Grumpy Neighbors

Some letterboxing directions lead me to Beach Memorial Park in Trumbull today, where I was greeted with this nasty sign: "Park permit required year round" and "Trumbull residents only".

Year round? There wasn't a single car in the parking lot on a Sunday afternoon with spectacular winter weather. What are they afraid of? Hoards of out-of-town hikers in February?

Here in Shelton our trails are open to everyone, and there's no fee.

I ignored the sign, hoping the Trumbull police wouldn't haul me off to jail for hiking in the Trumbull woods.

The letterboxing clues brought me to an engraved outcrop in the woods, which said:

Trumbull is a town dedicated
to matters of the spirit
It's a town to live in
It's a town to remember
It's a town to love
If you're a resident

OK, I added that last line. But really, if Shelton, Monroe, Fairfield, and other towns in the region can share their parks with non-residents, why can't Trumbull?

Webb Mtn Discovery Zone

Monroe did a really nice job at their new "Webb Mountain Discovery Zone", located on 171 acres of new open space next to Webb Mtn Park, just over the Shelton border. There are lots of interpretive signs, benches, landscaping, security cameras, and wide easy trails. There were maps and scavenger hunt cards at the entryway when I visited today (see photos).

From Shelton, take East Village Road and just after you cross into Monroe, take a right at Webb Circle. The very large parking area and sign are on the left maybe half a mile up the road. Can't miss it.

Funding for the $35,000 "outdoor classroom" came largely from private businesses. Wouldn't it be nice to see some contributions like that from our own businesses here in Shelton?

Monkey Brains at Black Rock

These fruits of the Osage Orange Tree are nicknamed "Monkey Brains". I found them under a grove of trees near Black Rock Lighthouse in Bridgeport while geocaching.



I had never run across this bizarre tree before, so I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered more interesting tidbits about it. Although the fruit are not very toxic, they tend to make you vomit. An oil of the fruit shows promise as a mosquito repellent.

Also, there are no animal that eat the fruit, so what's the point? Fruit is normally designed to be eaten for seed dispersal. According to one theory, giant ground sloths used to eat it, but went extinct when people came to North America.


The tree is native to the Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas and is also called Osage Apple, Wild Orange, Mock Orange and Bodark. The fruit has other nicknames besides Monkey Brains, including Monkey Ball, Monkey Fruit, and Brain Ball. So there you go, learning something every day.

By the way, the lighthouse and Seaside park are very picturesque and easy to get to in the middle of the winter. No crowds. The lighthouse was once on a island, but that's been connected to the mainland by a huge causeway of boulders you can walk on. From the parking lot, it's about a 15 minute walk.

WPA, CCC Work Projects

The photo is of the Indian Well Road bridge over Indian Hole Brook (which happened to be very dry at the time of the photo). If you've ever visited "the Well" at Indian Well, or driven along Indian Well Road between Route 110 and the state beach, you've probably noticed all the stone work along the road.


According to a Robert Novak article that appeared in the Huntington Herald on May 21, 1997, the stone work was completed during the Great Depression under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). According to Wikipedia, WPA projects included the construction of 650,000 miles of roads, 78,000 bridges, 125,000 buildings, and 700 miles of airport runways, as well as other projects.


The Post Office in downtown Shelton has another WPA product on display: A panoramic painting of the Derby-Shelton Dam from Riverview Park. Check out the symbolism next time you are standing in line. The factories below the dam are belting out smoke, which was considered a good thing in those days because that meant people were employed. Note also the name of the park on the piece of paper the woman is holding. It says, "Indian Park," which must have been the original name of Riverview Park.


According to the Novak article, while the WPA stone work was being constructed along the road, a CCC crew was in the woods creating the Paugussett "Blue Dot" Trail. The Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) was another depression-era work program.

Big Trees

There is a register of Really Big Connecticut Trees, which are actually called "Notable Trees" by the Connecticut Botanical Society. I've known that one of the registered trees was right here in Shelton at the French's Hill Open Space off of East Village Road, a Tulip Tree, but I hadn't been able to locate it until today, when I found the registration form while filing some old papers. According to the form, the circumferance is 14 feet 11 inches and is 123 feet tall.

I found the tree a few hundred feet off the end of Sagamore Road. To be honest, although it's a really big tree, I thought it would be larger. I've seen trees this big, althought they were always Oaks or Maples, and I have to admit I've never seen a Tulip Tree this big. The diameter was about 4 feet. It's a classic "Wolf" tree, one that grew all by itself in an open field, with a wide, spreading canopy, only to have a young forest grow up around it as the field was abandoned. I rarely see Tulip Trees with spreading crowns. Usually they are a tall, straight telephone pole with a narrow crown so high you can barely see it. (ID tip: Any unnaturally straight tree in the forest is probably a Tulip).

