Catching a Bird Migration

We had four full days of wind following my last trip out.  Four days of 20mph with some gusting up to 30.  You can canoe small creeks and forested rivers in that stuff, but anywhere else it's nothing but a fight, and that's if you can still steer the canoe.  But, today came calm and warm and mostly cloudy with just enough blue showing through to make the sky interesting.

It was time again to paddle with H. On our first trip, H brought her own kayak.  I promised her that we were going to be in the same canoe on our second trip.  Sharing a boat is a very different experience - there is a partnership in paddling tandem....even if it isn't quite polished at first.  The other thing is that while paddling tandem, I can act the guide and we can go to secret places or in more challenging water. It reminds me a bit of when I was a little kid.  As a 9 or 10 year old I sometimes tagged around with an uncle who was just a few years older.  Following his explorations in the neighboring swamps and forests were the greatest adventures. Someday, I'll tell you about how we tried to dig a tunnel under my Grandma's house.

We put in at the top of the Great Swamp, or, more accurately, the upper put-in for that place.  The water was high, but down from my last trip on May 1.  We headed downstream as I gave H a few lessons on paddling.  The first mile on this section is twisty as all get out, even with the slow water, there is rarely any time when a sharp turn isn't right in your face. It's definitely more challenging than an afternoon paddle on the pond.  We talk about art for awhile, because that is our original connection, but soon, the swamp takes over and where we are becomes the topic.

We slide over two beaver dams, with the high water it's just a drop of a couple of inches, we make a dozen sharp turns, and weave around a few deadfalls.  Redwing Blackbirds are everywhere and the trilling makes it unnecessary to actually look for them.  After we've spotted, in short order, a few Mallard,s a few Wood Ducks, a couple of Great Blue Herons, and some Geese, I tell H, "It looks like a normal day in the Great Swamp."  But, the bird of the day is, for sure, the Sandpiper.  There are more Sandpipers today than I've ever seen and there is one or two in sight more often than not for the entire trip.  These Sandpipers aren't familiar to me, a little smaller than the Yellow Legs (which are obvious if you think about the name and we do see a few of them today).  They turn out to be Solitary Sandpipers on migration to northern Canada.  

Solitary Sandpiper - the most numerous bird of the day

We paddle down to the only bridge crossing, just so that I can check the state of the deadfall mess, which is still passable.  We spot the root ball Canada Goose nest that I saw on May 1.  She sits low and motionless, head and neck laid against the ground, still tending eggs, although it won't be too many days til they hatch.  Then we head back into the twisty section again.