers on the Androscoggin River.

Name: Ouachita map turtle, Graptemys ouachitensis

When this story was published on June 6, we initially identified this as a small snapping turtle. Then James Dowling-Healey ’12 clued us in: It is likely a map turtle, perhaps an , which is not native to Maine but common in the pet trade. “It’s something rare and out of place, likely a released pet,” Dowling-Healey said.

Name: Snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina

This underwater apparition is a snapping turtle, seen lounging in about 4 inches of water near the inlet on June 3. Last spring, one was seen laying its eggs just off the Burgoyne Walk.

Brace yourself: snapping turtles eat ducklings. And lots of other stuff. Which means they help keep the ecosystem in balance.

Name: Common whitetail dragonfly, Plathemis lydia

Dragonflies are great flyers. They can move and rotate each of their four wings independently, and fly in six directions—up, down, forward, backward, sideways. And hover.

Name: Eastern gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis

The real �ֲ���ý motto: Amore ac Studio…ac Sciurus.

Gray squirrels have been part of the campus ecosystem and campus culture since the beginning.
The �ֲ���ý Student reported in 1881 that Albert Millet, Class of 1883, had a “go-as-you-please race” — a form of race where you can walk, jog, or run — with a gray squirrel.

“The first quarter of a mile he gained on the quadruped, but the latter won the race by taking a bee line for the top of a tree,” the Student reported.

Name: Copepod, Skistodiaptomus (genus)

True, you can’t actually see a copepod (the name means “oar-feet”) without a powerful microscope. They are a group of small crustaceans found in most freshwater and saltwater habitats. This example was photographed around 15 years ago by biology major Hannah Schultz ’12.

Collecting specimens by tossing a plankton net into the Puddle, she used the college’s scanning electron microscope to create images of the pond’s tiniest creatures, including fish and insect larvae, itty-bitty copepods, and ittier-bittier algae.

Schultz has since earned a medical degree from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and is now completing a residency at the Wilmer Eye Institute of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Name: Goldfish, Carassius auratus

There are a couple hundred breeds of goldfish, and all of them are apparently represented in the Puddle. The assumption is that they were introduced by students, and have been referenced since the early 1990s. In the spring, they exhibit this splashing and wriggling spawning behavior. (The fish do, that is.)

James Dowling-Healey ’12, who has degrees in law and biology, suggests that the goldfish “are likely all common goldfish, maybe with a comet (the long, swishy tailed goldfish) or a shubunkin or two. Orange goldfish are picked off by predators like ospreys and herons, so you are more likely to see wild-type goldfish.” 

Name: Ducks, Anatidae (family)

One can find 34 species of ducks in Maine, 15 are residents during the breeding season, 18 species winter in the state, and all migrate through Maine. That number includes 11 dabbling ducks, 13 diving ducks, six sea ducks, and four geese.

By the way, fictional fear that a duck is watching you, anatidaephobia, was coined by Garry Larson in a Far Side cartoon.

Name: Double-crested cormorant, Phalacrocoracidae (family)

Cormorants forage for fish underwater, and are capable of holding their breath for two minutes and diving nearly 150 feet deep. “If you watch them for long enough, you’ll see them emerge from the water with wiggling fish,” said Carly Philpott ’27 of Centennial, Colo., who photographed this cormorant speeding over the water on Sept. 23, 2023.

Name: Crayfish, Faxonius (genus)

Maine is home to several species of crayfish, both native and non-native/invasive, such as the rusty crayfish and red swamp crayfish. We’re not sure what species this one is, being eaten by a hooded merganser on Oct. 22, 2019.

Name: Osprey, Pandion haliaetus

In the warm months, ospreys are frequent visitors to campus. They circle Lake Andrews, searching for their next meal, then dive into the Puddle to scoop a fish.

An osprey is the Greg Louganis of the avian world. Capable of diving head-first into the water from high in the sky, this raptor repositions its body along the way, snagging a fish with a feet-first splash and grab.

Name: Great blue heron, Ardea horodias

Another predator that helps to maintain a semblance of ecological balance in the Puddle, dining on fish, amphibians, reptiles (including small turtles), and small mammals.

