Selden

I put in at Ely's Ferry Road.  It is near high tide, but with the river running high, there is a stiff current to paddle upstream against. It is in the 40's with a light downriver wind, and cloudy.  It feels cooler than it actually is.  As soon as I turn the canoe upstream, an immature Bald Eagle swings out from the top of the forest, and an Osprey arrives, fishing out in mid river.

Unlike the section of the river near the Mattebasset (see yesterday's entry), the river in this area has a good amount of buffer space - marshes, coves, and tributaries where excess water in the river can spread out. The water here is probably on the order of a foot above normal, although the current has an extra half mile per hour behind it.

It is a slow paddle upstream against the wind and the current. As I near Joshua Creek, the call of a Hawk...it's a Red Tail and it turns back flying away from the river. 

At the bottom of Selden Channel, I hear the whistles of Osprey.  At this time, Osprey are migrating through or finding their way back to nests in the area.  It is a surprise to find a mated pair already at their nest, and they've been doing work as the nest is looking quite solid. 

There is a good deal of beaver sign on the shoreline. In fact, it is rare to pass more than a few yards without seeing a cut saplings, a drag, or feed site.  A pair of beaver slip off the bank to my right. I only see one, but there are two bubble trails heading in different directions. The bubbles come from air squeezed out of the fur as they swim. The beaver surfaces ten feet ahead and gives me a good tail slap.  I spin the canoe and wait for the beaver to surface, then take a photo and leave it in peace.

Unusually, there is a strong current in the Selden Channel.  It took an hour to paddle up to the bottom of the channel and it takes another full hour to get to the cove at the top of the channel. I flush about a hundred Black Ducks and Mallards while in the channel. There are a few Common Mergansers as well.

Muskrat

At the top of the channel I turn and head back. With the current, it is an easy paddle, even without the wind, which has gone to calm. I spot one very fast muskrat as I head down the channel.

Giants in the Earth, the Castor Canadensis Edition

 I have new thoughts on the Mattebasset River. The title of this entry refers to Ole Rølvaag's novel about Norwegian homesteaders in the Dakotas.  The novel ends rather bleakly when the promised land turns out to have some hard edges.

Gusty wind is predicted, but I make an early enough start that I seem to have evaded it.  Putting in, it is already in the 40's and warming with a very light wind.  The Mattebasset is my go-to river for windy weather, being well protected by hillsides and trees. The water is high, the result of flooding in the Connecticut River, which this river joins just a few miles down.  In this reach of the Connecticut, there is a shortage of riverside marshes and tributaries to absorb high water events. Today, the water is about 5 or 6 ft above normal.  Five days ago, there was another 8 feet of water in here! This is an important detail for today's entry. 

I cut the river bank through a narrow bit of shallowly flooded forest into the Hummingbird Marsh.  It is worth the effort as I spot my first Osprey of the spring, high overhead circling and hovering, on the hunt. Two more Osprey arrive a few seconds later.  I also flush several Wood Ducks as I edge the more open water at the edge of the marsh.

The Mattebasset has always been a good place to come for the chance beaver sighting.  There are usually a few lodges to find and lots of beaver sign - scent mounds, gnawings, and downed trees.  It is unusual in that it lacks stability as a beaver habitat.  While there are always beaver here, lodges don't last very long and it is rare that any lodge gets enlarged enough to show that there is an active and producing colony.  And, that gets back to the high water that I mentioned.  

At first glance, whether or not you are a beaver, this river seems to be ideal habitat.  I can imagine a newly arrived beaver writing home to the folks to tell them of the forty acres of bottom land forest with running water and no competition for territory, sort of like Rølvaag's settlers when they arrived in the Dakotas. Unfortunately, once a year, if they are lucky, the river will flood.  And it will not flood just a little, but rather the water will rise up until it is five, six or ten feet above the top of the beaver lodge.  This forces the beaver out of the safety of the lodge.  If the flood is short lived, the beaver might return to their lodge, but more often the flood lasts a week or more.  At that point, the beaver will abandon the ruins and build a new lodge.  And, if that keeps happening, as it has recently with two or three flood events per year, the beaver move on.  

