Montville — The Connecticut Audubon Society has added 33 acres to its Morgan R. Chaney Sanctuary in Montville, thanks to a recent gift of the land.

Walter N. Wainwright Jr., of Waterford donated the property to the organization and added an endowment to help the society maintain the property. The gift tacks on a significant amount of land to a Montville nature sanctuary already covering more than 233 acres. Connecticut Audubon manages approximately 3,300 acres that comprise 20 separate preserves throughout the state.

The group’s executive director, Patrick Comins, said Wainwright contacted the society through his lawyer to offer the land.

“He’s doing a subdivision, and though he didn’t need to give us this land, he wanted to make sure that there was a buffer between the new houses and the Great Swamp,” Comins said. 

Wainwright said his girlfriend’s love of birds, borne from trips to Maine, was another motivation for his donation. 

“My girlfriend has always liked birds for one thing, she’s very ill right now, so that’s a reason I did it,” Wainwright said. “I’ve seen people use the preserve over on Turner Road. Every time I go by, I see cars pop in there.”

The Chaney Sanctuary, located in the southwest corner of town, has an entrance on Turner Road just past the intersection with Ridge Hill Road. It has public trails and acts as a habitat for various types of birds.

“The sanctuary is important because it provides a rare habitat type in Connecticut, what we call Shrubland or Early Successional habitat,” Comins said. “We manage it for that type of habitat, and it has some declining species, like Eastern towhee, field sparrow and blue-winged warbler, not to mention it’s also really good for pollinators.” 

According to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, an Early Successional habitat has “vigorously growing grasses, forbs, shrubs and trees, which provide excellent food and cover for wildlife but need disturbance to be maintained. Examples of early successional habitats include weedy areas, grasslands, old fields or pastures, shrub thickets (e.g. dogwood or alder), and young forest.” 

The preserve, given to Connecticut Audubon in 1986, welcomes hikers and wildlife species. Easy-to-moderate trails pass by several handsome stone walls, a stream that supports native brook trout and a stone hunting cabin once used by the former owner who donated the property to Connecticut Audubon.

In recent years, the society worked out a 10-acre area within the sanctuary to create shrubby habitat without fragmenting the mature forest around it. A similar project at the organization’s Croft preserve in Goshen had succeeded in attracting shrubland species. 

Bird species in forests drop if the forest decreases in size, so “adding to and providing buffers for existing protected lands helps ensure that species diversity remains stable,” per the state Audubon Society. Ovenbird, hooded warbler, scarlet tanager, red-eyed vireo, great-crested flycatcher, among other species, populate mature forests in Connecticut.

“The new section slopes toward and helps protect a large swamp in the Thames River watershed, and so it helps protect water quality in the river and in Long Island Sound,” a society press release said.

Comins said the society generally gains land through donations. He thanked Wainwright for also providing an endowment to fund property management in the future.

“A lot of our older sanctuaries don’t have any sort of endowment, so if you’re interested in land preservation or management, joining the Connecticut Audubon Society is a great way to help,” Comins said. 

s.spinella@theday.com