Posted By auntie on June 15, 2019

1 mile; Stonington, CT

I didn’t bother to gps track this, so I just guessed 1 mile, but even that might be generous. It was a Bruce Fellman walk, and just a gorgeous preserve, but one that is, unfortunately, closed to the public. The only way to see this is on a sponsored guided walk like today’s.

Distant Elms

This property, now owned by the Stonington Land Trust, was once owned by Monsanto, and one of the things they tried here was a breeding program intended to bring back the American Elm, once a ubiquitous street tree, which was ravaged by a fungal disease called Dutch Elm disease. There are still some lovely old elms ringing the preserve, but it’s now mostly given over to grassland.

Blue-Eyed Grass

This was one walk where I fervently wished I had an expensive camera with a zoom lens, because it is home to dozens of nesting pairs of bob-o-links, an increasingly-rare native bird that relies on grassland for its survival. You can find a lot of fields around here, but they all get hayed, making them unsuitable for nesting. But the Stonington Land Trust is preserving this land specifically as bob-o-link habitat, and they only hay very late in the season in order to maintain the fields as fields.

Bruce Cradles a Fallen Nestling

We were treated to all sorts of birds on this walk—including a nesting pair of kestrels, many red winged blackbirds, and this one unfortunate little baby yellow warbler that one of the children on the walk spotted in the grassy trail. Bruce tenderly set the poor little thing into a thicket of multiflora rose along the field edge, but he wasn’t sanguine about its chances, as it had a damaged eye, he thought probably from an encounter with a predator.

Multiflora rose

The edges of the field were covered with the invasive multiflora rose, but it wasn’t at all bad for us hikers and the scent of the blooms was intoxicating.

Fleabane

As I mentioned above, this property is not open to the general public, but if you keep an eye on the website of the Stonington Land Trust, they do occasionally hold guided walks here. And if you would like to see actual photos of bob-o-links, among many other things, shot by a professional with a fancy camera, please treat yourself by visiting my friend Bruce’s blog!

Categories: Connecticut, Walks and Hikes
Tags: 2 miles or less, CT, Stonington CT