To the Long Tailed Duck and Back

It's sunny and calm and forty degrees, it is about as casual as winter canoeing can be.

I put in at the End of the Road, a proper name for the launch site as the yellow warning sign that stands about 15 ft from the water suggests.  It takes five minutes of paddling to get down and past the last bridge on the river.  Coming out from under the arch, I catch the trilling of a Common Loon.  I scan and strain for a short time until I finally spot the culprit some 500 yards away.  Loons winter here and they don't call out very often unlike when they are in their nesting grounds.  Focused on the Loon, I almost miss the Bald Eagle that is circling just a hundred yards to the right of the Loon.  I've seen this circling many times before when Eagles were hunting Coots.  Tight circles, twenty to thirty feet above the water, the Eagle has forced its prey to dive.  Now it circles with intent to time its dive with the prey's gulp for air.  The Eagle circles for 4 or 5 minutes, but the prey has made an escape to somewhere.  The Eagle retreats to a tree perch for a rest and to late the hunted calm down.

When I get down to the big marsh I head up the inner channel.  The entrance is shallow at this low tide, but it is still and easy passage for a canoe.  I won't expect to see anything with a motor in here.  I'm low in the spartina, the golden tops some seven feet up with a thick layer of dark ancient sediment below.  Near the bottom end I round a corner and spot a Pied Billed Grebe, or at least, the head of Pied Billed Grebe.  Even from just ten yards away, it looks like a worn piece of drifting tree root, until it submerges without any rippling on the surface.  I nose the canoe into the bank and go to statue mode hoping for it to come back up.  A few minutes pass and I have to admit that my observation skills fall far short of the Grebe's evasion skills.

 

Oyster boats are busy working the mouth of the big river.  It's hand hoisting only here, but I am still amazed at the quantity of oysters on the boats.  One man drives the boat while three others dredge, dump, shovel and sort.

 

There is a very large bar on the east side of the river with a stone breakwater extending well out into the sound.  Scanning the bar with my camera, the boulders on the far side of the bar turn out to be Geese...winter mirage.  I never get bored with nature's sight gags.

I hear a Long Tailed Duck and decide to paddle on until I spot it.   It's not as far as I thought, just one male and female.  Then it's time to return.