Bolton Conservation Commission

06/11/2026

06/10/2026

Moths pollinate more flowers at night
than bees pollinate during the entire day.

We just don't see it happening.

Over 160,000 moth species exist worldwide.
In North America alone, moths outnumber butterflies 9 to 1.

Luna Moth → one of the most beautiful insects in North America. Adults don't eat at all — they live only to mate. Lifespan as an adult: one week.

Cecropia Moth → the largest moth on the continent. Wingspan up to 7 inches. Completely harmless.

Sphinx Moth → hovers at flowers just like a hummingbird. If you've seen a "tiny hummingbird" at dusk — it was probably this.

Rosy Maple Moth → looks like it belongs in a tropical rainforest. Found across the eastern US. Entirely real.

Hummingbird Clearwing → transparent wings, moves like a hummingbird, visits the same flowers. Most people mistake it for a small bird.

A porch light left on all night
pulls moths away from flowers and exhausts them before they can pollinate.

Turn one light off. Let them work.

06/10/2026

Wonderful TRAILS DAY in Bolton Saturday under the dense canopy of the Nathan Hale Greenway. It wasn’t the quantity of those attending, it was the quality. Everyone learned so much from each other. Thank you CFPA for such steadfast support every year.

06/10/2026

You've probably seen its work without seeing the animal — a tree gnawed to a point, a stream backed up into a pond that wasn't there last year.

For a long time that was the whole story: beavers as a nuisance, flooding a road or felling the wrong tree.

Then you look at what actually happens when one moves in.

A single family slows a stream, and within a few seasons there's open water where there was only a trickle — and a whole crowd using it. Frogs, fish, ducks, dragonflies, all moving into a place the beaver built without meaning to.

🦫 The animal behind it is stranger than it looks. Teeth that never stop growing, worn back down by all that cutting. The ability to stay under for many minutes on one breath. Ponds that hold water on the land through a dry summer instead of letting it rush away.

Their largest dam runs far enough to be picked out from satellites.

We spent a long time trapping them out. Now we're carrying them back — because the soggy engineer, it turns out, was building on our side all along.

06/10/2026

At 4:45 AM, before first light,
the Robin starts singing alone.

By 6:00 AM, the full chorus is at maximum volume —
six species, one overlapping wall of sound.

The order never changes:
Robin → Blackbird → Great Tit → Blue Tit → Wren → Blackcap.

The Robin goes first because of its large eyes.
It can see in lower light levels than any other garden bird —
so it starts singing before dawn while every other bird is still silent.

The Blackbird is the most inventive.
No two phrases are ever the same.
No other garden bird comes close to that level of improvisation.

The Wren is the most surprising —
a torrent of mechanical notes from a bird smaller than your fist,
producing one of the loudest sounds per body weight of any bird on Earth.

The Blackcap and Chiffchaff arrive last at 6:00 AM,
singing high in the canopy to bring the chorus to full volume.

This window closes in mid-June.
You have maybe 2 weeks left to hear it at full strength.

06/09/2026

Order your sticker now for FREE!

🚨 New CT Boating Update 🚨

During May, the CT legislature passed Public Act 26-60, which now requires all unregistered vessels - including paddle craft (kayaks, canoes, paddleboards, etc.) to have visible identification with current contact information.

This can be as simple as your name + phone number printed on or attached to your vessel.

The goal: Help search and rescue teams quickly identify vessels in emergency situations.

DEEP is offering free stickers to make this easy! Visit https://portal.ct.gov/DEEP/Boating/Safety/If-Found-Sticker to get yours now.

FBL may also have a batch on hand at our next member get-together.

Already paddling this season? This is a quick win to stay compliant and help keep our lakes safer.

Questions or thoughts? Drop them below!

06/09/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/18ZCG9XTNJ/?mibextid=wwXIfr

The flooding of the summer of 2024 exposed major weaknesses among Connecticut's towns and cities that do not measure the average daily flows of smaller bodies of water.

But a small team in the state budget office, in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey, is now engaged in a year-long mapping plan aimed at providing resiliency data in this period of climate change.

More: https://www.nhregister.com/politics/article/ct-eye-future-flooding-begins-mapping-rivers-22285614.php

06/05/2026

Most people picture a gray squirrel and think they've covered it. The yard has more squirrels than that — and one of them only comes out at night.

A southern flying squirrel weighs two ounces. It launches from a high branch, stretches a flap of skin from wrist to ankle, and glides a hundred and fifty feet. You have lived under them. You have not seen them.

North America has dozens of native squirrel species — from a fox squirrel longer than a house cat to a chipmunk that fits in your hand. The ones you see by day are not the only ones using your tree.

Tree squirrels rotate their hind ankles a full one hundred and eighty degrees to come down a trunk headfirst. Gray squirrels scatter-hoard thousands of nuts and remember most of them months later. The cavities a pileated woodpecker drills become winter dens for flying squirrels — sometimes fifty in one hole.

The squirrels you've been watching are not all the squirrels you have 🌿