Around Town

‘An Incredible Experience’: Birding Expert Leads Tour of Bristow Park Sanctuary

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Frank Gallo crouched down and peered through the trees at Bristow Park on an overcast Friday morning, holding his strapped binoculars and wearing a hat that celebrates a biennial birding exploration he leads in Texas. “We’ve got action over here,” Gallo whispered to a group he led through the Old Stamford Road bird sanctuary, contiguous to Mead Park. To the naked eye, there’s nothing but plants, dirt, and rummaging chipmunks as an eerie silence engulfs the natural world, yet Gallo hears the calls of hundreds of birds. Suddenly, a repetitive shushing sound rang throughout the trees, not made by the birds but by Gallo. After several of his calls, the forest awakens: Birds swoop down, making their “tea-kettle-like” noises, as Gallo described.

Around Town

Congregational Church, Town Find Contractor To Repair ‘Wayside Cross’ at God’s Acre

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The Congregational Church of New Canaan and town have agreed on a contractor to repair a damaged World War I monument on God’s Acre that was damaged during a police pursuit this past summer. The Wayside Cross (local history here) will be repaired by Lorton, Va.-based Rugo Stone, under a $31,166 contract that the Board of Selectmen is scheduled to take up at its regular meeting on Tuesday. The Rev. Dr. Stephen Chapin Garner, senior minister at the Congregational Church, told NewCanaanite.com in an email when asked about the monument’s status that “the church and town have been working really well together” to try and get it repaired in time for the Nov. 11 Veterans Day ceremony at God’s Acre. VFW Post 653 member John McLane, a U.S. Army captain in Vietnam, said that the Wayside Cross at God’s Acre “has been a memorial to those who have lost their lives serving this country since right after World War I.”

“Our New Canaan VFW Post holds a service there every Veterans Day,” McLane said.

Around Town

‘So Many Ways To Stay Connected’: New Canaan Memorial Day Parade and Ceremony [PHOTOS]

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New Canaan’s Jim Talbot arrived in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, a major campaign of the war that launched in early 1968 and involved a series surprise attacks. A Maine native who had gone on to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, U.S. Army Capt. Talbot by that time had undergone airborne and Ranger training, and spent one year stationed in West Germany. In six months as battery commander, Talbot saw four killed and 40 wounded in his towed artillery unit. “When you ask a veteran about Memorial Day, faces flash in front of us,” Talbot said from a podium outside the north entrance of Town Hall following a re-routed Memorial Day parade. “Memories of relatives in more distant wars arise from the fog of time.