We set out later than normal preferring to wait for the tide to come in for a couple hours and give us more water to paddle in. It was clear at the put in that a good number of other folk were out before us. Anyway, the weather was nice enough, mid-80's with a refreshing light wind and distant cumulus clouds that would be of no threat.
Right away as we headed up the East River we spotted a few Willets, "not so rambunctious as they are during nesting" I commented to S. Unfortunately, the birds were not putting on a good show. As I often say, first one up the river sees the most wildlife, and we were not first. We then flushed a small flock of Laughing Gulls.
I suspected that most of the people would not get past the highway bridge, that 's just too long a round trip for a "twice a summer" paddler. And as I thought, we found some Great Blue Herons, Egrets and a Yellow Legs up in the Big Bends.
As we neared the arch bridge we started seeing Hawks and Kingfishers, and finally a Green Heron.
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| Great Blue Heron |
Up between the Gravel Flats and Foote Bridge was quite a number of Kingfishers and I imagine that they were successfully feeding on the schools of fingerlings that every so often breached the surface. I figure that we might have spotted 10-12 individual Kingfishers in that area.
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| Green Heron |
On the return we flushed a couple Green Herons that headed down the river to a deadfall. There we finally got a closer look.
I spotted a recent Osprey nest off of the lowest of the Big Bends that I had never noticed.
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