Connecticut’s Best Nature Sanctuaries, Chosen by Yankee Magazine: Bafflin & Trail Wood

The Bafflin Sanctuary at our Center at Pomfret is a great place for kids to hike. Photo copyright Connecticut Audubon Society

May 2013 – Like good parents, we don’t make judgments about which of our 19 sanctuaries are better than the others. We love them all. But that doesn’t mean others can’t render a judgment.

The editors of Yankee Magazine have done just that, choosing Trail Wood and the Bafflin Sanctuary, in northeast Connecticut, as the Best Nature Sanctuaries in the state, in Yankee’s May-June 2013 “Best of New England” issue.

There is no better time to visit these beautiful sanctuaries. Breeding birds are setting up territories and filling the air with song. Wildflowers are in bloom. And the miles of trails are in great shape and ready for hikers.

The Bafflin Sanctuary, which surrounds our Grassland Bird Conservation Center at Pomfret, covers 702 acres and has 10 miles of walking trails, so you can wander for a while. Bafflin is known for its meadow and early successional habitat, and for the increasingly hard-to-find birds that rely on it, including Bobolink, Eastern Meadowlark and American Kestrel.

Trail Wood, in Hampton, is the former home of writer-naturalist Edwin Way Teale, whose 31 books includes A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm, the story of how Teale and his wife Nellie found and bought Trail Wood. The sanctuary covers 168 acres.

Go on your own or consider coming for one of the many guided bird walks and follow it with a Lori McKenna concert on Friday June 7 or the Center at Pomfret’s 14th Annual Owl Garden Party on Thursday, June 13, at 6 p.m. (lots of fantastic local food and wine). 

Click these links for more information about visiting:

Center at Pomfret/Bafflin Sanctuary
Trail Wood

Yankee Magazine is on newstands, or click here for a digital copy.