Quick Trip

 M sends me a message that she wants to go canoeing. It's a tough sell.

The day is perfect, calm and partly sunny. M has things to do, so we have to keep the trip to a couple hours. So, I coax her over to take a turn through the local big marsh. The tide is dropping when we set out, but with a low tide coefficient, we'll be able to squeak through the marsh without grounding out.  with From the put-in, we cross the river and head upstream just to see what might be up in the Peacock-Carting-Long-Pope's island complex. We make a counter clockwise turn around Peacock Island noting one Osprey, one Green Heron, a Kingfisher, two dozen Mallards, and a couple Great Egrets. Then we head down river along the west shore, crossing back into the marsh via Pepe's rock.

We paddle down Nell's channel. Very few birds so far. We get more Egrets - both Great and Snowys, and Yellow Crowned Night Herons, as we cut across the bottom of the marsh. It is no where near as many as we saw two days ago, but that is probably a tidal timing thing. We do spot two Harriers and one more Osprey. Osprey are pretty much gone at this time.

At the top of the marsh, as we are heading out, I spot a bottle sticking out of the bank. It's a Virginia Dare Wine bottle. I think it was a "less than fancy" produced in the first half of the 20th century. With a detailed embossed design covering much of the bottle, I would think it would be easy to date. Unfortunately, there seems to be dozens of minor variations in the designs without any record of when they were made. The bottle rim is distinctive and dates it to 1920's and 30's. The bottles had screw tops after that. Anyway, the bottle was pulled from a partially slumped bank and I have to guess at the depth - maybe 20 inches. In the last few trips, I have found several glass bottles, all vintage 1900-1930 in the 20 to 25 inch depth. The trick is that the bottles could have been deposited any time after the manufacturing date. So, what is just as important is the lack of any modern materials in the bank at those depths. 

Bottle mold in circle

With that, we head back up river.