Name: �ֲ���ý Bobcat, �ֲ���ýina lynx

And finally we have….the �ֲ���ý Bobcat, first identified as the college mascot in 1924, which means the Bobcat turns 100 this year.

Jack Williams, Class of 1911, was among the first to suggest the bobcat as a mascot; he had sent a letter to the �ֲ���ý Alumnus in 1922 suggesting the bobcat: “It is small — but Oh! how it can fight.” In December 1924, the student body gathered in the Chapel and, with a near-unanimous vote, decided on the feisty feline.

The �ֲ���ý Bobcat, curiously gregarious for a species typically considered elusive, is guaranteed to be out and about during Reunion weekend!

An osprey is the Greg Louganis of the avian world. Capable of diving head-first into the water from high in the sky, this raptor repositions its body along the way, snagging a fish with a feet-first splash and grab.

In the warm months, ospreys are frequent visitors to campus. They circle Lake Andrews, searching for their next meal, then dive into the Puddle to scoop a fish (there are lots of goldfish in the Puddle).

But that immense talent doesn’t mean that an osprey, or any bird, will also be good at nest-building, or will make good choices about where to build a nest, says Don Dearborn, an evolutionary biologist and professor of biology.

Watch this osprey bring a branch, gripped in its talons, to the top of a light pole at Garcelon Field on April 7, in an attempt to build a nest.

During the first week of April, an osprey, having returned to campus after its winter sojourn, presumably to Central or South America, tried to build a nest in a spot that seemed to meet the three rules of home building for humans or birds — location, location, location.

Yet the effort failed. Over and over, the osprey carried sticks to Garcelon Field, placing them atop a light pole. But the ever-growing pile of sticks that fell to the ground told the tale: There wasn’t enough purchase or flat space atop the pole to build a nest, and the sticks fell, or were blown, to the ground. The osprey eventually gave up.

“Birds can choose poor sites or simply be bad nest builders,” explains Dearborn. “Although some species are incredibly talented nest-builders, others make nests with holes in the bottom that eggs drop through.”

Birds that live in human-modified environments face additional challenges for nesting, Dearborn explains. “Urban ducks, for example, can choose locations that are fine from their perspective but ultimately problematic.”

Last summer, a duck decided that a planter in front of busy Pettengill Hall was the place to nest. From the duck’s point of view, the location was fine: close to water. But though folks from �ֲ���ý Facility Services worked to keep folks clear of the location, the duck did not hatch any ducklings. Another duck nested in a tree on the Historic Quad.

There’s also nest-building drama and outright thievery, Dearborn says. Frigatebirds, for example, don’t have the right anatomy to collect nest materials, like twigs and sticks, on the ground. “Their legs and feet are too short to do much walking.” 

So they often purloin nesting material from other birds’ nests. “They also steal material in mid-air from other frigatebirds,” says Dearborn.

“But regardless of how frigatebirds acquire nesting material, they share with the duck and osprey the crucial task of making an effective nest in a good location,” he says.

A task that evidently, in the case of our local osprey, doesn’t always go well on the first try.

When Bill Tucker ’67 and Monica Drozd decided to renew their wedding vows, more than three decades after getting married before strangers in the Black Forest of Germany, they knew exactly where they wanted to be, and who they wanted to share the special moment with.

“We wanted to renew our vows in a context that, while still small and intimate, took place in a more personally meaningful location,” says Tucker. “�ֲ���ý and Bill Hiss immediately came to mind.”

Hiss, a 1966 �ֲ���ý graduate, was Tucker’s college roommate back in the day. They’ve been friends ever since. And besides a long career heading �ֲ���ý’ admission program, Hiss is also a licensed minister in the United Church of Christ.

“With one of my oldest, dearest friends to officiate — he kind of pulled the arc of our lives together,” Tucker says.

So it happened that Tucker and Drozd re-dedicated their union next to Lake Andrews last Friday morning, with Hiss officiating. His wife, Colleen Quint ’85, joined the gathering, along with two official witnesses, �ֲ���ý leadership gifts officers Cary Gemmer ’07 and Rebecca Lazure.

