September 18, 2021
The tide was just reaching an above average high when we set out. With the high water we started to explore some of the smaller openings to see where they would go and if they would connect to other passages. So, we paddle in and out of a few as we worked our way counter clockwise around the perimeter. I've been in here many times yet it always surprises me how different the channels can look with a few feet more or less of water depth.
At the top end we go into what looks like a familiar sneak, and then paddle back out after a couple hundred yards. The next opening is, again, a wrong turn. But, it has a fork in it and after the west branch dead ends, we take the east branch and it is a wide open path back almost to where we started. We return on it just so that I can familiarize myself with how it looks from that direction. Once again back at the top end, we take another opening, which turns out to be the one I was looking for except it is so wide right now that I didn't recognize it. It leads into Nell's channel although without the usual twists due to the high water, we're paddling Nell's for a quarter mile before we realize it.
There are a good number of Great Egrets and Night Herons - lots of juveniles of course, but I spot an adult Yellow-Crowned and an adult Black-Crowned. At one time, something disturbs a gathering of unseen Night Herons and fifteen take flight from not too far away out in the spartina. There are, for sure a great number of Egrets and Herons feeding in the marsh, but with it flooded like this they are dispersed in areas that even the canoe can't reach. Of note, no Osprey sightings today.
We take out with the tide still high and just a bit of draining current getting started from the deepest parts of the marsh.
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