Least Tern at Milford Point, photo by Sami DeMarco.
The Connecticut Audubon Society is celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2023. Although the Fairfield residents who founded the Audubon Society of the State of Connecticut in January 1898 didn’t formulate an official “vision” for the organization, we think our vision now is not so different from what they might have come up with.
As our Mission Statement puts it, “We envision that our efforts will lead to a future where all can share and experience the joys of nature and understand the importance of environmental preservation.”
The first annual meeting was held June 4, 1898. To mark the anniversary, June 4, 2023, was proclaimed Connecticut Audubon Society Day in the state by Governor Ned Lamont.
Fall hawk watches from the teaching terrace at Deer Pond Farm in Sherman have spotted Bald Eagle; Broad-winged, Red-tailed and Red-shouldered hawks; Turkey and Black vultures; Osprey; Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawks.
Deer Pond Farm: The hiking experience got even better with a new trail, 0.75 miles long, connecting Carolyn’s Trail to Greenwoods Trail to make a loop where hikers previously had to backtrack. The early reviews are that people love it!
Roger Tory Peterson Estuary Center: The restoration of the 5-acre property in Old Lyme continued with the planting of no fewer than 55 species of native plants.
Pomfret/Bafflin Sanctuary: Participants in a Tuesday morning bird walk observed a hard-to-find Grasshopper Sparrow on the preserve. It marked the first time the species was reliably identified on the preserve.
Center at Fairfield/Larsen Sanctuary: Beaver sightinigs delighted visitors but bedeviled sanctuary staff who had to deal with continually flooded trails until the large rodents moved on.
Coastal Center at Milford Point: A colony of Least Terns, a threatened species, seemed ready to establish itself near the sandbar’s tip over the summer until a number of larger Common Terns moved in and took over.
Trail Wood: Birders found 17 species of warblers on the preserve in just two spring days—appropriate for the former home of Edwin Way Teale, whose book North with the Spring includes a chapter called “A Hundred Miles of Warblers.”
Greater Hartford Area: Families flocked to Colt Park for a free event that featured bird-house painting. Participants went home with packets of native wildflower seeds for their own garden.
Birdcraft: A well-known migration oasis, the sanctuary attracted 119 species over the past year, including Connecticut Warbler, Kentucky Warbler, and Lincoln’s Sparrow.
Habitat improvements at Connecticut Audubon Sanctuaries—13:
Stratford Point, Deer Pond Farm, Larsen, Smith Richardson, Bafflin, Milford Point, Roger Tory Peterson Estuary Center, Birdcraft, Trail Wood, Chaney, Croft, Haagenson, Field & Mahoney.
Bird habitat improvements on other sanctuaries—8:
Bristow, New Canaan. Kosciusko Park, Stamford. St. Mary’s by the Sea, Bridgeport. Allen’s Meadow, Wilton. Connecticut Wildlife Management Area, Goshen. Hoyt Island, Norwalk. New Pond Farm, Redding. Long Lots Preserve, Westport.
Science in Nature |
Science in Nature is the foundation of Connecticut Audubon’s education programs for school-age students. It is designed for K-12 students and consists of hands-on, inquiry-based activities that relate to earth and life sciences, ecology, conservation, and civic engagement. Each program is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards as well as Common Core math and literacy standards. |
Number of students: 14,000 |
Grades: Pre-school through 8, and 11 |
Number of school districts: 25+ |
School districts: Bethel. Bridgeport. Clinton. East Hartford. East Lyme. Easton. Essex/Chester/Deep River. Fairfield. Greenwich. Lyme/Old Lyme. Manchester. Milford. Monroe. New Haven. New London. Newtown. Norwalk. Old Saybrook. Rocky Hill. Seymour. Stratford. Trumbull. Watertown. Westport. Woodbridge. |
We help kids enjoy and understand the natural world when school ends for the year as well, at our summer camps at the Roger Tory Peterson Estuary Center, Coastal Center at Milford Point, Center at Fairfield, and Center at Pomfret.
