Art of Conservation: Second annual event

By Beth Sullivan

On Saturday Oct 24, a lucky group of people were treated to a lovely evening of fun with friends, good food, and soothing music in a beautiful venue surrounded by some really amazing artwork and even more amazing opportunities to purchase it at a bargain! To top it all off…they were doing a great thing by supporting the mission of Avalonia Land Conservancy. How could you go wrong?

A panoramic photo of Sandy Point by John Papp caused a bidding war.

This was the second year of the Art of Conservation event. Last year was hard work, but we had good reviews, opportunities to improve and learn and grow. It led to an even better event this year. Word spread and what was most special was that local artists were even more generous than last year! The selection of donated art ranged from fine art and photography, to three-dimensional art of sculpture, jewelry, fiber art, and prints and cards, and nature books that were stunningly illustrated.

Bidding was lively and good natured, 

Good art, good food, and good drink

The attendees were treated to beverages and delicious finger food as they browsed the main gallery to view items for the live auction. At the same time, the silent auction ran in the lower gallery where it seemed everyone gathered for the longest time, hoping to get their own bids on the last line, before last call at the end of the evening.

A lovely spread was offered throughout the evening.

This year we had a much larger selection of art to offer and as a result, bidders had less competition for each piece. While there were several lively bidding wars for certain special items, many were able to be purchased well below their value. Folks went home with their Christmas shopping well underway!

President Michele Fitzpatrick welcomed guests and thanked everyone for their support.

This event is gathering steam and has returned a modest profit to support Avalonia’s local efforts. We are already beginning to think of ways to change and improve and make it a bigger event. We are looking for committee members who are willing to brainstorm and help plan for next year.

A thank you to our sponsors

We are thankful for our sponsors: Chelsea Groton Bank, The Company of Craftsmen, Dime Bank, Mattern and Stefon Land Surveyors LLC, New England Science and Sailing Foundation, and Shaffer’s Marina.

Music was provided by Maryann Koch and Bill Johnson III.

A full list of donors and those who provided services will be found on our website. Please support them as they have supported us.

Volunteers planned the event, set up, provided flowers and were the heart of the show.

We are truly grateful for the generosity of our local artists who continue to support a vision that we ourselves are committed to. By lending their names and talents to our cause, they help spread the word of our mission to acquire, protect and steward the special green spaces and habitats that make our corner of CT so very special.

There was plenty of time to review and bid on silent auction offerings.

The nature here nurtures our souls and inspires art. What a wonderful way to connect the two.

Photographs by Bruce Fellman.

A bird in the hand is great, but keep an eye on the bushes

By Beth Sullivan

This is an active time of year for watching birds. Many of our summer residents have left the area, long gone to warmer climates, that are more supportive of the insects and fruits or nectars they require. The Hummingbirds, Orioles, Tanagers, and Flycatchers have been gone a while. The aerial insectivores, the Swallows, and our Purple Martins hauled out beginning in August and though September. Before they left they provided many of us with spectacular displays of roosting behaviors.

We are still seeing many migrants though: Birds from farther north, still on their way south, but using the coastal route, they stopover along our shoreline shrub-lands, forests and fields.

Holding a Cardinal can be a challenge and a hazard

This is the time we set up for our fall banding operations at Knox preserve.

This year we have had other studies of the birds ongoing there since the spring. The Trinity College team that has been studying at Knox has expanded their efforts to include birds. For several years now they have been studying our efforts to eradicate non-native invasive plants and restore native grasses and shrubs where we can. They also decided to collect data about the effect the efforts may have on bird life as well.

