Heronville

It is a cloudy and comfortable morning with a bit of sprinkles and a little wind. More or less, it is an ideal summer canoe day. I set out just short of two hours before high tide.

They're in the trees and, of course, they're in the marsh. But this morning, a lot of them are in the trees. There's a gnarly stressed oak tree just down from the refuge put-in. Birds perch there, and from a distance I can see two Egrets. I get closer and counting left to right, I get 6 Night Herons in that same tree. Then, I count right to left and come up with 9. I drift closer and recount, 12. I nose the canoe into the spartina and count again, 15. And, I bet there are 5 more that I can't see from this angle. 

One year, just because it was so crazy looking, I counted the Herons and Egrets in this quarter mile of treed shoreline, and came up with something like 130. 

But, my first stop in the marsh was, as usual, the central phragmites patch. It seemed kind of quiet as I closed in, but as I got to the far side, 15 to 20 Night Herons flushed. It was a half and half split of Yellow Crowns and Black Crowns, although accuracy when everything is moving is impossible. 

At the central phragmites patch

From the gnarly oak, I crossed over to Nell's channel by weaving through the well flooded inner passages. I saw a half dozen Willetts in the channel and a few more Night Herons. 

 The tide was now high and the current slack. It was an easy smooth paddle back up river to take out.