Follow the Trail with Bill Reid,
The Last Green Valley's Chief Ranger

“For days now, monarch butterflies have been drifting through. While birds are migrating south by night, in starlight and moonlight, these butterflies are moving south by day, in brilliant sunshine and under the shadows of clouds. The night of the migrating songbird finds its parallel…

“Father and brother Harold built the little stone original museum that was begun in 1930 and completed and opened in 1931. The purpose of this little stone room was to house our collection of various artifacts that had been made and used by our people…

On the evening of July 24, I was joined by 28 intrepid TLGV members, their children and friends at the Wyndham Land Trust’s Lyon Preserve in Pomfret. We were there for a program led by CT DEEP Wildlife Biologist Devaughn Fraser. She is an expert…

We have an old honeysuckle bush in our front yard twisting up a pipe 10 feet into the air. Planted by the previous owners, the orange-red flowers spreading out five feet around attract hummingbirds to their trumpet-shaped flowers. On sunny, warm days they move between…

“The scales have tipped and the days have more of early fall than early summer in them. Mornings dawn with heavy mists that burn away in time. The annual overturn in sound has already taken place. The chorus of singing birds has diminished; the music…

The summer of 2021 will go down as one of my more satisfying and yet concerning summers when it comes to my fascination and interest in birds. My wife refers to our backyard as Birdland due to the variety of species visiting and residing near…

“I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.” — Henry David Thoreau One of my favorite places to visit is Nathan Hale State Forest at the Nathan…

The Summer Solstice may be in June, but for us New Englanders it is July when summer really starts. The heat of the season draws me outdoors to the wealth of beauty right out my doorstep. Here is what I’ve been seeing so far and…

I grew up outside of Boston, and as a kid was told the story of one of my ancestors who fought in the battle of Bunker Hill. It was the first major battle of the American Revolution and while the colonists lost the battle, they…

Last Monday was the summer solstice and the official start of summer. We have a tradition at The Last Green Valley (TLGV) to take in the summer solstice with a sunset paddle, and Monday about 30 of us enjoyed a beautiful evening at Mansfield Hollow…

Earlier this month my colleague, LyAnn Graff, brought in an interesting looking fuzz ball surrounding a thin leafy branch of a burr oak tree. It was about the size of a golf ball, but with red-tipped small points on the wooly surface. I figured it…