12. Audubon Center

The Audubon Center is located several miles north of exit 28 on the Merritt Parkway near Round Hill, Connecticut (See Figure 32). Although the center is a wildlife sanctuary, it hosts several miles of hiking on well-maintained trails through several hundred acres of forested and rocky hillsides. Trials lead along tumbling brooks and across barren, rock outcrops. There are several boardwalks through bogs and wetlands areas. The bedrock is the Ordovician Harrison Gneiss (equivalent to the Hartland Formation) which consists of interlayered dark- to light-gray, foliated gneiss with sporadic quartz veins and patches of granite pegmatite. The landscape displays classic features of recent glaciation: numerous erratics, large barren rocky hillsides void of soil, and surfaces displaying grooves and striations gouged by the passing ice. The forested landscape is host to numerous rock walls from the Colonial Era when upland farmers attempted to grow food on the land before abandoning the depleted soil. A hike through the grounds of the Audubon Center is particularly scenic during the fall colors.