Tucker wore a suit with his father’s cufflinks and tie clip, which held sentimental value. Drozd held a bouquet of fresh flowers cut from Gemmer’s garden. The more casual — but special — event reflected the first time they exchanged vows: in a remote German chapel, witnessed by a handful of tourists and travelers.

Drozd did not attend �ֲ���ý, but she and Tucker share a love for the school, and Drozd teared up as she explained how much having the ceremony at �ֲ���ý meant to her. “I can’t even express in words — my tears are probably sufficient,” Drozd says. “Bill loves �ֲ���ý, I love �ֲ���ý and I love Bill.”

Hiss and Tucker met during Hiss’ senior year and Tucker’s junior year. Tucker was 26 years old at that point, older than a typical �ֲ���ý junior. After spending the better part of a decade in and out of �ֲ���ý including service in the U.S. Army with the Military Police Corps in Korea, he was finally ready to finish his degree.

“We didn’t meet until we both moved into apartments on the top floor of what’s now Turner House,” Hiss recalls. They were studying two very different things: Hiss was studying English, and Tucker was majoring in psychology. They both found the other’s studies to be interesting, and this set the stage for their lives to complement each other for the next 57 years.

“Fresh out of the military and filled with anxiety over returning to college after a five-year hiatus, I found in Bill not only a good friend,” Tucker says, “but a role model of academic engagement combined with social conscience.”

“He didn’t really ‘get’ what the intellectual life was all about,” Hiss says of Tucker. “And he sort of learned that, he said, from watching me write an honors thesis, in the English department, on a topic nobody would want to read about.”

The friends left �ֲ���ý and became leaders in their fields. Hiss became a national expert on the gatekeeping effect of standardized tests like the SAT, while Tucker, a professor emeritus of psychology at Rutgers University, used his academic career to focus on how social science has been used to advance oppressive and racist social policies.

“To say that Bill Tucker has a lifelong commitment to racial and social justice is a big understatement,” says Hiss.

During the ceremony, Hiss, dressed for the occasion in his academic robe and hood, reflecting his Tufts Ph.D., and a minister’s stole, spoke about the love Tucker and Drozd share. He told them that “caring for each other and caring for other people is what you two do.”��

Like any group of old friends, they recognize that every moment spent together is more special as the years march on. Tucker and Drozd clasped each other’s hands while Hiss talked about the couple and their love.

He told the small gathering that Tucker and Drozd met at a dance competition, and “the two of these folks are spectacular dancers, among other things. Lucky Bill,” Hiss said, “and yes, lucky Monica, too. And I have to say, at this moment, lucky me, too.”

A hungry �ֲ���ý Bobcat knows to make tracks to Commons. For a peckish local osprey, Lake Andrews offers bountiful helpings of its favorite food: fish. Specifically, goldfish.

Around 10 a.m. on Aug. 22, �ֲ���ý Communications photographer Theophil Syslo spied an osprey perched atop a Garcelon Field light stand.

Through his camera viewfinder, Syslo saw the raptor munching a goldfish from the campus pond. “And I figured it would go for more.”

Syslo tagged along to chronicle the show, and here’s what happened:

10:03:25 a.m.

Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College

Atop a light stand at Garcelon Field, the osprey finishes its first helping of Lake Andrews goldfish.

Goldfish have long populated the campus pond. They were there before the pond’s 1998 draining and restoration, and reappeared soon afterward.

We assume they were introduced by students. Fish being the only pets allowed in residences, it’s easy to imagine a goldfish going from, say, Adams Hall to Lake Andrews.

10:05:28 a.m.

Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College

Having eaten one goldfish, the osprey takes flight for Lake Andrews, just 500 feet away.

A bird expert who often does fieldwork on remote seal islands, �ֲ���ý Professor of Biology Don Dearborn appreciates this local bird show: “It’s super cool!”

He adds, “Especially since the Puddle is so popular — noontime walkers, students studying — it’s great that people have a chance to see nature in action.”

10:09:23 a.m.

Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College

Perched in a spruce tree along the shore, the osprey scans the water below for fish. Osprey are the only hawk species in North America that eat live fish almost exclusively.

10:09:46 a.m.

Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College

The osprey dives toward its prey and, just before hitting the water, “repositions to land feet-first for prey capture,” says Dearborn. “As a side consequence, they typically penetrate a meter or less into the water.”

10:09:49 a.m.

Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College

Shedding water, the osprey emerges from the pond with a goldfish. Barbed pads on the soles of an osprey’s feet help grip slippery fish.

Like most raptors, an osprey has four long toes—three in front and one in back. When it reaches for a fish, one front toe swivels toward the rear, effectively positioning two toes in front and two in back to create twin grasping talons: perfect for holding a fish tightly.

10:09:52 a.m.

Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College

It’s said that when an osprey has a fish in its claws, it orients the fish head first for less wind resistance, though that doesn’t appear to be the case here.

Repositioning the fish “is perhaps less important for short-distance flights, given the risk of dropping the fish during repositioning,” Dearborn says. “On longer flights, such as back to a distant nest, the reorientation is likely to produce valuable energy savings.”

10:09:53 a.m.

Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College

As the osprey ascends from the water, it shakes itself off, shedding water easily thanks to oily feathers common among aquatic birds and many terrestrial birds.

10:09:55 a.m.

Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College

See you again, osprey!

Twenty years ago this month, �ֲ���ý began a major restoration of the Lake Andrews area.

First, the pond was drained by opening the sluice gate at the north end, near Russell Street. Then, bulldozers and backhoes removed 4,963 cubic yards of so-called dredge spoils, scraping the bottom to the base of marine clay.

As the water level lowered day by day, all sorts of��treasures were revealed: a bowling ball, mangled bike, table, stereo set, desk, bed frame, chairs, tennis shoes, bottles, cans, three 30-pound snapping turtles (they were relocated to a nearby pond), and many overgrown goldfish (they met their maker).

It had been 40 years since the pond was first excavated, and the accumulation of mud was deep, a fact that aquatic biologist and limnologist Scott Williams ’71 learned the hard way.

Bulldozers scrape the bottom of Lake Andrews down to its base of marine clay during the July 1998 restoration. (Marc Glass ’88/�ֲ���ý College)

Williams was a consultant on the project, and late one afternoon during the dredging operation he spied one of the snapping turtles in the middle of the pond. Armed with his trapping gear and wearing hip waders, he headed out toward the snapper. But he never got there.

A few yards from shore, he could move no more. “I was up to my thighs in muck.” He struggled for a bit, then scanned the shoreline for help. “No one was around,” he recalls. “Not a soul.”

But then a truck stopped, and a man stepped out. “You’re stuck, aren’t you?” he asked. Yup, replied Williams. “Well, I can help you,” the man said.

“I would’ve come out naked.”

Could he ever. The Good Samaritan was also one of the heavy-machine operators. He mounted his idle excavator — a “monstrously big thing,” recalls Williams — and fired it up. All the while, Williams was thinking, “How is this going to work?”

The operator expertly maneuvered his rig so it perched on the very edge of the pond, and extending the bucket to its full reach, just to where Williams could grab it.

The huge bucket soon loomed directly and, from Williams’ stuck perspective, menacingly over his head. “All I can think is that if his rig toppled into the pond, I’m going to be driven 10 feet into the sediment.”

In 1998, the beloved Puddle’s massive makeover began with its complete draining.

The operator had a plan. “I don’t think I can just yank you out,” he called to Williams, who heartily agreed with the anti-yank sentiment��— “I would’ve come out naked.”

Instead, the idea was for Williams to grab the teeth of the bucket, and then the operator would rock him back and forth to break the suction.�� “It worked,” says Williams. “He was able to lift me out, swing me around, and deposit me on the shore.”

With the pond bed eventually scraped clean, workers covered it with six inches of clean, coarse sand.

Lake Andrews got its name in the 1910s when Delbert Andrews, Class of 1910, helped students create a skating rink by damming a swampy area of campus behind Hathorn Hall and Parker Hall. In 1958, as �ֲ���ý embarked on a building program, the college excavated wetland to create a formal retention pond to handle stormwater runoff.

