David Lyon for The Boston Globeįor roughly 300 years South Dartmouth was a community of saltwater farms on Buzzards Bay. Depending on the currents, paddlers can follow Red Brook upstream well past the footbridge.Ī kayaker begins to explore the marshes at the outlet of Red Brook into Buttermilk Bay. They skim along the small beach and cut swiftly upriver to wind their way into the marsh. Kayakers favor this marsh as much as fisher folk and walkers. In the brackish shallows where the beach begins, delicate sea asparagus sways with gentle wave action. The short trail emerges from the woods to reveal grand views of the hummocks of cordgrass and saltwater hay tossing their seed heads in the strong tidal current. But the Beach Trail crosses Head of the Bay Road for a winding and scenic walk through scrub oak and pitch pines to the beach. (It’s catch and release only.) You might be tempted to head upstream on the Red Brook Trail, if only to walk past the freshwater cattail marsh and across the footbridge for a grand view of the saltwater marshes. Trout fishermen speak of the freshwater Red Brook in hushed tones, as it’s one of the last wild sea-run brook trout fisheries in the country. ![]() Three communities share the 210-acre Lyman Reserve at the head of Buttermilk Bay. The best viewing spot is from the boardwalk over the marsh.īoston floats on the distant horizon from the viewing platform on Belle Isle Marsh. In early September, that included four different raptors (kestrel, osprey, Cooper’s hawk, and peregrine falcon), three kinds of sandpipers, three types of plovers, and two kinds of egrets. A whiteboard at the informational kiosk by the parking lot lists birds spotted in the previous week. In fact, Belle Isle is something of a birder’s paradise, so bring your binoculars and your cameras equipped with telephoto lenses. A circular path skirts the perimeter and a crisscross of mowed land creates access to a salt meadow landscape so critical to nesting birds. Decades of restoration have preserved Belle Isle as a recreational treasure. The towers of downtown Boston seem to float on the watery horizon like a vision of Atlantis risen from the sea. The biggest birds flying overhead aren’t the blue herons or black-backed gulls - they’re the planes shuttling in and out of Logan. Boston’s last remnant of the salt marshes that once lined Massachusetts Bay, it is a pocket of wilderness in an urban setting. This DCR reservation on the site of the Suffolk Drive-In Theatre (which closed in 1971) is something of a miracle.
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