Back home, I Googled "big trees, Connecticut" (I kid you not) and came with the Notable Tree website. They've got the list of registered notable trees online, and I was surprised to find that there are five registered trees in Shelton: A purple European Beech (21 ft circumferance); a White Oak (I bet it's the one at the corner of East Village Road and Longfellow, 19 ft cir.); a Norway Spruce (could this be the one that took a trip to Rockefeller Center? 10 ft cir.); and a Sycamore (15 ft circ.). They won't tell you exactly where the trees are, because many are on private property.

None of the Shelton trees are the largest in the state. The Tulip Tree, when it was registered, was the 12th largest in the state. But that's nothing. Down south in the Appalachian cove forests, tulip trees can have a circumference of 20 to 30 feet (our is almost 16 ft). And they are one of the tallest trees in the forest.

Coordinates for the tree are N 41 20.649', W 73 08.237'

Cattle Underpass

Yup, it's a cattle underpass, right here in Shelton. Who knew. It's at Nicholdale Farm (Shelton Land Trust property), immediately west of the main parking lot. The tunnel was incorporated into the construction of Route 110 so cattle could cross the road. There are no longer any cattle, but maybe some wild animals use it (they actually build tunnels for amphibians to cross roads these days).

Tamarack

Tamarack (aka larch) look like a spruce or pine, but their needles turn color each year and fall, just like the maples and oaks. It's when they change color that they really stand out. I normally associate them with northern bogs and streams, but here's a line of tamarack growing in the Shelton Land Trust's Nicholdale Farm off Route 110 in the White Hills. I also noticed a tamarack changing color on Bridgeport Ave near exit 13 the same week.

Salamanders

Mike VanValen sent me these pictures he recently took of salamanders along the trails in Shelton. The salamander at left was identified as "Leadback" Salamander (Plethodon cinereus). He also took great photos of Northern Two-Lined Salamander (Eurycea bislineata) and Northern Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus fuscus). Click here to see the photos.

Barred Owl

A Barred Owl has been hooting away all summer north of our house, near the southern end of the Shelton Lakes Greenway, around Buddington Road and Great Oak Circle. Instead of the steady "hoo, hoo" of the Great Horned Owl, which I used to hear on occasion, I now hear a hooting that has a weird trailing off on the last note. It's commonly described as "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you ALL?" The "All" note sounds oddly like an elephant.

Here's a sound file. Barred Owls and Great Horned Owls apparently don't mix very well, so their territories tend not to overlap much. That would explain why I don't hear the Great Horned Owls this summer now that I'm hearing the Barred Owl.

Water Quality Sampling

Over the past few years the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA) has sponsored macroinvertebrate sampling of several Housatonic River tributaries, including the Far Mill River and Indian Hole Brook in Shelton. Last weekend, myself and a few other volunteers scrubbed little bugs off of the rocks in the river for hours, which were carried by the current into our nets. Later, we picked out every bug (macroinvertebrate) we could find from the samples, placing them in ice cube trays (photos), and identified them. It's very time consuming, about 3-4 hours per sampling location, and it usually takes two people.

The type of macroinvertebrates you find says a lot about the water quality. Certain types, like stoneflies, must have very high oxygen levels at all times. Other types, like blackfly and midge larvae, can live with very little oxygen and high numbers may be found in polluted waters (including my goldfish pond).

Because we volunteers are no experts, we pick one of every type of bug we find and place it in a jar of alcohol. HVA submits the jars to the DEP, who re-identifies everything in the jar and publishes a report. Here's the 2006 report.

The good news is that both streams are oxygenated enough to support a small number of sensitive species such as common stonefly larvae. The many waterfalls and riffles of both rivers is a big factor there. The bad news is that we are not usually finding many of the most sensitive species. Most of the bugs we do find -- netspinner caddisfly, fingernet caddisfly, midge and blackfly larvae -- are indicative of unnaturally high organic loads. Think lawn fertilizer and lawn clippings getting washed into the storm sewer.

For example, near Mill Street (Gristmill Trail), we collected 5 stoneflies (good), and also about 200 netspinners, 35 fingernet caddisflies, 1 fishfly, 2 snails, 3 riffle beatles and one small minnow mayfly. These are the bugs in the ice cube trays in the picture up above (click it to enlarge). Other Far Mill River samples were taken near Route 110 and off of Roaring Brook Lane. The sample near Route 110 looked better this year than the samples we usually get.

Here's a video from last year showing how we sample the river. Sometimes we get unexpected animals. The first year we caught a baby eel. This year we caught a baby salamander and a couple of fish (blacknose dace and tesselated darter).

Update 10/9/2007: A sample collected from Means Brook at Lane Street had none of the "most wanted" species, which suggests that oxygen levels are too low to support sensitive species.