Alison Robb

Alison Robb spent her first nineteen summers in Woods Hole in the family summer home. Since 1972 she has lived here year 'round. While she studied Art, English Literature and History in college, she has been a painter ever since. With a degree in Library Science in 1965, she filled the roles of archivist, curator and exhibits designer at WHHC 1977-1979. After being awarded a degree in Environmental Studies in 1992 from Antioch New England Graduate School, Alison is now fulfilling a wish to teach about the natural environment and "spend the rest of my life outdoors".

While bringing up her son, Daniel, Alison followed her artist bent with commissions of portraits of houses of Woods Hole in pen and ink, and 20 years of providing Woods Hole residents with photographs of favorite local scenes on land and sea.

Since there was no nature center nearer to Falmouth than Green Briar in Sandwich, Alison founded Nature's Circle in 1995, under whose auspices she has led bird, botany, coastal dynamics, and butterfly walks ever since. She works with Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (WBNERR), Mass Audubon, Green Briar, Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, Mass Butterfly Club and others. She is the treasurer and secretary of the Botanical Club of Cape Cod and the Islands.

While immersed in teaching about the plants and birds and ecosystems of Cape Cod, she launched into the world of butterflies in 1996. For the last twelve years she has led July butterfly counts in Falmouth, in Brewster for the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History (CCMNH), in Barnstable and in Truro for the North American Butterfly Association.

Alison has worked as a volunteer for the last eight years, 15 hours per week, at the Falmouth Service Center.