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| View of Little Bay from Great Bay NWR |
Dropped the girls off at Water Country, had a few hours to kill, why not visit nearby Great Bay National Wildlife Refuge?
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| Former Weapons Storage Area |
The parking area fronts the glorious fenced-in "Former Weapons Storage Area," which has reverted to scrubland with a few osprey nests scattered about. Apparently the iconic water tower will be coming down. (Bird-strike hazard).
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| Lichened fence post |
I am quite fond of ruined areas. Does this make me some kind of Romantic?
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| Ferry Way Trail |
It doesn't take long to get into the delightful hickory-oak forest. Not much activity (a scarlet tanager and great-crested flycatcher or two) but I didn't expect much. The shag-barks were dropping nuts on the trail (I was a little worried I'd get beaned).
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| Great Blue Heron on Little Bay |
Followed a well-travelled though apparently unofficial trail down to the shore. I was amazed by the quiet. Great blue heron actively hunting. A couple of spotted sandpipers teetered on the rocks.
3 comments:
I never made it there in my brief attempt at living in Dover.
It was the old bomb storage bunker zone and getting into it is a strange run along the skirt of the Pease airstrip.
Newington is still seething over this encroachment and had played the victim card to the hilt since it was built.
They even have brass plaques that whine about it.
Unfortunately I lost all my NH stills when Skype froze my drive in early May.
No matter. I was actually doing video of the Bay Colony Rail stretch between Needham Junction and the old Trestle Bridge at the Charles.
I didn't encroach on your domain as my main mission was to scout the rail trail.
The rail route is the best one I've seen although the trestle bridge is a bit scary.
It looks like surveyors were through there recently, which was great, as some sections were that impassible tangle of vine-ish things we find around here.
And someone put tiny charming birdhouses in the Needham town forest as a kind of 3d trail blaze.
Yes, Great Bay is not easy to get to. Counterintuitive really--you have to start at the opposite side of the airport.
Feel free to encroach! I agree about the trestle, really the most significant obstacle (other than upset homeowners) to getting the trail out of Needham. Lots of traffic to the Charles River Peninsula in the future though! People will need to bring tick repellent along with their picnic blankets...
Those vile little arachnids have been refreshingly absent over the peak heat of summer like some compensation for other miseries.
But I imagine thoughts of breeding stir in their pin bug brains and fall will see another round.
I've been doing a series of photo loads to Google + in the same album to seed interest and response has been fun. The area now has a small global crew of fans.
The trestle bridge is funny, If I were a few decades younger I'd traverse it without worry.
I'll probably scout the other side soon until I get to the Medfield Junction.
The Great Bay access road was probably an AF Base war fighting game plan, create a very circuitous access with open field of fire zones as a contingency against Russian Commandos or something.
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