Jenny Young | Estuary Magazine: For people who care about the Connecticut River

Below the Surface: Giving Tanks for Aquatic Education

We often lament that the carefree days of exploring outdoors with only a dinner bell to call you home are unfamiliar to today’s children. But early learning about the natural world is important.

Estuary for Young Readers #17

The Emancipation Proclamation became official January of this year, 1863.

Project partners from three different organizations wander across fields of goldenrod and burnweed under a perfect September sky. From a boardwalk just a few inches above the wetland soils we inspect alders and cattails, wool grass and smartweed.

One Photograph: In the Darnedest Places—NESTS

Some birds are unshakably consistent in their nesting ways, and good for them, I say. It’s heartening to know that some lives can sustain such constancy, and thrive.

Gardening for Good: Gardening for a Changing Climate

In summer 2021, my neighbor sent me a text with a picture of an unusual bird wading in the marsh below his deck. You had to take note, as there are just no big pink birds local to Connecticut. Indeed, that bird—a roseate spoonbill—is typically a resident of Florida and tropics further south. Likely sent off course from a storm that blew it up the coast, it is somehow appropriate to elicit that recollection in a conversation about how our climate is changing in New England.

Wallace Stevens and “The River of Rivers”

One could walk the length of the Connecticut River and never think of Wallace Stevens.

Connecticut River Critters: The Mudpuppy

Mudpuppies gushing out of fire hydrants onto the streets of Albany, New York.

Central Watershed Outings: Tracking Dinosaurs in the Connecticut River Valley

In March 1835 Amherst College professor Edward Hitchcock received a letter about a mysterious discovery in Greenfield, Massachusetts. The writer, a doctor named James Deane, described bird-like tracks embedded in a slab of sandstone rock.

On My Mind…

In the Connecticut River, the scientific community recognizes ten species of migratory fish that include American shad, alewife, American eel, Atlantic salmon, striped bass, blueback herring, sea lamprey, hickory shad, Atlantic sturgeon, and shortnose sturgeon. They travel thousands of ocean miles and annually swim up the Connecticut River, some a few miles and some over two hundred miles.

Casting About: A Day on the Deerfield River

On an Autumn evening last year, I got a text message from guide Chris Jackson offering me a half-day float on the Deerfield River. His offer, however, came with a warning. Drought conditions, coupled with unseasonably warm weather plaguing the entire Northeast at that time, had caused river conditions that were low and warm, resulting in difficult fishing.

What’s for Dinner: Duck Confit and Wild Rice

Ducks and wild rice are as comfortable together on your dinner plate as they are in the wild! The wild rice, a semi-aquatic grass, is mostly found along riverbanks where the water is shallow and the currents slow.

Local Wastewater Operators Persevere to Improve Our Public Waterways

The adage “When it rains, it pours” is one that is becoming all too familiar and challenging for the future health of our local waterways.

Conte Corner: Fifty Years with Andrew French

I n November 2024, I sat down with Andrew French, Refuge Manager of the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge and the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge and longtime employee of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), to discuss his career and perspectives on the Connecticut River watershed.