Clinton owns Madison

It’s been over 6 years since I went out there. It was too hard, too rocky. And nobody knows that the actually point is not in Madison, but Clinton, probably because the  Hammoneggitt River changed course after the town’s boundaries were set. A flood cast the border askew and severed off a piece of Clinton by it’s wide estuary channel.

I slowly made my way out the newly scaped path and reached the point without trouble. On the way I saw sea going geese called Brant’s and several merganser couples. The formally dressed males in black and white and the females in earthtone brown with red fronts. Still not as impressive as the morning sunlight tom turkey with its feathers all iridescent and shiny.

But there were seals. Two large, lazy harbor seals showing white and slate grey, like seagoing Confederate officers.

They laze there, on rocks on the outgoing tide, enjoying the sun.

Once with Gary the Negative we met a woman at the park. He was wallowing in his post divorce loneliness. He had made his teenaged daughter the center of his universe and I warned him to take care of himself for she would soon want her own life. I’m the smoother one and  soon she agreed to continue on  at a local coffee shop where he, Hallelujah, got her number. Nothing came of it and I grew tired of him making plans and having his daughter disrupt them with her petty drama. I mean cant’s a father have one afternoon every two months where he’s not at her beck and call?

Leaning on a big boulder that glacial outwash deposited 10,000 years ago, I relaxed and enjoyed the sun and water and birds and pinnipeds. But soon there was crunching and voices and a troupe of people coming. Fifteen tweens emerged with their beautiful counselor. She was blonde, fresh and bubbly and soon began asking questions.

“Do you know what those birds are?”

Then she said they came out to see seals, I showed her and began passing my binoculars around. There were four that seemed interested. A small boy, younger who liked the binoculars more than the seals, a pretty brunette who only became interested after the tallest blonde boy, who also feigned interest. And there was Kyle. He was bigger than everyone except the blonde kid. He w as just a few inches shorter than our 5’10” heights and his voice was stuck in the a lower range due to changing. Deep, but not yet a bass or tenor. He was skeptical. He claimed the seals were just rocks. It’s funny that there are so many people skeptical of wildlife in Connecticut. But there are seals, moose, wolves, eagles and mountain lions in our woods.

The most common response I hear, when I tell people that eagles’ nest in Hamden, next to the Amtrak line north, across from the W.B. Mason distribution center is;

“those gotta be chicken hawks”

But what is a chicken hawk? No such thing. It’s a combined misnomer for any hawk capable of killing a chicken.

Kyle froggy voice was a real doubter until he saw the seals move. It was only visible with the binoculars, they were too lazy to move around enough to see without them. He was a little excited, but then his boyness took over and he started to climb on the rocks. When I left I went eagle watching in Guilford at the yacht club and did an eagle drive-by in Hamden. And I might have seen an elusive chicken hawk. One eag in Guilford, none home in Hamden.