It's nearly impossible to spot birds in the tangle of protective vines

Knox bird survey

If you have walked Knox, you will have noticed wooden stakes with pink flags and metal tags, these are the 22 bird survey sites. Through the summer a team of students arrived at daybreak to do a very precisely laid out investigation of the species that use each site. The survey has continued through the fall now, with others of us gathering gather data on the birds that now use the site as a migratory stop over or as wintering grounds. The observations include vocalizations, songs and chip notes, as well as sightings of the birds at each area. This can be pretty difficult as Sparrows, in particular, tend to pop up, then immediately fly down into the tall grasses, making counting and identification really difficult. The dense thicket areas, the main attraction there, provide great hiding and protection, and also make spotting the flighty creatures difficult. To make it harder still, the birds just don’t sing in the fall like they do in the spring, so the survey has been a challenge.

Each circle represents a bird survey station

Long history of banding

The other technique to sort out the birds in an area is to catch them! We have been banding at Knox for nearly 30 years, so there is a large body of data available. Read about a previous banding here. This year we had hoped to have our special Avalonia day of banding on October 25, but the weather did not cooperate. We cannot do it even in the lightest rain as it is really dangerous for the birds to get wet to the skin; feathers clump, nets sag, and no one is happy!

A Yellow-Rumped Warbler caught in a mist net.

We did, however, set up the nets this week, as we wanted to get some consistent data for this period. On Monday Oct 26, it was clear and cold and sunny. The birds were active and in less than 3 hours we had captured and banded about 30 Yellow -Rumped Warblers, the most abundant fall migrant through this preserve. We also caught 3 Cardinals, a Song Sparrow and 2 Black Capped Chickadees. The surprise of the morning was that one of the Chickadees had a band already! By checking our back data entries, we discovered that the Chickadee we caught that day had been caught at Knox preserve last year on October 19^th.

Song Sparrows are masters of hiding in grasses.

So that was a great day! The very next day we set up again, nearly the same conditions, and not one single bird was captured!!! Go figure. Maybe it was that hawk we watched …watching the nets!! Enough to spoil any little bird’s day!

White Throated Sparrows are here for the winter.

Photographs by Al Bach, Rick Newton and Beth Sullivan.

Beauty can be a beast - again

The follow blog post originally appeared in October of 2013.

By Beth Sullivan

During this time of year, the scenery changes, seemingly minute by minute. Light changes: the angle of the sun creates shadows and details. Color changes; grasses go to warm browns and golds, meadows show off aster purples, goldenrods and Joe Pye weed magentas.

There are other colors showing up in hedgerows and shrub lands and along roadsides. This is the season for berries. Throughout the spring and summer we enjoyed the flowers, some showy, some discrete. Some are fragrant and others not at all. But now the great variety of berries, the fruits, creates a special show.

Take a ride along a back country road, or even along the highway, and it is impossible not to notice the bounty of berries. We have dozens of native shrubs and bushes that have evolved to provide the vital foods needed by small mammals and birds. Ripening over a succession of weeks and even months through fall and winter, they provide a food source for birds when insects are long gone. Migratory song birds will rely on shrub-lands full of cover and food as they stop after a long night of flight to rest and feast and refuel.

But not all berries are created equal!

Over the decades shrubs were imported and planted as ornamentals. Multiflora Rose created instant hedgerows and fragrant white flowers in spring. Those flowers turned into abundant fruits, rose hips, that were eaten by many species of birds. Seeds were dispersed in droppings and now the rose has become an invader, an aggressive spreader that is quick to colonize fields and roadsides. Even though it does provide food and cover, it will out-compete other native plants in our landscape.

Multiflora Rose

Autumn Olive was planted deliberately along our highways to create visual buffers, and also to be a quick cover to prevent erosion. Now that shrub dominates the roadsides. Red berries are abundant now and robins and thrushes are quick to find them. At this time of year we can witness great flocks of starlings, along the highways, swirling and circling as they descend into the medians and roadside edges to feast on the berries and further disperse the seeds.

Autumn Olive

We all enjoy the colors of autumn decorations, but beware of using the non-native and invasive Oriental Bittersweet. It is another truly lovely berry, but a menace when its seeds are spread. The resulting vines climb and twist their way up trees and over native shrubs, strangling and adding their weight and causing death to the plant that supports it.

