Virginia Rail responding to callback survey, Bantam Lake, Litchfield, Li...

Sarah McQuade, Seasonal Research Technician, recorded this Virginia Rail while performing callback surveys.  Cheyenne Liberti (Yale University and Abby Wilson (Unity College) were also present during the dawn canoe survey.

Game Camera Along Bantam River at Haight Parcel

A series of videos and images captured on a game camera set along the Bantam River at White Memorial Foundation's Haight Parcel in Litchfield, CT, USA

Monitoring Bantam River Water Levels

Staff Gauge (highlighted in yellow) at Chickadee Bridge on the White Memorial Foundation.

A staff gauge installed at Chickadee Bridge (N 41.724119 degrees, E -73.207193 degrees) is used to monitor the water levels flowing in Bantam River.  This data is useful for a variety of management issues, such as calculating the amount of water and nutrients that flows into Bantam Lake.  The water levels are monitored weekly and a chart of the fluctuations in water levels can be viewed here.  You can see the water levels drop throughout the summer as the drought of summer 2016 continued until some recent rainfall at the time when this post was published.

Aerial view showing the location of the Conservation Center and Chickadee Bridge, where the staff gauge is located.

Housatonic River Watershed Basin Stream Flow Data

The Bantam River and it's associated tributaries stream flows have been quite low lately.  I found some data at the USGS WaterWatch that helped me explore the current stream flows.  The Housatonic River Watershed Basin stream flow that incorporates the Bantam and Shepaug Rivers is monitored at the Stevenson Dam, located along the town lines of Oxford and Monroe, CT.  The above graph shows stream flow from January 1, 2011 to April 15, 2012 as a bold black line. The other colored regions show you the 28 day average level of much above normal water levels (dark blue), above normal (light blue), normal (green), below normal (orange), and much below normal (brown).  Normal seasonal stream flow is high in spring, while it is low in winter and summer.  Notice that autumn stream flow is normally low but it has a wide range, therefore it can be high in certain years and not be unexpected.  For example, the stream flow rate in autumn 2011 was very high because of Hurricane Irene and because we had lots of rain throughout the season.  Now look at our current stream flows!  It is below the much below normal flow rates and it is the spring season!  I think this is a pretty interesting pattern, but I am not sure what this means for the living organisms that rely on this vital resource (water).  We are currently living in an obvious drought.  Therefore, we all must conserve the water that we have in our homes and yards.  Use this tool to investigate your watershed and examine it's current stream flow at various ranges.

CT DEEP Fisheries Northern Pike Management

Northern Pike have been a integral sport fish in Bantam Lake for many years.  The success of this introduction effort is largely due to using the local herbaceous inland wetlands on the White Memorial Foundation property as spawning areas for adult fish every spring.  Once the adults have spawned, the adults are captured so they can be returned to the Bantam Lake where they are important predator and game fish. 

Jason and Abby (CT DEEP Fisheries Division) deploy a gill net to capture adult Northern Pike. 

Several of White Memorial's herbaceous inland wetlands are used for spawning areas for
Northern Pike that are released into other lakes throughout the state.  

Abby removed the fish from the gill net and
Jason waits with a net to quickly transport the fish to a holding tank. 

Northern Pike in net and about to be released into Bantam Lake.  

Once the juvenile fish grow and develop into a size class referred to as fingerlings, they will try to swim into Bantam Lake.  A weir has been installed at a culvert under the road to capture the fingerlings so that they can be measured and released into other lakes in CT.

This gate traps fingerlings that try to disperse from the spawning area.  

Monthly Volunteer Meeting -- March 2012

Timberdoodle Evening Air Show

We were treated to an airshow at our Monthly Volunteer Meeting.  American Woodcock were performing their springtime ritual in hopes of attracting a mate in the Saw Mill Field.  Nearby we also heard several Northern Leopard Frogs calling in the North Shore Marsh vicinity of Bantam Lake and River.  A real treat for our volunteers, who well deserve it to say the least!

Bantam Lake Finally Freezes Over!