The Point Lodge - only 2 feet exposed.  It is a 4 foot tall lodge.
The water level was about 8 feet higher five days ago.
I expect that this lodge will be abandoned.

This is without considering the need to reproduce.  Beaver have kits in late winter or early spring. They have a set each year and the kits are allowed to stay until their second year, at which point they are pushed out and must go colonize new territory.  With two or three floods each year, reaching a stable colony has to be very difficult, and based on the rarity of large lodges, it's probably not often happening in the Mattebasset. 

I make it down to the Coginchaug River just as the wind arrives.  It has come up quickly, and rather than head up into the Coginchaug, I turn back.  This is the wrong side of the wide open marsh considering the wind.  I spot an adolescent Bald Eagle on the return. It has the white head and tail, but still has light blotches on the body. I pass the put in and head up as far as the railroad trestle, which I manage to pass without portaging.  And that is far enough for the day.  I head back out.

The Home Turf

I set out into a murky day just as the morning mist dissipates. The tide is very near high and there is no wind with a temperature somewhere under 50F. I follow the east shore down the river to the marsh.  I was just thinking about how I hadn't seen any Common Loons in their normal fishing area around the bridge when one surfaced in mid river.  

At the top of the marsh, I head over to Nell's Island.  With the high tide, it is a perfect opportunity to head into the Nell's Island maze. I flush some Black Ducks and scattered Canada Geese in the maze, and make it through to the south end of the island with only one wrong turn, although I seem to find the exit via a secondary channel that I've not before been in.

Ducks and Geese are well distributed throughout the marsh, which I credit to the end of hunting season a few weeks ago.  I flush some Geese, which sets off a chain reaction of Ducks and Geese going to wing.  But, unlike during hunting season, I watch them settle down in the marsh again.  In hunting season, they just leave the marsh. I flush a flock of seventy five Green Wing Teal from the center of the marsh.  I saw a hundred or so Green Wing Teal yesterday in the Connecticut River, so they are definitely on the migration. There are more Teal scattered throughout the marsh.

I somehow miss the passage leading to the Central Phragmites Patch, so I back out, interrupted very briefly by a Snipe flying at high speed across the top of the spartina. I take an obvious route over to the east shore, then cut back into another inner channel that leads to the top of the marsh. A Harrier sweeps through. I really like watching Harriers hunt, gently and silently gliding low across the top of the marsh, weaving and bobbing at times to get closer looks at possible prey.

 

Nest Check

A couple hundred yards before the Boulder Swamp, I spot a mature Bald Eagle soaring in a thermal about 300 ft up. The only wing motion over the next couple minutes is a subtle dip of one wing to adjust its turn. When I reach the Boulder Swamp, the Eagle is directly overhead and about a 100 ft higher.  Then, it turns east and glides off until disappearing behind the trees. In another minute, another mature Bald Eagle comes in from the north.  It heads towards a nest that I am familiar with.  I get to the nest just in time to see the Eagles do a shift change, trading off the hunting and egg sitting roles.

The old mill race, which is about the same size as the river at this point

I make my way through the Boulder Swamp. At a lower tide one has to slow down to avoid pasting one of the many barely submerged boulders, which I assume are substantial leftovers from the ice age. The Lieutenant River narrows significantly after the boulders, coming down from Rogers Lake as little more than a steep creek. The river presents its usual M O. with the channel blocked by a good sized deadfall. I have only once made it up the next 1/3 of a mile to a old mill dam. I don't need to go up there bad enough to clamber over this deadfall. On a positive note, the deadfall is the result of beaver gnawing halfway through the trunk.

