Happy Bird Day

 It is another warm and calm day.  It is a happy bird day. An owl passes close by before I am in the water. I watch it glide through the trees until it has disappeared. Heading downriver, Red Wing Blackbirds trill from the cattails with the chatter of Kingfishers in the background. All seem pleased with this day.

There is some ice in the water - small flows, five or ten square feet in area. It is ice that formed up in pockets of the cattail marsh, knocked loose by the warmth and high tide. The flows aren't big and there isn't enough that it will jam up anywhere on the river, but the bergy bits aren't to be underestimated. They started as thin sheet ice, but then had one or two inches of snow added to the top.  Next, the tidal waters saturate the snow and quite quickly there is three inches of ice.  The flows don't move much when you bump them with a canoe, and they are heavy enough to damage the canoe if you hit them wrong.

Still above the Clapboard Hill Bridge, I flush 50 Ducks from almost 200 yards away.  Too far to identify them by sight, the behavior signals Black Ducks, which are by far the most skittish of Ducks that I come across in this area. 

At the Big Bends, I flush another 50 Black Ducks, this time getting a good look at them. They in turn flush another bunch, and another. It's a chain reaction until about a 150 have taken flight.  They don't have far to go to settle in again with the wide marsh to the side of the river well flooded.

Below the railroad, I enter the Sneak, which has more than enough water for me to get through.  I flush a flock of two dozen Canada Geese while going through.  The larger than normal numbers of birds is probably due to hunting season being over, and ice conditions farther inland.  

Ring Necks

I head down Bailey Creek, then Neck River, and back to the East River. There is a small flock of Scaups about a hundred yards downstream of the confluence.

It is work heading back as the tide is midway into the ebb. In the Big Bends, I flush a small flock of Ring Neck Ducks. 

Nearing Clapboard hill Bridge, there is more ice than when I came down, with several larger flows.  I pause once when several flows are spanning the river, and then gently pick one out and give it a gentle spin with the bow of the canoe, and sneak past.  A couple of the bigger flows are about thirty feet long and five or six feet wide, and four inches thick.

East River, Bailey Creek, and Neck River