Paddlers Explore Cove For Trails Day

Dozens of canoists and kayakers came out Saturday morning to the Trails Day event at Poquetanuck cove to enjoy the fair weather and get a glimpse of the wildlife that populate the Thames River estuary.

Launch was at 10 a.m. to take advantage of high tide. Even before the boats went into the water, paddlers were treated to the sight of an osprey circling above the marshland.

“It’s a fantastic over-wintering place for waterfowl,” said Ann Roberts-Pierson of the Avalonia Land Trust. She said she saw a mature bald eagle on the cove the weekend before, and thinks a nesting pair might have settled nearby.

Before the launch, Roberts-Pierson explained some of the conservation efforts over the years, including Avalonia’s purchase of 1.5 acres of sedge beds along the water and the nearby Poquetanuck Preserve: 234 acres of land that had been donated by Desire Parker back in 1988.

In 1998, conservationists helped block the construction of a garage, which could have threatened the ecosystem with contaminated runoff. Now Avalonia is trying to get local landowners to help them preserve the cove with steps such as installing buffers to prevent lawn chemicals from entering the water.

Roberts-Pierson said some of the species that call the cove home include snapping turtles, blue crabs, egrets, green herons great blue herons, ducks and red-winged blackbirds. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has identified the cove as a regionally significant habitat for the fish and birds, which use the waters for food and breeding.

State DEP Senior Coastal Planner David Kozak was at the event boating with his son. 

“This is the nursery of the ocean,” he said. Some of the fish that travel up the cove include blue-back herring and alewives. A ladder at nearby Hallville Dam allows the fish to travel up into freshwater.

The paddle went by the sedges that Avalonia had purchased. Several redwing blackbirds flitted through the reeds.

Avalonia and the state were working to eradicate Phragmites Australis, a non-native invasive reed. Though blackbirds were able to use Australis as a habitat, it provides no food for the ecosystem. They had beaten down the enemy in several places, using mulch and spray as well as an amphibious Marsh Master vehicle.

“You've gotta get into the root system,” Roberts-Pierson said. She was able to point out the areas where cattails and other native sedges were reclaiming their lost territory.

Roberts-Pierson and David Bainbridge, formerly a member of the Ledyard Conservation Commission, co-directed the event. Jackie Bacon of Ledyard Public Libraries had helped coordinate the event with the hiking series in Ledyard. She shared a canoe with her husband Scott and their son Joey, who wanted to try out his makeshift fishing line.

The group of kayaks and canoes spent several hours exploring the marshland around the cove as well as the center island and the shore of the wooded preserve. Some people opted to go underneath the Route 12 bridge and up to the point where the railroad crosses the cove at the entrance to the Thames. Most boaters needed to duck in order to pass beneath the low tracks—no large boats can access the cove from the river.

In order to enjoy Poquetanuck Cove, Roberts-Pierson recommends you check the tides. High tide at the Royal Oaks Drive boat launch comes about an hour after high tide in New London. If the water is too low, boaters will find themselves launching in impossible, shallow muck.