Wild at Heart | Local Treasure
Even in winter, Connecticut’s largest wildlife refuge rewards nature-loving explorers.
By Yankee Magazine|Dec 03 2020|
Sixty percent of the shoreline of Connecticut’s biggest natural lake, Bantam Lake, is protected as part of the White Memorial Foundation and Conservation Center.
Credit: Leo Kulinski Jr.By Erik Ofgang
“Keep an eye out for butterflies.” Even in months when snow still blankets the forest floor, that’s James Fischer’s advice to hikers who visit White Memorial Foundation and Conservation Center in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills.
Fischer, the research director at White Memorial, explains that the preserve, which stretches from Litchfield to Morris, is home to thousands of winter-dwelling mourning cloak butterflies. These large butterflies have dark brown wings edged with beige. They survive the cold by sheltering in small holes drilled by woodpeckers into the sides of trees. And White Memorial has an abundance of maple trees—more than 1 million, by Fischer’s estimation.
Shown with their real estate magnate father, May and Alain White founded White Memorial in 1913; the former White family mansion is now the property’s nature museum.
Credit: Courtesy of White Memorial Conservation CenterCredit: Courtesy of White Memorial Conservation Center
“You will sometimes see the mourning cloak butterfly fly through the forest on nice warm winter days,” Fischer says. “It’s seeking out mates at that time of year, but it’s also trying to find high-carbohydrate, high-sugar sap to drink from.”
This winged wonder is just one of the many surprises you might discover on a visit to White Memorial. The 4,000-acre wildlife refuge—the state’s largest—has more than 40 miles of trails that run through beautiful Connecticut countryside and are popular with travelers year-round. It also has a nature museum, which is temporarily closed due to coronavirus concerns, but the natural history of the region it celebrates is still, thankfully, accessible.You can learn about the area’s wetlands at one of White Memorial’s most popular year-round destinations, the Boardwalk, a 1.2-mile walkway over the Bantam River and around Little Pond. Only a few feet off the ground and an arm’s-length wide, the wooden path traverses through the wetlands, giving you the same view that birds enjoy when they skim over a marsh.
Sixty percent of the shoreline of Connecticut’s biggest natural lake, Bantam Lake, is protected as part of the White Memorial Foundation and Conservation Center.
Credit: Leo Kulinski Jr.Credit: Leo Kulinski Jr. Cross-country skiers and snowshoers head to the Five Ponds Area, where wide trails twist and turn by a series of small ponds. Apple Hill Trail is a two-mile route that takes viewers up a hill with an observation deck that provides a view of Bantam Lake from its 1,200-foot elevation. No matter how often you walk through the preserve, there is always more to explore.
The preserve was founded in 1913 by siblings May and Alain White in memory of their parents. Their father was John Jay White, a New York real estate magnate who in 1863 built the family a mansion in Litchfield called Whitehall, which today serves as the preserve’s nature museum.
Over six miles of the Bantam River runs through White Memorial, giving paddlers a prime spot for wildlife watching.
Credit: Leo Kulinski Jr.Credit: Leo Kulinski Jr.
A bobcat on Apple Hill, which is a habitat restoration area for the New England cottontail.
Credit: Leo Kulinski Jr.