Oriental Bittersweet

Oriental Bittersweet vine

Colorful but invasive 

One of the most outstanding plants for colorful berries is likely the very worst invader: Porcelain berry. A decade or so ago, it was a sought after nursery plant, a climbing vine with most unusual berries. They start creamy white, then to pale green, then light teal, deeper aqua, sky blue and then to purple when ripe. Porcelain berry vine is a vigorous grower, adding inches, if not feet, almost overnight. It covers everything in its path. Obstructing light, smothering plants beneath, it forms a dense monoculture allowing no diversity and changing the landscape and altering valuable habitat.

Porcelain berry smothering a ceder tree.

The colorful Porcelain berry.

Walk through the Moore Woodlands in Groton, Knox Preserve or Knox Family Farm in Stonington, Pine Swamp in Ledyard, Preston Nature Preserve and many other Avalonia Land Conservancy properties. Notice the berries. Take the time to learn the non-natives and notice the beastly effects they have on our landscape and avoid them in your own. Opt for natives instead and the birds will be happier you did.

Photographs by Beth Sullivan.

A good reason to visit a ‘new’ preserve-Ram Point

By Beth Sullivan

As a Land Trust, Avalonia is held to standards and practices that ensure that we monitor our properties regularly to make sure they are being preserved and protected as intended in the deed at acquisition.

All Avalonia properties are open to the public. Some may have regulations about usage, and some may have restrictions about access into certain areas that may be fragile habitats or nesting sites.

Avalonia Preserve sign marks the island. Retrieving the tires will take a bigger boat.

Not the typical perimeter walk

As stewards it is our responsibility to get out to all preserves, walk and view the boundaries and make sure our neighbors respect our properties as well. Most of the time it is pretty easy to do the monitoring-trails loop through, and often the boundaries are viewed from the trail. Sometimes boundaries go right through a wetland, which is a bit tricky. Doing those when the ground is frozen is helpful. Sometimes the land lines run smack through dense thicket, briers and impassable vines. Those are downright impossible but often we can say that if we can’t get through, likely no one else can either!

A small pool, deep and clear, provides an interesting habitat.

As we reviewed our list of preserves that still needed monitoring this year, there was one, Ram Point, that no one had been to or documented. A review of the maps revealed that the only way to access the property was by water. Land access was through someone’s very exclusive private driveway, and I did not have contact info.

We were very lucky that we happened to choose the most perfect October day to set out for our monitoring! We were grateful to Mystic River Marina for letting us launch our kayaks from their docks. On a beautiful warm late afternoon, the tide was very low, and it was an easy paddle, even against the wind and the tide, to the very tip of Mason’s Island’s most southerly and westerly point along the Mystic River.

Diverse habitats. from rocky shoreline and salt marsh, to shrub land and taller trees, support a variety of birds.

At low tide there were shoals surrounding the point that were quite cobbled, not sandy. They were occupied by Gulls foraging for crabs and flying over and dropping their clams onto the rocky substrate then swooping down to gather the feast. There were a few shorebirds still picking in the wrack lines. Most of the four acre parcel was of low elevation, but there was just enough of a rocky knoll to support some beautiful old Oak trees as well as Sassafras and Cedars. The thickets were alive with birds. Blue Jays were raucously flitting through the tree tops, while masses of Yellow- Rumped Warblers worked the Bayberry and Groundsel thickets.

The rocky cobble along the shore and tide pools full crabs are perfect foraging for Gulls and other shore birds.

A small rocky knoll of higher elevation supports larger trees.

Diverse habitat

Getting out and walking the perimeter, I was struck by the diversity on such a small piece. On the west side were the rocky shores, the south shore was more solid rock, like a headland, and around to the east side there was a band of lovely salt marsh with peat edges at the shoreline. Closer examination showed how the salt marsh edge is literally crumbling away into the water as higher tides eat at it and undermine it.

On the east side, the salt marsh shows signs of undermining and crumbling as a result of rising tides.

