Nature Center

Nature Center page

The Nature Center is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00-4:00 until mid-October.
Weekly Activities - September & October

	1:00	2:00	3:00
Wednesday	Kite building	Nature walk	Owl pellet dissection
Thursday	Kite building	Nature walk	Bird house building
Friday	Arts and crafts	Nature walk	Fish dissection
Saturday	Arts and crafts	Nature walk	Shark dissection
Sunday	Arts and crafts	Nature walk	Squid dissection


Thursday evening lectures - and a special Sunday lecture in October
The Nature Center is hosting a series of free lectures on Thursday evenings. See times below. After 6:00 entrance to the park is free.
July 23 6:30 pm	Horseshoe-crab tagging. Dr. Jennifer Mattei, Chair of the Department of Biology at Sacred Heart University, on Project Limulus, a long-term horseshoe-crab tagging project.
July 30 6:30 pm	Tree and shrub care. Arborist Doug Williams on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and best practices for tree and shrub care.
August 6 6:30 pm	The Basics of Bird Photography. A.J. Hand on the techniques he uses to capture photos of sometimes-elusive birds in the wild. Birds of Sherwood Island. Prints in the Nature Center.
August 13	No lecture.
August 20 6:30 pm	Plastics debris in our oceans. Nature Center naturalist Mike Rowinsky on his work with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and the North Pacific Sub-tropical Gyre (NPSG).
August 27	Sea turtles. Nature Center naturalist Alan Berman on his coordination of a sea turtle project in Costa Rica to help save these ancient and endangered species from extinction.
September 3 6:30 pm	"Taking Flight and Getting Your Wings"-How to be a birdwatcher! Tina Green on why, where and how she got into bird watching. Tips on how to get started.
September 10	Friends Shorefest fundraiser, no lecture
September 17 6:00 pm	Aldo Leopold, Environmental Ethics and Salt Marshes. David R. Brown Sc.D. on the ideas of Aldo Leopold, the father of wildlife conservation, who introduced the idea of Environmental Ethics in his 1949 landmark book “A Sand County Almanac.”

Sunday October 4 2:00 pm	Buried Resources Under Sherwood Island: How Archaeology Reveals History Cece Saunders, Historical Perspectives (website) The history of Sherwood Island State Park encompasses thousands of years and covers vastly different cultures - a Native American presence followed by colonial farmers, millwrights, sea captains, and horse breeders. Connecticut’s southern coastline is rife with similar embayments, salt marshes, rivers, and terraces that have each been critical in both local communities and the evolution of the entire region. Her talk will cover efforts to identify, preserve, and celebrate these archaeological sites.