An avian chorus greeted friends and me as we hiked on a bridge overlooking North Stonington’s Assekonk Swamp one sunny day last week, prompting us to pause and raise binoculars.

“Eastern kingbird,” Maggie Jones announced, pointing to a gray bird with a white underbelly. Andy Lynn and Phil Plouffe swiveled to get a better view.

“Eastern phoebe, willow flycatcher, tree swallow …” Maggie continued, ticking off other species that swooped over the still water, snatching insects in mid-air.

The 693-acre state wildlife managing area, traversed by the Assekonk Borderlands Trail, well deserves its reputation as one of the region’s top birding hot spots.

Not long ago, most people regarded swamps as mucky, mosquito-infested bogs that needed to be drained, filled in or paved over to create more “usable” land for farming, housing or commercial development.

Now, wildlife authorities preserve these ecosystems – not only to provide habitat for countless plants and animals, but to purify water and control flooding.

People today also appreciate that “recreation is important for our health and welfare,” Bill Ricker, chairman of the North Stonington Conservation Commission told me later. The commission has helped establish a trail network in town that connects “a green necklace” of adjoining open space, he noted.

Ricker said he hopes to secure state funds to make part of the Assekonk Borderlands Trail wheelchair-accessible, so that more visitors can experience nature first-hand.

Assekonk– a Native American word meaning “place with much green grass,” was acquired in 1938 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of a New Deal program to buy farmland that had fallen on hard times during the Great Depression. The federal government then leased the property to the Commission on Forests and Wild Life, a forerunner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which conveyed the property to the state in 1954.

The management area connects to a parcel that the town obtained in the 1960s as part of an agreement with the developer of the Kingswood neighborhood. One entrance to the Assekonk Borderlands Trail is located at the end of Kingswood Drive; another is on the south side of Route 2, near the North Stonington Elementary School.

Rather than start at either of these trailheads, though, our group decided to begin hiking at the North Stonington Town Recreation Area off Rocky Hollow Road. Even though the access is not marked here, we had no trouble finding the wide, well-maintained trail behind the tennis courts.

In a short distance, we emerged from woods dominated by oak, birch and hickory, and crossed athletic fields behind Wheeler High School, including a short stretch on the cinder running track.

Next, we passed through a stone wall, re-entered the forest on a section of trail lined with wood chips, and approached the bridge over the swamp.

This appealing span provides an excellent vantage point – not just for birdwatching, but for admiring white water lilies and yellow pond lilies on the water. Maggie also pointed out dense clusters of high-bush blueberry, elderberry, azalea and sweet pepper bush along the shore.

After crossing the bridge, we continued hiking until reaching the Kingswood Road access, where we turned around and took a circuitous route back to the town recreation area on Rocky Hollow Road.

Along the way we passed cinnamon, royal and interrupted ferns that framed native wildflowers, including blue-eyed grass, shin-leaf and red baneberry.

A lone cedar waxwing feasted on juniper berries covering a stand of Eastern red cedar trees; red-eyed, warbling and yellow-throated vireos sang; ospreys circled. The management area also attracts great blue herons, great egrets, kingfishers, wood ducks, rails, spotted sandpipers, ovenbirds, veerys and Acadian flycatchers. It is also home to frogs, turtles, muskrats, otters, beavers, deer, fisher cats, bobcats, coyotes and weasels.

The trail also passes an area once known as the Parade Grounds, where local militia trained in the early 1800s.

Maps of Assekonk and other North Stonington trails are available at Town Hall and the Wheeler Library, as well as online at northstoningtonct.gov/home/pages/trails-information-maps.

The website also includes a map of the Lower Pawcatuck River Quad-Town Kayak/Canoe Trail.