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A vignette from our winter hike yesterday at Hammonasset State Park. We saw a couple of grey seals, but my lens isn't long enough to capture them adequately.
Hammonsasset State Park is easily the most popular State Park in Connecticut. While it's always packed during the day in summertime, it's possible to find some peace and solitude there as well.
Song Sparrows eat mainly seeds and fruits, supplemented by many kinds of invertebrates in summer. Prey include weevils, leaf beetles, ground beetles, caterpillars, dragonflies, grasshoppers, midges, craneflies, spiders, snails, and earthworms. Plant foods include buckwheat, ragweed, clover, sunflower, wheat, rice, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, mulberries, and wild cherries.
I had run back to my car and while I was getting some water, this classic coupe drove by. I like that the wooden guard rails were there since they seem to fit in with the vintage look.
After two rainy days, this past Wednesday was gorgeous... most of the day. I decided after work I would head to Hammonasset to try out my recently repaired Tamron 150-600. It began clouding up as we left the house... and the first raindrops hit the windshield as we pulled off the exit in Madison. I decided I could still take photos from the relative shelter of my car window. Well, duh! Raindrops do impact photo quality. So I don't know but what maybe the lens repair made it worse (!). I'll have to try it another day.
There are quite a few Purple Martin apartment houses at Hammonasset. This was the only one with any birds. These are probably early arrivals.
Putting up a Purple Martin house is like installing a miniature neighborhood in your backyard. In the East, dark, glossy-blue males and brown females will peer from the entrances and chirp from the rooftops all summer. In the West, martins mainly still nest the old-fashioned way—in woodpecker holes. Our largest swallows, Purple Martins perform aerial acrobatics to snap up flying insects. At the end of the breeding season they gather in big flocks and make their way to South America.
Cool Facts
- Putting up martin houses used to be so common that John James Audubon used them to choose his lodgings for the night. In 1831, he remarked, “Almost every country tavern has a martin box on the upper part of its sign-board; and I have observed that the handsomer the box, the better does the inn generally prove to be.”
- Native Americans hung up empty gourds for the Purple Martin before Europeans arrived in North America. Purple Martins in eastern North America now nest almost exclusively in birdhouses, but those in the West use mostly natural cavities.
- Purple Martins roost together by the thousands in late summer, as soon as the chicks leave the nest. They form such dense gatherings that you can easily see them on weather radar. It’s particularly noticeable in the early morning as the birds leave their roosts for the day, and looks like an expanding donut on the radar map.
- Despite the term "scout" used for the first returning Purple Martins, the first arriving individuals are not checking out the area to make sure it is safe for the rest of the group. They are the older martins returning to areas where they nested before. Martins returning north to breed for their first time come back several weeks later. The earlier return of older individuals is a common occurrence in species of migratory birds.
- The Purple Martin not only gets all its food in flight, it gets all its water that way too. It skims the surface of a pond and scoops up the water with its lower bill.
- The oldest Purple Martin on record was at least 13 years, 9 months old, banded in 1933 and found in 1947.
MEGA* First CT record, if eventually accepted by ARCC. Hammonasset Beach State Park, Madison, Connecticut, USA. 23 November 2019. © Frank Mantlik
The cobble field at Hammonasset State Park was full of the slipper shell (slipper limpet, slipper snail) belonging to the snail, Crepidula fornicata.
This snail lives in stacks--one snail on top of another--of about 5 or so, with the biggest on the bottom (a female) with gradually smaller males stacked on top of her. These snails are what is called "sequential protandrous hermaphodites". What this means is that they all begin their lives as males (protandrous-firstly male) and transition into females later in life (sequential hermaphrodite). When the female on the bottom dies, the next largest one up will then change sexes and become female.
Often you can find these shells washed up on the beach in large quantities, and for the last two winters I have seen stretches of beach covered in inches and inches (upward of a foot in places!!) of our friend, Crepidula fornicata. As of yet, I do not know the reason for such large pile ups...but I am determined to find out why.
MEGA* First CT record, if eventually accepted by ARCC. Hammonasset Beach State Park, Madison, Connecticut, USA. 23 November 2019. © Frank Mantlik
Male feeding in shallow rainpool. Hammonasett SP, Madison, Connecticut, USA. 13 May 2020. © Frank Mantlik
MEGA* First CT record, if eventually accepted by ARCC. Hammonasset Beach State Park, Madison, Connecticut, USA. 23 November 2019. © Frank Mantlik
The stones on the beach are most likely left over from the 1955 construction of a nearby jetty.
"Hammonasset" means, "where we dig holes in the ground" and refers to the place where a settlement of eastern woodland Indians farmed along the Hammonasset River. They subsisted on corn, beans, and squash, and by fishing and hunting. The first colonists arrived in 1639. Property changed hands frequently between Native Americans and the first colonists.
In 1898 the Winchester Repeating Arms Company bought Hammonasset and used it as a testing site for their new rifle. Their Lee Straight Pull rifle was mounted on a horse drawn stone boat, from which it was fired into targets on the beach.
On July 18, 1920, Hammonasset Beach State Park was opened to the public. The first season attracted over 75,000 visitors. The park's reputation drew tourists from across the continent as well as the state.
During World War II the park was closed to the public and loaned to the federal government as an army reservation. Meigs Point functioned as an aircraft range. Planes flew over Clinton Harbor, fired at the range and then flew out over Long Island Sound.
The stone breakwater at the Meigs Point end of the park was built in 1955. The stones were brought in by truck from quarries in northern New England.
Today, over one million people come annually to enjoy Hammonasset Beach State Park.
MEGA* First CT record, if eventually accepted by ARCC. With Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia). Hammonasset Beach State Park, Madison, Connecticut, USA. 23 November 2019. © Frank Mantlik
There's still a snowpack on the ground, but this was the first time this winter I've been down there and could smell the sea and the salt marsh. An encouraging sign after a long snowy and cold winter.