Connecticut Naturalist Brings Back Spring

By Dottie Evans

At the end of November, we can all use a reminder that spring will come again and today’s frozen, gray-brown bog will be tomorrow’s vernal pool teeming with life, sound, and color.

“Autumn is the hardest time of year for filming the out-of-doors,” says nature photographer Will Michael, who is known to many Newtown residents as the Connecticut Naturalist. His weekly half-hour television program can be seen on Community Access Cable Channel 21.

 “Winter is pretty uncomfortable for filming nature, because it’s so cold. But you’ve got the contrast of white snow and ice to work with, so it’s visually stimulating,” said Mr Michael, bemoaning November’s monochromatic palette.

On Monday, November 28, Will Michael gave a public showing of the 40-minute documentary he recently completed with the assistance of a Meserve Foundation Grant.  The show was titled “Journey Through The Old Quarry Nature Center,” and the film spanned four seasons of wildlife activity observed at the 75-acre Danbury nature preserve located off Maple Lane near Rogers Park.

Those who attended the viewing in Danbury’s Immaculate High School library included Mr Michael’s family, friends, fans of the TV show, former science teachers, college professors, and fellow students at Western Connecticut State College.

While they might not have all been familiar with the Old Quarry, everyone in the room could identify with the abundance of wildlife now living there, some 40 years after the site was reclaimed and transformed from city dump to wildlife park. The sights and sounds of nature captured by Mr Michael over the past year-and-a-half are typical of what one might see in any wild area of Fairfield County that has been protected from development.

“The more you look, the more you see,” he noted.

Will Michael has logged hundreds of hours in the field, gathering an impressive photographic album of close-up wildlife shots. These include “action” shots of a snapping turtle lumbering uphill while looking for a spot to lay her eggs and a cicada nymph just emerged from the ground and shedding its exoskeleton.  Zooming in on the face of a half-submerged bull-frog, the camera focuses on a swarm of gnats crawling across the frog’s nose, mouth, and bulging yellow-green eyes.

“Not a very safe place for those insects to have landed,” he commented.

Using a macro lens, special lighting, a night vision camera, an underwater camera, and time lapse photography––sometimes all at once––he has been able to film a great diversity of wildlife in and around the quarry ponds and woods. Spring peepers, may apple flowers and the box turtles that eat their seeds, tree toads trilling, fox kits romping, a staghorn beetle rummaging in last year’s leaves, and crayfish swimming in the Simpaug Brook that traverses the Old Quarry Nature Center––these are a few of the many images he has painstakingly filmed, edited, and arranged into a coherent story of four seasons in the preserve.

The live sound track accompanying the documentary features original music, and Mr Michael’s sometimes humorous but always factual commentary describes the lives and habitats of the creatures he films. The sounds of running water, birdcalls, and insects’ buzzing provide appropriate background according to the season.

Perhaps the most unusual footage was shot from inside a camouflaged bivouac tent. It captured the rare sight of flying squirrels soaring across the tree branches overhead and plummeting to the ground, tales and feet splayed like wings.

“Flying squirrels are native to this area, but since they are very small and they are nocturnal, most people never see them. You have to be very patient and just wait,” he said.

Waiting for wildlife to come into view and managing to get just the right shot is something that Will Michael seems to relish. Having grown up in Bethel, he has been exploring nature trails and watching wildlife since he was a child. He graduated from Immaculate High School in 2001, and he will have graduated from Western Connecticut State College by the end of December with a degree in biology and environmental studies.

“He’s got the talent. Now he’s got the paperwork to back it up. The world’s his oyster. We’ll see what he does next,” said Immaculate High School Science Teacher Kevin Dunleavy, who has kept up with his former student over the past several years.

While attending college, Will Michael has been an intern at Charter Communications on Commerce Road in Newtown, which broadcasts his weekly Connecticut Naturalist television show. His father, also Will Michael, is a musician who has often entertained Newtown senior citizens by singing and playing the guitar.