the Way of the Turtle

1 Mile Walk at Bauer Environmental Park
Monday, February 8, 2010

Last fall I first encountered a reference to Bauer Environmental Park in the Hudson Mohawk Bird Club's guidebook, Birding New York's Hudson-Mohawk Region, while checking out the pages on Ann Lee Pond. I was a bit surprised - the only other place I've seen it mentioned is in ECOS's Natural Areas of Albany County; on-line references are very few, and no mention is made on the Colonie Parks & Recreation page. The directions in the birding guide were pretty vague, and the road the park is off of is a fairly busy one, so I missed the trailhead parking area the first few times I went looking for it... I even began wondering if maybe it had been developed into housing or some other use since the guidebook had been published. During a couple of recent drives down that road I thought I might have glimpsed the trailhead, so today I decided to head over there and see if it was where I thought it was.

Success! And no other cars in the small lot (not that great a surprise on a cold Monday afternoon) so I had no difficulty parking. Before long I was heading out on the boardwalk, expecting to make a short trip into the woods and then come back... but I was in for a pleasant surprise. A short way into the park the boardwalk branched off in two directions - more trails to explore! Along the way I spotted several chickadees (I really need to keep a bag of sunflower seeds in the car...) and a nuthatch.

This is definitely a cool little park. All the trails are boardwalked; from the looks of them they're probably pretty wet in the spring and summer. The paths go through a variety of environments. There's a lot of hardwood forest, but also a large hemlock grove and some wetlands as well, with a couple of bridges that go over a small stream that winds its way through the park. At the far side of the loop another spur took me out to a second parking area and a service building for the nearby power lines. I wandered briefly over to the power line right-of-way to see if there was anything worth seeing, and caught sight of a hawk winging off further into the woods. There was also a small flock of juncos that zipped off into the bushes as I approached; I tried getting photos of some of them but they refused to sit still long enough for me to do so.

After that I followed the other half of the loop through more woods , some of which ran right alongside what looked like a small apartment complex (bleah... but then again I was right in the middle of Colonie.) More hemlocks and hardwoods and yet another crossing of the stream, pretty nice. This wouldn't make a good place to run, but it's a nice short walk and today it was just right, I got back to the car not long after my hands really started getting cold.

JMH