Bantam Lake's Outlet as viewed from the

Pt. Folly observation platform in a photo

taken by Ashley Hayes 5 weeks before the rest

of the Lake iced-over on 1/16/2012

Bald Eagles, photo by Paul Fusco from

www.paulfuscowildlifephotography.com

Canada Geese photo by Bob Stanowski

Mallard photo from www.wikimedia.org

Northern Pintail photo by Tom Munson

from www.fishandgameidaho.gov

As of yesterday, 1/16/2012, most of Bantam Lake had frozen over. This is amazingly late! As usual, the Outlet and the Bantam River downstream all the way to Rt. 209 has remained ice-free. This is typical except in the most severely cold winters. Though much of the waterfowl that had been seen daily at the Lake so far this winter left in the past 3 days, huge numbers of Canada Geese and Mallards, along with fair numbers of American Black Ducks and Ring-necked Ducks, 3 Lesser Scaup, a Northern Pintail, 3 Hooded Mergansers, and at least 101 American Coots have remained in the open water of the Outlet. The geese and Mallards have fallen into a winter activity mode of foraging in cornfields in Litchfield, Morris, Bethlehem, Warren, and Goshen by day, and roosting at the Outlet from sunset until sunrise. Thus, it is best to look for these birds either from the N. Shore Rd. bridge over the Bantam River or the Pt. Folly observation platform between 7 and 8 a.m. or 4 and 5:30 p.m. Any other time of day will produce a lot less. This has been highlighted by our counts Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The morning observations, made by Mike Doyle, produced counts of 725, 500, 800, and 800 Canada Geese and 3, 52, 5, and 13 Mallards for these 4 days, respectively. John Eykelhoff didn't find more than 65 Canada Geese and 10 Mallards on his noon-time visits here these days. However, Jim Kandefer and I counted 1,075 Canada Geese and 500 Mallards coming in to roost here between 4:30 p.m. and dark on Monday, and Jim Dugan and I counted 675 Canada Geese and 175 Mallards doing the same thing during the same time frame on Wednesday. No evening counts were conducted on Tuesday or Thursday. During both evening counts, more geese and Mallards flew in from the north than from the south. We didn't see any fly in from the east or west. It doesn't appear as though many of the 65 American Black Ducks that we saw come in Wednesday evening stayed, as only 9 were counted at the Outlet the next morning. We haven't been able to relocate the hen Northern Pintail that we saw Monday evening. The numbers of American Coots and Lesser Scaup have been dropping steadily all week as these birds exit the area. Greg Hanisek saw a Greater Scaup there Wednesday mid-morning, but we haven't been able to find that bird again. Some birds do only drop in to rest here for a few hours before moving on. As many as 4 Bald Eagles hanging around the Outlet at various times has also been a disincentive for some birds to stay here. It will be interesting to see what the rest of the winter brings.

Solitary Sandpipers aren't always solitary

Spotted Sandpiper from http://www.discoverlife.org

Solitary Sandpiper from http://www.utahbirds.org/

Many of my previous posts have discussed the various groups of birds migrating back to and through White Memorial this spring. That includes shorebirds, which I've touched upon a couple of times. Now that we've passed the halfway point in May the shorebird migration will pick up, both in terms of diversity of species and the numbers of individuals moving through. Even though most people associate shorebirds with coastal, saltwater locations, there are inland places such as Bantam Lake and Little Pond in Litchfield, Great Pond in Simsbury, and Nod Brook in Avon which also appeal to shorebirds. If these birds become tired and/or hungry when they are passing over a lake or pond with a muddy shoreline, they are likely to drop in. They seem to be just as capable of finding and eating freshwater invertebrate animals as they would ones from saltwater environments. In fact, many shorebirds breed along bodies of freshwater in Canada. One of them, the Solitary Sandpiper, is pretty much exclusive to freshwater. It is one of the most likely species to be seen at inland water bodies in New England as it passes through northbound in April and May and southbound from late July through late September. Its name is somewhat of a misnomer, at least during migration time. While they aren't sociable, it is still possible to find quite a few of them in an area like Little Pond which offers them ideal feeding conditions when the water is low enough. We are currently experiencing these ideal conditions as floodwaters from the past month recede and expose mud inhabited by a host of invertebrate critters. That's why we encountered 14 Solitary Sandpipers, each, on 5/7 and 5/9 at Little Pond. E-bird flagged these as unusually high numbers, which I had to explain for them to accept. These birds weren't all concentrated on the mud bar at the Bantam River's inlet to Little Pond, as most shorebirds like Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs are. Instead, they were spread out rather evenly from this point down around to the River's outlet and then down the length of the River to a point below Sutton's Bridge on the Boardwalk. That's a distance of 1/4 mile. Each bird had its own foraging space. When one bird encroached into another bird's space, objections were voiced, and sometimes a chase ensued. Obviously, they would be solitary if they had a choice. By contrast, the Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs and Least Sandpipers all foraged together in relative peace at the mud bar, inlet, and outlet. Also found in this area was a Spotted Sandpiper. They prefer to remain somewhat solitary, too. Unlike these other shorebirds, though, this species will remain here to nest. Each summer we can usually find one pair at Little Pond, one or two pairs along the Bantam River as it heads down to Bantam Lake, and 2 pairs in the North Shore Marsh along Bantam Lake's North Bay. They nest on the ground among grasses and sedges, and forage for food along the muddy, sandy, and rocky shorelines. The Old Camp Townsend beach is an especially good place to see them from now through late September.

