Conservation Hikes Are For the Birds

It was easy to feel all a twitter during the Weigold and Auperin Conservation Area tours on Sunday, June 5.  

About 40 different species of birds were reportedly either seen or heard on a walk led by birding enthusiast John Stakes that started at 7:30 that morning. Several species were also heard and seen on the walk led later the same day by Cynthia MacDonald of the town's Conservation Commission and Roseann Gottier of Conserving Tolland. Marsh Summers, a local birding enthusiast, also attended the 1 p.m. walk, identifying various birds by their unique calls.

The two tours were part of a series of hikes to be held in June, July and October, co-sponsored by the nonprofit Conserving Tolland and the Conservation Commission.

Like the early morning tour, the afternoon hike started at the Weigold Conservation Area accessed off of Summerwood Ridge Drive. The walk took participants along the blue trail down to the general parking area entrance on Weigold Road where a Boy Scout Arthur Jacques of Troop 61 in Mansfield recently completed repairs to a spillway and built a footbridge.

"The area was full of invasive plants such as bittersweet and multiflora," MacDonald said. "Arthur cleared it away and worked with Steve Lowrey in the Planning Department and Ken Hankinson of the Conservation Corps to fix the spillway and build the bridge. Before he did this, you couldn't even see the dam that is here.”

The reason this was an important project is because the swampy area is home to a variety of birds, MacDonald said, including phoebes, swamp sparrows and red-winged blackbirds. Water thrushes and American Goldfinches might also make their home in this type of habitat, she said.

Other birds reportedly seen or heard during the two walks included the scarlet tanager, the flycatcher, and the black-billed cuckoo.

Several times along the afternoon walk, MacDonald and Gottier stopped to identify certain species of birds by their calls, various flora and fauna, improvements made by Boy Scout troops and other local groups, and to provide some historical background to the land acquisitions. For example, Gottier said the Auperin land, which connects to the Weigold property and can only be accessed from the Weigold property at this time, was a gift from the Auperin family for the benefit of Tolland, a gift for which Conserving Tolland is extremely grateful.

The two Conservation Areas also connect with additional conservation land managed by Joshua's Trust.

"Joshua's Trust was named for Joshua, a Sachem Mohegan Indian who left a large plot of land in Norwich to the white man," Gottier said. 

Organized and incorporated in 1966, Joshua's Trust today protects and monitors over 4,000 acres of land in Connecticut. The Trust acquires land in various ways such as through a bequest or as part of a required donation of land for a subdivision development.

Gottier said each property managed by Joshua's Trust has a monitor that periodically walks the property to insure it is not developed. Trust members clear fallen trees and otherwise maintain the land for passive recreation.

MacDonald said the benefit of having connectivity between various conservation properties is easy to see in the variety of birds and other wildlife that can only thrive in unfragmented forest.

"I was able to hear the hermit thrush here," MacDonald said. "It is very similar to the Robin, but it needs much more space."