Spring

It's just after low tide when I put in. The tide coefficient, the difference between high and low tide, is low today, so the tide will rise only about 4 ft and the currents will never be strong. There is a bit of wind but it is sunny and the temperature will climb into the 50's.  We've had several good canoe days but my first covid vaccination kind of knocked me down for a couple days.  I can't wait for that junk to be behind us.

Buffleheads and Red-Throated Loons

 Today's trip is mostly a bird check.  One of these trips will be the last trip without an Osprey or Willet sighting.  But, today is not that day.  At the first bend up the East River I see several white patches far ahead in the water.  With the binoculars, I find them to be about fifteen Buffleheads and three Red-Throated Loons.  The Buffleheads fly when I get up to that bend, but the Loons just swim up river, diving for fish and maintaining distance from me.  Just below Cedar Island, one of them takes off and flies past me back down river.  Most of the time Loons evade by submerged swimming, so it is a treat to get a closeup of the Loons streamlined body as it passes.  The shape reminds me of that of a seal, which makes sense considering the underwater abilities of both species.  A couple hundred yards above Cedar Island a second Loon takes off and heads downriver.  The third one continues up at least as far as the railroad bend.  There, it dives and although I scan all around for it, I don't see it again.

At the Big Bends are maybe two dozen Canada Geese.  Heading on I pass a couple Killdeer on the bank.

Above the stone arch bridge I spot a Kingfisher.  Another comes in and splashes down right in front of me.  It's not a typical headfirst fishing dive.  It looks much more like it was evading the other Kingfisher.  Anyway, it pops up and the two go to separate corners.

The graveyard is on the left bank

With the low water I call my high point at the small pox graveyard, beaching the canoe to make the short walk up to the stone wall enclosure.  I didn't know it, but there is a plaque in the center explaining the graveyard.  There are no headstones.  Captain Scranton and the remnant of his unit are buried here having returned in 1760 from the French-Indian war infected with small pox.  From an old map, I know there was once a house just outside the walls.  I suspect the wall was built later as it would have been rather gruesome to build a graveyard wall while the men were still alive.  It is a well built wall.

 

Small pox graveyard

I spot a Harrier just above the railroad bridge.

I head back down and try the Sneak when I get to that point.  The water is still too low as I discover after poling myself to the halfway point and seeing that it is exposed mud as far as I can see, about 75 yards.  A flock of Black Ducks flushed from over in Bailey Creek alerts me to a Bald Eagle.  There are also a half dozen vultures circling over in that area.

Rather than pole back out, I clamber up onto the spartina and drag portage the canoe.  With no rocks or shells, just long dry grass, dragging the canoe with the bow rope is easier than carrying it.  It's a technique that is frequently used above the tree line in the north country.  The only trick here is getting in and out of the canoe without sinking knee deep in the silt.  The spartina itself is firm as any lawn.

On the pull, I surprise a Willet-sized marsh bird.  Without the obvious wing bars of a Willet, I suspect it might have been a Clapper Rail.

I put back in on the East River and head out.