2021-2-3, Dead Wood Swamp, Farmington, CT.

 On 2021-2-3, I re-visited the Dead Wood Swamp area in Farmington.  I made an interactive map on which I put location numbers.  Here's a link to the interactive map, on which you can zoom in and out and turn on and off various layers: https://arcg.is/1f5in5 .

Here is a static screenshot of the interactive map.



1.  Where I parked, in the parking lot of an office park.

2.  I followed an old road, now blocked by numerous fallen trees, to a thoroughfare that runs underneath power lines.

3.  I left the power lines to explore a dim trail that went northeasterly.  At 3, I found what I believe is a red oak tree that had many galls on its branches.  I believe the galls were caused by the Gouty Oak Gall Wasp, Callirhytis quercuspunctata.


3.

3.  The trunk of the tree that had the galls on its branches.


4.  As I made my way back to the power lines, I noticed a beaked hazelnut shrub, Corylus cornuta.

4.  Cones on the beaked hazelnut shrub.



5.  I followed the power lines to I-84.  Near here, I believe there is a culvert under I-84 that brings water from Dead Wood Swamp to a canal that empties into what is now Batterson Park Pond but that, at one time was Metropolitan District Commission Reservoir Number 4.



6.  Looks like an inner feather of some sort of bird that has red in its plumage.  A pileated woodpecker, perhaps?

7  I turned southerly onto a clear road that followed a stone-lined canal.  The road showed evidence of recent maintenance.  The road I was on merged with another maintained road (both are not open to vehicles) that the Town of Farmington GIS site calls "Settlement Road."  Steve Schiller wrote this on Facebook: "Settlement Rd was the main route between Farmington village and Kensington going back to colonial times, long before NB was incorporated in mid 1800s."

8.  Settlement Road now ends at I-84.


9.  Here, Settlement Road runs along a causeway between two wet areas.


10.  The Town of Farmington GIS site shows Settlement Road continuing northerly through the Tilcon quarry.  I don't think that is currently the reality.  I turned and went easterly along the power lines.


11.  The temperature was about forty degrees Fahrenheit.  I took a picture of a bug on the snow.  Two people on iNaturalist (where I posted these pictures) think the bug is an insect in the genus Allocapnia, 
a member of Small Winter Stoneflies Family Capniidae.


11.

12.  When I was last here (in 2013), there was a clear trail here.  On 2021-2-3, there were only traces of a trail.

I researched who owns the land I was on, or near.  I marked up a screenshot from https://crcog.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=ed798533e6fd4304b2bef1f28e95c06f .  "T" stands for Tilcon.  "F" stands for Farmington.  "H" stands for "Hartford."








David Reik

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