During the 1998 restoration, Lake Andrews was drained by opening the sluice gate at the north end. Once it was drained, bulldozers and backhoes removed 4,963 cubic yards of dredge spoils. (Marc Glass ’88/�ֲ���ý College)

Like many urban ponds, Lake Andrews gets��much of its��water from stormwater running off roofs, parking lots, and lawns, so it has a harder time staying healthy than its country cousins.

“The water doesn’t receive filtration that a natural pond would from forests, land, and soil,” says Williams, the longtime director of��, a nonprofit that works to protect the health of Maine lakes by collecting citizen-reported scientific information.

In the years prior to the 1998 restoration, Lake Andrews was susceptible to eutrophication, which occurs when a body of water receives too many nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus, prompting overgrowth of plants and algae. Even in Williams’ era, the Puddle had a bad rap. “No one would stick their pinky in it.”

The marine clay layer that exists all around the �ֲ���ý campus doesn’t help the pond, explains Williams. “Marine clay tends to be impervious; it doesn’t absorb water. So the watershed runoff, rather than filtering into the ground, tends to erode the clay, creating silt that carries nutrients like phosphorous into the pond.” (Years of silt runoff also created the deep muck.)

At this site, between the Museum of Art and the pond, the college created the new Florence Keigwin Amphitheater. (Marc Glass ’88/�ֲ���ý College)

Planted along the shore, aquatic and terrestrial buffer vegetation, including lots of bulrush and low-bush blueberry plants near the Museum of Art, help to filter sediments and nutrients from watershed runoff. Some 250 tons of rip-rap (large stones that prevent water erosion) were placed in some areas, vertical stone walls built in others, to further stabilize the shore and curtail silting.

The restoration also entailed a passive runoff filtration system to capture nutrients. “It was fairly sophisticated technology,” says Williams. “The goal was to slow down the pond’s return to a eutrophic state, though it will never be completely turned around due to it being an urban pond.”

The existing path around the pond was moved back from the shoreline, improved, and named the Marjorie Burgoyne Walkway. With granite from an old quarry in Lincolnville, Maine, the college built the new Florence Keigwin Amphitheater to help connect the Museum of Art to the pond.

Much of the 1998 Lake Andrews shoreline restoration was funded through a $1-million gift from Jack Keigwin ’59 and his wife, Beverly, longtime supporters of projects that improve and enhance the �ֲ���ý campus. The naming of the amphitheater honors Jack’s aunt, while the path honors Beverly’s mother.

“The Lake Andrews area has a significant potential as a place of respite and rejuvenation,” Jack Keigwin accurately predicted at the time. “It is a place to gather and to celebrate, a place for recreation for the soul and mind.”��

Reunion is a time to reunite on campus with classmates and friends — but also for a �ֲ���ý community spanning 65 years to gather and celebrate.

On Friday evening, alumni and their families and friends, from the Class of 1948 through the Class of 2013, ooh’ed and ahh’ed at spectacular fireworks over Lake Andrews.

The following morning, after a 5k race and mimosas, everyone lined up on the Historic Quad for a Reunion centerpiece: the Alumni Parade. Classes cheered each other on as they marched or rode.

The weather: pretty cold. The costumes: wigs and heels, goggles and pig noses, swimsuits and cow suits. They lined up behind the freshly cut ice, surrounded by smartphone cameras and supportive friends, a bonfire roaring nearby.

And then, the jump.

The �ֲ���ý Puddle Jump, the annual, you-have-to-be mad dash from shore to pond, has been going strong as a student rite of passage since 1975. A new wrinkle for 2016: Pond skimming!

The annual Puddle Jump, held on Jan. 23 as part of Winter Carnival festivities, drew hundreds of students to Lake Andrews for a Bobcat ritual first begun back in 1975.

The event begins with the ceremonial arrival of the Winter Carnival torch, born by members of the �ֲ���ý Outing Club. Apre-jump, students adjourn to a bonfire along the shoreline to warm up.

Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen.