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01/16/2019 06:00 AMThose who run across a copy of the recently released Birding in Connecticut might reasonably ask, why another book about the great outdoors and birding?
There’s Guilford native David Sibley’s The Sibley Guide to Birds. There are many other additional resources specific to Connecticut, including The Connecticut Audubon Society, birding stores like The Audubon Shop in Madison and The Fat Robin in Hamden, the Connecticut Ornithological Association and its Avian Records Committee of Connecticut, and the Daily Connecticut Rare Bird Report.
And then there are the works of the late Noble S. Proctor, an internationally renowned environmentalist and birder from Branford who amassed a lifelong birding list that included more than 6,000 species worldwide, including 814 species in North America. Proctor not only worked with his close friend Roger Tory Peterson (of Old Lyme) during his revision of the Eastern Field Guide to Birds, Proctor also wrote 25 Birding Areas in Connecticut in 1978, which hit all the birding hot spots in the state.
And it is, in fact, that last book that led to the most recent Birding in Connecticut book, written by Frank Gallo, which will be featured at an event, free and open to the public, at the Meigs Point Nature Center at Hammonasset Beach State Park, 1288 Boston Post Road, Madison on Saturday, Jan. 26 at 2 p.m.
It started when an editor from the publisher of Proctor’s 25 Birding Areas in Connecticut contacted John Himmelman, an author and illustrator based who specializes in nature topics, to update Proctor’s classic work.
He Blames John
“I considered it, but it was too large of an undertaking for me at that time, so turned it down. I did think it was time for an updated book though, and immediately thought of my friend Frank,” says Himmelman, who lives in Killingworth. “I knew he could write, and he’d always been my birding mentor. If I had taken it on, he’d have been the one whose brains I’d be picking the most. He knows every nook and cranny in this state and what birds could be found there, and when.”
Gallo laughs when he’s asked about why he wrote the book.
“I blame John Himmelman. Yeah, basically, I blame him,” he says.
The result is a handsome tome that runs to more than 500 pages, and is packed with information about birding from one tip of the state to the other. But it doesn’t just tell the reader where, in general, birds might be found. It explains where they might be found, and in what season, and in what part of the property, and whether you should walk east to west or west to east (depending on the time of day), where you can park, whether there is an entrance fee, whether you need a spotting scope, whether bug spray is recommended, where the nearest restrooms can be found, and how you can make a day of it by visiting birding places nearby.
It also plays well with others. It not only has an extensive list of additional resources in the back, along with testimonials from the likes of Sibley on the back cover, it also includes QR codes, a code that, with the proper software on a phone, will direct the reader to additional information and the most up-to-date bird lists.
“My book is a site guide, it’s not a field guide,” Gallo says.
And, in fact, while Gallo’s book includes an annotated species list and many beautiful pictures, a field guide is a perfect companion to the book.
“My book is not meant to teach you how to identify birds, although I do include many tips and tricks to help people along. But many of the sites that Noble has in his book, they were no longer viable for a variety of reasons” he says. “Sites that everybody knows can change dramatically. They can change over time and they can change in short order.”
One example is the pines in Hammonasset Beach State Park, which was known at one point as one of the best places for birders along the shoreline.
“Except the pines are not there anymore,” says Gallo. “A hurricane killed most of the pines. So I had to rewrite that. Parks that were open are now closed. Trees fall down. Those kinds of things happen all the time. And I wanted to add sites that people did not know about.”
General Overviews, Specific Details
The book, rather than just 25 sites, includes more than 140 in 48 chapters that move across the state, covering it from one side to the other, and from top to bottom, including the Southwest Coast, the Northwest Highlands, the Central Coast, the Central Interior, the Southeast Coast, and the Northeast Highlands.
Major birding sites in this area include the western New Haven parks including Edgewood Park, West Rock Playground, and West River Memorial Park; East Rock Park, Lighthouse Point Park, and East Shore Park in New Haven; Ecology Park and the Shoreline Greenway Trail in Branford; Shell Beach in Guilford; the West River Marsh complex in Guilford, including the Jared Eliot Preserve, Chaffinch Island State Park, Chittenden Park, Sachem’s Head Marsh, and Westwoods; the Madison shoreline including a tour of East Wharf beach to West Wharf beach, Circle Beach, and the East River State Boat Launch; a winter eagle and raptor tour on the lower Connecticut River from Eagle Landing State Park in Haddam to the Essex Town Dock; and the Cornfield Point scenic viewing area in Old Saybrook.
There is a section on species status, an annotated species list, an appendix with species by habitat, a checklist of birds in Connecticut, a list of Connecticut rare species, and an appendix of bird resources.
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