Number of campers in 2023: 1,800
Day Trips: 20
Day Trip Travelers: 1,097
Domestic Overnight Trips: 17
Domestic Travelers: 135
International Trips: 6
International Travelers: 46
EcoTravel enjoyed another robust year of traveling with Connecticut Audubon members in 2023: Tanzania, Iceland, Scotland, Romania, and across the United States as far as Oregon (just to mention a few destinations), and to many islands, deep forests, open ocean, and high mountains.
EcoTravelers viewed some of the most spectacular landscapes and experienced incredible habitats, all while developing an eye-opening local and global perspective on conservation issues and their interconnectedness.
In 2024, we look forward to returning to many of these locations, plus an exploration of Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest freshwater wetland, full of exceptional wildlife like jaguar, Hyacinth Macaw, giant river otter, and more. We’ll be back in Cuba to help with a continuing bird survey, featuring 26 endemic species and the World’s smallest bird, the Bee Hummingbird.
Of course, we’ll return to our perennial favorites, Block Island and Monhegan Island. Connecticut Audubon has now collected over 50 years of bird survey data on Block Island!
During the past year we’ve sent 14 Rare Bird Alerts via text to 2,486 people who signed up for the alerts.
Highlights: Roseate Spoonbill at the Milford Point Coastal Center. Green-tailed Towhee in Fairfield. Common Murre and Black Guillemot off New London and Groton.
Stratford Point
In January 2023, Connecticut Audubon became owner of the 28-acre Stratford Point preserve, our 22nd sanctuary. The sanctuary features grasslands, salt marsh, a north-facing beach, and a coastal trail offering panoramic water views. It’s a vital coastal habitat jutting into Long Island Sound and the Housatonic River estuary,
Its location makes it a magnet for migratory songbirds. Birders have identified 300 species here, including more than 30 species of waterfowl, and rarities such as White-tailed Kite, Long-tailed Jaeger, Cory’s Shearwater, and Snowy Owl. It also houses a small Purple Martin colony.
Once home to the Remington Arms Gun Club, the site underwent a significant cleanup in the early 2000s. Connecticut Audubon’s ownership ensures proper habitat management, building upon successful efforts at the Milford Point Coastal Center and H. Smith Richardson Wildlife Sanctuary in Westport.
Stratford Point is also something of a conservation keystone. It’s across the mouth of the Housatonic River from Milford Point and the 840-acre Charles B. Wheeler Salt Marsh, and is close to the 699-acre Great Meadows salt marsh in Stratford.
Stratford Point is also the site of significant coastal resilience research, conducted by Sacred Heart University and overseen by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Stratford Point is a testament to your support for conservation, providing a safe haven for wildlife, a valuable resource for scientific exploration, and an unmatched location for birders and other visitors.
Connecticut Audubon strengthened its commitment to the state’s cities and its residents by taking a leading role in the official rededication of the Hartford Urban Bird Treaty, in May.
At a get-together at Hartford’s Keney Park in May, a coalition of federal and city officials, alongside statewide and local conservation groups, reaffirmed their dedication to making the city a place where birds thrive in places that are welcoming for people to appreciate them.
Originating in 1999 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Urban Bird Treaty program is a national network striving to enhance bird habitats in urban settings. A major goal is to encourage city residents to observe, learn about and enjoy birds and the natural environment. The program includes 30 cities.
The rededicated plan for Hartford builds upon the foundation laid by the original 2011 Hartford Urban Bird Treaty. It creates a fresh “bird agenda” tailored to the city, in alignment with the core objectives of the Urban Bird Treaty program:
The event in Keney Park highlighted the significance of urban areas as crucial stopover points for migrating birds. These spaces offer essential resting and feeding grounds, enabling birds to gather energy for migration and breeding. Connecticut Audubon’s 2018 Connecticut State of the Birds report identified Hartford as a key location for establishing additional high-quality bird habitats.
Connecticut Audubon’s Coalition of grassroots activists helped convince the state of Connecticut to enact three new laws designed to provide better protection to vulnerable migratory birds: Lights Out, horseshoe crab protections, and a seabird and shorebird protection program.
The new “Lights Out” law mandates that state-owned or leased buildings switch off unnecessary outdoor lights between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The law combined with the simple action by residents of turning lights out at home are small but important steps in the growing effort to reduce the number of birds that die each year when they fly into buildings — a number that reaches approximately 1 billion across North America.
Connecticut Audubon members sent hundreds of emails in favor of the law to their elected representatives, and also responded enthusiastically to “lights out” alerts during peak migration.
The horseshoe crab law bans commercial fishing for horseshoe crabs in Connecticut. In addition to the obvious benefits to the horseshoe crabs themselves, the law will also help birds such as Red Knots and Semipalmated Sandpipers, which rely on horseshoe crab eggs as a vital food source during migration. Both of those species have seen dramatic population declines ralted at least in part to a paucity of horseshoe crab eggs to eat.
The seabird and shorebird protection program empowers the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to identify birds in need of special protection and create safe zones on public beaches from March to September.
These designated safe areas, designed to protect beach-nesting birds such as Piping Plovers, American Oystercatchers, Least Terns, and Common Terns, are crucial for their safety.
Connecticut Audubon has played a leading role in protecting these birds, especially at the Milford Point Coastal Center, where diligent stewardship led to a record year for nesting Piping Plovers in 2023.
These laws show that good things happen when Connecticut Audubon members speak out. They not only provide hope for Connecticut’s environment but also demonstrate the potential for preserving our birds and maintaining the natural balance of our state for generations to come.
The 2023 nesting season at Milford Point was not just a successful one for federally-threatened Piping Plovers. It was record-breaking. Out on the sandbar, 16 nesting pairs laid 64 eggs; 30 chicks fledged.
Conservation biologists estimate that for the population of these small, vulnerable birds to increase across their range, they would need to average 1.5 fledged birds per nest.
At Milford Point, the success rate was 25% better — 1.9 fledglings per nest.
The reasons are simple: member contributions along with funding from the Jeniam Foundation supported the work of three coastal rangers, who were on the beach daily from April into October. Those rangers worked closely with staff and volunteers from the Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds.
American Oystercatcher fledglings also had a record year at Milford Point, although the total numbers were much lower. Three nests produced seven fledglings. By comparison, the previous four years resulted in only six fledglings combined.
The news was not as good for Least Terns. Only four chicks fledged from a colony that, at its peak, had as many as 170 nests.
Predators including night-herons, rainy weather, a high number of visitors on the sandbar and, at a particularly sensitive time for the colony, an off-leash German shepherd and an illegal ATV all likely contributed to the poor year.
2023 marked Osprey Nation’s 10th year. It is without a doubt Connecticut’s pre-eminent citizen science project, with over 1,000 people collaborating to find, map, and collect data on the state’s Osprey population.
The goal of Osprey Nation is to create a long-term record of data that will give the conservation community a better understanding of the health of Connecticut’s Osprey population. Ospreys are abundant and thriving now—with 684 active nests in 2023 and a minimum of 877 fledglings (a 145% increase since the start of the project), we estimate that there were at least 2,250 Ospreys in the state at the end of the summer.
Fifty years ago, there were only 10 nests.
The purpose of Osprey Nation is to track the population year-by-year so that if it starts to fall, conservationists will know right away and will be able to look for causes and solutions.
This is citizen science at its best. Thank you to the 1,000-plus Osprey Nation stewards, and to Connecticut Audubon members, whose contributions have enabled it to continue.
2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
Stewards | 100 | 146 | 224 | 287 | 314 | 342 | 231 | 342 | 385 | 411 |
Active nests | 210 | 250 | 337 | 394 | 416 | 501 | 510 | 558 | 606 | 688 |
Fledglings | NA | 356 | 490 | 607 | 725 | 650 | 549/ | 858 | 835 | 881 |
Fledglings per nest |
| 1.42 | 1.45 | 1.54 | 1.74 | 1.3 | 1.08/ | 1.54 | 1.37 | 1.28 |
*observed/estimated