Common Merganser - male

I back out and take the other arm, a meandering dead end  that heads into a dense cattail marsh.  I flush some Black Ducks and several Wood Duck pairs. Then, I back out of there and head down river, passing my put-in with intentions of going to the Watch Rocks. I retrieve a wandering paddleboard, which is in new condition.  I deposit it on the nearest dock as it should belong to someone nearby. The winter winds have been tough this year - (I noticed that the canoe abuse guy at the top of the Boulder Swamp - he owns an high quality canoe that he leaves outside to rot in the UV light... the new discoloration in the kevlar laminate looks like it must have gone sailing around his property)

There is a Red Throated Loon at the railroad bridge. It is actively fishing and with each dive it moves away from me. It's the first Red Throated of the spring. 

Green Wing Teal

I's quiet down to the Watch Rocks. But then, there are about a hundred Green Wing Teal in the bay just above the rocks. I take a short break on an island near the rocks, and then wander back exploring some side channels, which it turns out, connect.

Animal Time

In between paddle strokes, I catch the calling of Canada Geese somewhere behind me.  The calls are coming through riverside forest and I suppose they have taken off from somewhere in Lord's Cove. After a piece of a minute, I can tell that they are coming from behind me, getting closer as the calls become louder as well as coming down at an increasing angle.  The calls of a flock of Canada Geese peels decades off of my life as I am taken back to the first time that I heard and connected that noise to the bird. I lean back and look overhead waiting for them to arrive.  It is amazing.  It is two hundred Canada Geese in a giant V, half of the flock in each arm, and they look to be near a thousand feet up.  They didn't come from the nearby Lord's Cove.  These Geese are on a long flight northward.  I watch them as I continue paddling upriver. The formation becomes a thin smoky smear, still visible a couple minutes after they passed over. The thin line of smoke becomes more like a ball - the formation has turned to one side or the other. They don't disappear until trees on a mile distant hill hide them from view.

It is another warm day.  The tide is high, perhaps just peaking a few minutes ago. I set out from Ely's Ferry Road, heading upstream to Selden Island.  There are quite a few Common Mergansers in the main river.

Just short of the entrance to the Selden Channel, I spot a mature Bald Eagle high overhead.  It is several hundred feet up sharing a thermal with four Gulls.  Over the next three or four minutes, the Eagle flaps its wings only three times, as if to relieve stiff muscles.  

I head into the long marsh channel on river right.  I don't go back in here often, but it is a spot that should get checked every so often.  A few hundred yards in, I find a beaver lodge. It is an exceptional build, an Architectural Digest beaver lodge to be sure - perfectly conical with well packed mud and just enough branches to hold it all together.  

First Lodge

Beaver are colonial, and finding this lodge is a sign that I should continue on.  A second lodge is a few more hundred yards.  It is also well built, although the craftsbeavership is not up to the first lodge.  I find a third lodge farther in.  This one might not be in use, seeming a bit porous, but if it is abandoned, it wasn't vacated too many months ago.

Second Lodge

 I continue, knowing that the channel will peter out, although the marsh will continue.  A hundred yards or so up from the last lodge, the scent of castoreum is thick. I have no doubt that there are more lodges beyond this point.  Scent mounds are territorial markers.  Usually, the mounds are dirt piles on the bank, but these are grass hummocks.  The beaver have smashed down the grass and plopped a couple shots of mud on top of the hummock before leaving their scent. Also of note is that there is an occupied Eagle Nest between this channel and the main river.  

I turn and head back, crossing the channel and heading back into the Elf Forest, a marsh of stunted and twisted trees.  I flush at least seventy five Black Ducks as I head in, and spot, unexpectedly, two turtles trying warming in the sun. The wind has been coming up, and I decide that it is time to start my return, as I am going to have some angle of a headwind.

Fortunately, I have the river and tidal current with me once I get to the main river.  The water is choppy, particularly by some of the bedrock points that protrude into the river. 

Taking out, three kids on bikes arrive.  They tell me about there family canoe trip last year to Kilarney, a provincial park in Ontario. It's good to trade canoe stories.

