The Selden Channel

I cut straight across the river from the ferry landing to Whalebone Creek, but finding that I had the big river all to myself I delayed that side trip and followed the east shore down river into a mild and humid headwind that carried more weight than science would say exists.

About half of the way down the Selden Island it occurred to me that I had never paddled this shoreline on my more leisurely outward bound leg.  I'd only been here late in trips when I was tired and the horses were pointed towards the barn.  The forested shore, rocky at times, cliffed at others and turning to sand and marsh border berm as I go, is far more beautiful than I remember.

I turned the bottom of the island, going well wide out into the river to avoid the extensive sandbar that forms on the downstream of such landforms.  Entering the channel, I enter osprey land.  There are four nests that I know of - there were three when I first came here and I watched the fourth being built.  They are doing well.  They are all accounted for.

Selden Attack Swan

The channel is peaceful, sheltered from any wind and blanketed in the humid and moist swamp air, as it should be.  There is nothing remarkable except for the stillness and the sneaking around one of the Selden attack swans, and the pileated woodpecker that lets me observe for a full five minutes from thirty feet away.

pileated woodpecker

 

I do finally make the sidetrip into Whalebone Creek and it too is quiet and soft.  There are a few geese with goslings, a few songbirds, and a pair of ospreys.  It is a far cry from March when the creek was well packed with ducks stopping off on their way north.

The cattail spears are almost to the bottom of last season's "cattails", which are finally breaking up and spreading seed with the wind.