Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom

If you are of a certain age, you will get the title. Sleepy Saturday afternoons watching TV with Marlin Perkins and his much younger outdoorsy stunt man, Jim, as they round up some wild beast. Senior citizen Marlin standing way back while Jim wrestled with alligators or dodged wild horses or slipped the noose onto the rattle snake. Go Jim go. Jim works, Marlin narrates.

It is my first trip of the year into the Great Swamp. I mind-wrestle with which of the three put-ins to start at. But it really doesn't matter, because this is the first trip of the year and there is no telling what the river conditions will be. Being a large beaver swamp, there are scads of dead trees waiting their turn to fall into the river channel. I put in at Green Chimneys.

I'm first on the river today, even though my start is not particularly early (in fact, I will see no one else until I take out). 

The first hour is a rather slow paddle. There is just so much wildlife that I end up constantly going to my camera. The first ponding holds several Wood Ducks, just as many Mallards, and a few Canada Geese. A Great Blue Heron is perched high, and a Hawk flies through just to make it a party. The surrounding woods and marshy edges are filled with small birds. The trills of Red Wing Blackbirds dominates the other calls, it is noisy. The first of the swallows have arrived, there will be more soon. I spot one occupied Goose nest and nearby, one that has been abandoned. There is a egg in the water outside the abandoned nest and I suspect that this nest was just too low and it got flooded out by some high water. The occupied nest is well up on the root section of an old blow down. I spot a rookery of five nests in the trees near the river. They don't look large enough for Herons, but I can't think of anything else that would build a rookery in this area. Anyway, it is not occupied at the time.

The paddling is easier than I expected. There hasn't been much deadfall over the winter. My canoe gymnastics are just a couple of limbos, one step over on a large log, one thin tree that I cut with my saw, and a drag up an over a two foot high beaver dam.

Canada Goose nest

Of the first four beaver lodges, three have been abandoned, and I suspect they may have been trapped out. The other lodge is quite big and has a large cache of winter food, an area of saplings and twigs that is 1 x 2 canoe lengths (16 x 32 feet). Also of note the giant scent mounds are even bigger than they were, easily three feet tall. Even with the collapsed lodges, things are looking pretty good. 

In the forest section, I spot a coyote (or maybe, a large fox). It stays in sight and ahead of me for the next quarter mile. I also spot a total of four muskrats, and a water snake.

Muskrat

The old blow down area at the half way point has rotted away enough that it can be paddled through. I spot three medium sized snapping turtles just above that spot.  

 I continue up as far as Cult Tower Hill, where there happens to be a nice new beaver dam. I turn and head back out.