Ghost Animal

Two immature Bald Eagles circle over the put-in. 
I set out, leaving my camera in its waterproof box, deciding to paddle for awhile without the distraction. It's one of those scientific facts, that the observation of an experiment changes the experiment. Anyway, I was even thinking about how I would write in my journal about leaving the camera boxed away, and rounding the first point, where I consider myself to be entering the cove, was a bobcat, not thirty feet away. I know with fair certainty that if I go for the camera, the bobcat will be gone. I keep and eye on the bobcat as it walks warily away on a steep slab of bedrock that is the shoreline.  I fumble the camera out of the box, but the bobcat is behind some brush by that time.  It disappears like the ghost animal that it is.

It is already in the 40's and rising to 60F later with a light wind.  The tide has peaked, but not long ago so the currents are nothing to cry over. 

I head into the U-channel. I normally leave this route for the end of the trip, such as when I need just a little more canoe time, as the other possibilities in this marsh are more interesting.  I flush a few Common Mergansers and Buffleheads as I turn in.  I spot three dark birds, probably Red Wing Blackbirds, in the reeds, which are still standing as we have not had any heavy snowfall.  They trill, confirming my guess.  In the U-channel, I flush some Teal, Black Ducks, more Common Mergansers and Buffleheads,  one Harrier, and a pair of Hooded Mergansers.

I head up into the upper arm where there has been a very productive Eagle nest.  The nest is still there, but I see no activity.  I would expect that eggs would be laid by now, but I'll just have to check back later. I take one of the small side channels. It dead ends just a few yards from the Ely Ferry Road and I can see a landmark house near the shore.  I might, some day, do the portage and make this trip into a loop. 

Heading back, I divert over to the little wood bridge, just in time to see three women ride their horses over. Then, I continue out, crossing the very shallow Goose Bay to get into the main river and round the bottom of Goose Island back towards the put-in.

Salmon and Moodus Rivers

 The day is calm and warm - that kind of weather when someone might walk by and say,
   "It's kiinda warm for a drysuit, isn't it", as a sheet of ice floats by the put-in.

The first lodge, which is the newest one that I know of, is a bit shabby and still small.  However, the area around it is littered with leftover fresh peels and other signs that the colony is quite active.

Ring Neck Ducks

There are eighteen Mute Swans near the point.  A flock of about 50 Ducks flush from just before the point, when I am still at least 200 yards away.  They are dark and take off by flying low across the water before climbing out. From the quacking (most ducks do not quack), there are a couple Mallards in there, but just a couple. When I turn the point, I flush another 50 of the same type.  This time, a few circle back overhead and I get a photo, which even though the Ducks are silhouetted, the bill markings are clear.  They are Ring Necks. I flush some more as I head up the cove, but they never let me get closer than 200 yards - that is a long distance to spook from.

There is a fair current coming out of the Moodus.  No tide that I've seen has ever caused this.  Recently, we had some snow, then some rain, then some freezing rain, and a good deal of water has been locked up on the surface as ice. It is making its way into the river.  The low beaver dam is being topped by a healthy flow of water.  It takes me four attempts to paddle up and over the dam, and I do that by double poling it with both of my paddles. The last 1/4 mile up to the Johnsonville Dam is too fast to be bothered with, so I turn back. While drifting down, I am able to look around and see that there is a very active colony of beaver working in this area.  I hope the locals will leave the dam alone as a couple of feet of water in this marsh won't threaten anyone's property, and it would be interesting to watch the area go to beaver terrain.

The Moodus

I cross the top of the cove and enter the Salmon River.  There is a current, right away.  Typically, the Salmon has no discernible current  until one is about a mile up, and that is light.  I know at this point that there must be a pretty good wall of water coming over the Leesville Dam, my usual turning back point.  I also know that the last 1/4 mile to the Leesville Dam ain't gonna go today.

I flush some more Ring Necks, a two dozen strong flock of migratory Canada Geese, about a dozen Common Mergansers, a few Wood Ducks, and a pair of Great Blue Herons.

I make it through the tunnel on river right, and the current hauls me downstream.  There are a few gentle puffs of wind, and with a forecast of very gusty conditions for later in the afternoon, I put a little steam into the paddle.  The cove, which is open and shallow is no fun when it is windy.

I beat the wind.  It was an excellent day of paddling.