We put in in a deep forested cove. Winds were coming up as we loaded up and set out and the forecast had been for gust up to 20mph, so I kept a weather eye. But as it was, it stayed surprisingly calm with overcast skies with more cottonwood seed in the air than raindrops. In fact, the wind was light enough that it did not break up the film of pollen and other plant duff that had formed in the inlets and along the shoreline.
We turned up the Shephaug and followed the heavily forested shoreline noting an occasional trash item for retrieval on the return and watching for wildlife. I spotted a quite distant Bald Eagle and was trying to point it out to M without realizing that she was watching another eagle about 50 ft up in a tree that was just a few tens of yards away.
In the next cove we found a very active beaver feed zone with quite a few well felled trees, each of them thoroughly stripped of branches and some of the boles stripped of bark as well. However, we were unable to locate their bank burrow (there would be no conical lodge in this type of water).
Just after we started our return, I spied a Bald Eagle Swooping at the water about 600 yards distant. Typical of hunting maneuvers, we watched it splash down on the water at something. Then, it landed in the water. It had something much too heavy to fly with and it began a flopping swim to shore with its catch firm in the talons. The swim was about 75 yards or so. By the time it reached the shore we were close enough to see that it had a 10 lb carp, which it was already tearing into.
After a short watch, we collected the previously spotted trash and made our way back to the put-in.
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