Under Clear Skies

Sierra Club Walk - Patrice Gillespie

Last Sunday I lead a walk in Wilton for the State Chapter of the Sierra Club as part of their Climate Days of Action. Of course planning events in October is always taking a chance with the weather and we were greeted by heavy rains on Sunday morning. Still the Sierra Club members are a tough crowd and a number of them ventured out for a morning checking out Allen’s Meadows in Wilton. It was also great to get introduced to local State Senator Toni Boucher.

I am by no means an expert on climate change but it seems likely that the kind of projected changes that most of the scientific community agree upon would be disastrous for bird life as we know it. Even in our own fair state the plight of such birds as Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow (which has perhaps 1/3 of it’s population nesting in the Nutmeg State) would be thrown into serious jeopardy by projected sea level  rises. Another threat to the Saltmarsh Sparrow is the fairly rampant development of coastal sites, of course Allen’s itself has always been under threat from development: ball fields, dog parks, DPW site but overriding all of that is that the piece of property is essentially owned by the DOT as part of the swathes of land bought up for the Super 7 project. Super 7 is kind of like a horror movie bad guy – just when you think it’s dead and buried it rises from the grave all over again.

Though the raindrops we managed to actually see some nice birds including an Americal Kestrel a couple of Coopers Hawks, a White-crowned Sparrow and a couple of Vesper Sparrows. I invited the club members to join me next Sunday Nov 1st for a free walk at Allen’s that I am running for Sunrise Birding when I hope to show them just how beautiful the spot can be when it’s not raining and raw!!!! A little piece on the event and more about the days events linked here.