Birders Paul Kennedy and Sulmaan Khan were enjoying the bird blind where the Quinnipiac Meadows/Fargeorge Preserve meets the river. They spotted robins likely migrating down from Maine, an immature bald eagle, and a raven.
But no gun-toting bird hunters, at least on the land.
It’s likely to stay that way thanks to three new “NO HUNTING” signs just installed by the New Haven Land Trust (NHLT).
The three signs were put in place on nearly adjacent Grannis Island, where last January bird hunters made landfall and blasted away. There were no signs prohibiting hunting there at that time.
Click here and here for that story.
The hunters’ early morning shotgun blasts a year ago alarmed the Q River neighborhood: How could bird-killing pellets be flying so close to an urban area?
Game wardens who eventually showed up determined the hunters were partially in the right.
In the January incident the hunters broke no law if they shot from boats that were more than 250 feet from the nearest buildings.
That was indeed the case.
However, they were in the wrong in stepping onto the preserve and shooting from there.
Grannis Island is a nine-acre chunk of land surrounded by marsh and just feet from 35-acre Quinnipiac Meadows/Fargeorge. Both are administered by NHLT. Hunting is prohibited on the preserve. But the NHLT, which received the island from the Blakeslee Arpaia Company, had at the time not yet put signs up.
(Branford-based Blakeslee is the construction firm that helped build I‑91 among other huge projects. The company maintains a right of way through the preserve, where it stores equipment as well as much construction detritus) .
“That [2008 gift from Blakeslee] was the first season we owned Grannis Island,” said Randall.
Now the signs are up and complement the No Hunting signs on the Quinnipiac Avenue gate access. There are three signs now visible, one each from the south, west, and north of the island.
Click here for the state Department of Environmental Protection hunting and trapping guidelines.
The No Hunting signs are made from recycled materials: posts from street signs and backing from a school crossing sign. The posts were driven into the mud so that they rise now only one to two and a half feet. “You try to achieve a balance between not being obstructive with over-signage, but at same time as marking the property as an area where you can’t hunt,” Randall said.
During his Friday visit to blind this past Friday, birder Paul Kennedy said knowing No Hunting signs were about would not alter his experience of the preserve, where he has been coming to bird for two years. “I come from a country where hunting is fine as long as you are professional about it.”
Kennedy is British and has been teaching political science at Yale for 22 years. His colleague and graduate student Khan had just seen a harrier, a kind of hawk that is protected, said Kennedy. Kennedy said he has no problem with hunters who can distinguish between those birds they shouldn’t shoot and those they might. “Mine is a middle-of-the-way attitude,” he said.
That generally echoed the Q River community’s position, in meetings after the hunters’ intrusion of last winter and in recent email communications. Some Q River neighbors are pro-hunting, while others want it abolished from New Haven waters, said Chris Ozyck in an email message.
“I am sitting on the fence. I know the value of conservation for hunting, but hate the gun noise factor. Bow and arrow or bollas would be fine by me,” said Ozyck, who manages the Urban Resources Institute at Yale.
Randall said a fourth No Hunting sign will soon be affixed to the bird blind as well at the tip of the preserve.
(Note: sign photos provided by Chris Randall and J.R. Logan of NHLT)
Thanks to the New Haven Land Trust for obtaining and maintaining this wonderful preserve.