Ospreys have returned to Bantam Lake

Juvenile Osprey photographed by

Bob Stanowski at Bantam Lake's Outlet

in October, 2010

Adult Osprey with a Northern Pike

photographed by Bob Stanowski

at White Memorial's Pike Marsh

in April, 2007

Adult Osprey photographed by

Darlene Knox in Florida

in March, 2011

We recorded White Memorial's first Osprey sighting of 2011 this past Saturday, 4/2, at the Litchfield Town Beach. The bird flew in from the Bantam Lake Inlet with a 12" (or so) fish that appeared to be a White Sucker. We think that this was the correct identification of this fish species, even though we didn't see its head, because its body was slim, and it had a white belly, greenish-brown sides, and a deeply forked tail. This latter body part flapped up and down for close to 10 minutes while we watched the Osprey slowly consume the fish from the head on back while it perched on a tree branch about 100' from us. Unfortunately, neither of us had a camera with us. An Osprey that was seen in the same area the next day and frequently yesterday could have either been this bird or a different one. We also have no way of knowing whether this bird is a resident back on territory or a migrant passing through since very few of these birds are fitted with colored and lettered or numbered leg bands. Though many young Ospreys are banded as nestlings at coastal sites from Maine to Florida every year, they are only fitted with a silver U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service band on the right leg. They do carry serial numbers, but the bands are next to impossible to read, even with the best spotting scopes. By contrast, some of the colored leg bands on Bald Eagles do have letter and number combinations that can be read with a good scope. Also, a sizable and increasing number of young Ospreys are being produced from nesting pairs at inland bodies of water, especially in New York, northern New England, and Canada. These birds are seldom banded due to the combination of the shear number of birds involved, nest site accessability issues, and a low number of Federally-licensed banders. Getting back to the Ospreys at Bantam Lake and elsewhere around White Memorial, it is interesting to note that we almost always see our first one of the year around 4/1, give or take 3 days. This has been the case for the past 15 years. Over this time span we have seen a steadily increasing number of these birds passing through here northbound in the spring and southbound in the fall. Starting about 6 years ago, one or two Ospreys were seen with some regularity around Bantam Lake's N. Bay during the months of June and July. Since the breeding season for these birds is typically from early April through late July in CT., the birds around here could have been establishing a breeding territory. That was confirmed in late April of 2009 when I saw them carrying sticks into a clump of rather short Red Maples in the N. Shore Marsh. For such large birds with a large nest they remained amazingly well-hidden. We didn't find out the outcome of this nesting attempt until late July when a fledgling appeared with the adults on the east side of this marsh. They were seen a few times before they departed in late August. In 2010, the Ospreys returned, but moved farther up the Bantam River from Bantam Lake by at least a quarter mile. This may have been due to the pair of Bald Eagles becoming increasingly territorial at the Lake. Bald Eagles and Ospreys do not get along well with each other. We saw stick-carrying by the Ospreys in late April, and a fledgling with them a few times in late July and early August, indicating a second year of successful nesting by these birds. It will be interesting to see if they threepeat in 2011.