There was a lovely central area of wetland-a salt marsh with Spartina grasses and marsh plants . The Salicornia, Sea Pickle to most kids, was now red with cooling fall weather. I had hoped to walk in farther, but the entire area was “guarded” by a battalion of Poison Ivy plants! The most variable and tolerant plants along our coast, they were vining and twining, and some were actual full sized shrubs. Gorgeous red leaves, even at this time of year, promised a painful punishment if I chose to walk through any further, so the remainder of the boundary was viewed from a distance!

Large bushes of poison ivy provide lovely fall color, but prevent further exploration.

The center of the preserve is a salt marsh.

It is not too late in the season for a paddle out and around Ram Point. The water is warm still for wading in. But at the very least, remember it for a summer visit next year.

Photographs by Beth Sullivan

A Walk in the Woods

Member Appreciation Hike

On Sunday, October 18^th at 2pm, Avalonia will host a hike on Tefftweald preserve. Entrance is at 282 Grindstone Hill Rd in North Stonington. Parking is down the dirt roadway. It will be led by naturalist and photographer Bruce Fellman. It is a great family hike, lots to see and explore. Easy trails, beautiful opportunities for photography. Don’t forget the binoculars: The woods will be more open and we are in the migration season now!

by Beth Sullivan

There is so much to see now and finally the weather is inviting us to get out and stretch ourselves.

A preserve I have not yet described, is a truly beautiful and special one in North Stonington: Tefftweald at Burchenturn.

A plaque dedicates the meadow as Lily's Lea.

The entrance to the preserve is down a gravel drive at 282 Grindstone Hill Road. A short way down is an area for parking and a sign describing the area and maps. Maps are also available on line at the Avalonia Web site.

This 77-acre preserve was once a Girl Scout camp, enjoyed by generations of Scouts and families. There are still reminders of those days as there are old outhouses, wood sheds, camp fire pits, gathering places and a lovely pavilion. When the camp came up for sale, resident and Avalonia Land Conservancy founder, Lois Tefft had the vison to purchase the land to preserve it from development. She later generously donated it to Avalonia so many more generations could enjoy it. Thank you to Lois!!

A stone bench invites you to rest.

Central in the preserve runs a stonewall-lined lane way with big trees all along. The trails loop off the sides making it easy to explore.

Follow the trail to a peaceful overlook.

Rocky ledges and outcrops are common throughout the preserve.

The loops to the East take you to uplands with rugged ledges, rocky outcrops and some pretty views from up high, down into the lovely woodlands below. The trails cut through mountain laurel groves that remain green even in winter. We will welcome that in the months to come. One of the Eastern loops goes by a very old cemetery with mostly unmarked stones. It is the Bell York Cemetery, and it would be interesting for someone to do some research, or find if it has already been done, to add to our knowledge base of the preserve.

Simple, unmarked stones are found in Bell York cemetery. 

Wyassup Brook to the west

The Western loops take you to the Wyassup Brook. This summer it was pretty dry, but at this point in the Autumn, after recent rains, it is likely to be flowing and beautiful. There are also Laurel glens and rocky ledges, small caves and overlooks. There is also the Poet’s Bench Trail which leads to a serene spot to meditate and muse. Maybe make poetry, paint a picture or take photos of the changing moods of the brook. Parts of the Western trails will lead you to the old Scout sites: the Pavilion is a lovely spot for a family picnic, but please carry out what you carry in. It also leads to a site called Lily’s Lea. This is a sweet open meadow which was the site of the Scout gatherings and the old campfire circle remains.

Wyassup Brook flowed quietly during the drier summer.

The very southern tip of the brook loop provides an overlook where the brook runs into a beautiful large boggy swamp. There is no access as it is privately owned, but a pair of binoculars certainly is helpful.

Return to parking area along the main trail and you will pass old stone foundations, a root cellar and the walls. Ferns along the path set off the trail as a gorgeous view.

Several stone foundations hint at the past.

A must see preserve in any season.

Photographs by Beth Sullivan.