Waiting for Willets

The tide is still quite low and the way down from Foote Bridge to the bottom of the Gravel Flats is a lot of drifting with only an occasional and subtle use of the paddle to keep the canoe in the deepest water, all 5 or 6 inches of it. If I was a left-lane kind of guy, you know, the dudes driving in the left lane who always think that someone else is in their way, I'd probably just get out and wade it, which would be faster. But, I am not a left-lane guy, stating the obvious as I spend so much time paddling a 3 mile per hour boat. It is entertaining to fit 16 feet of canoe through a series of boulders with just an inch to spare, without touching rock.

It is in the 60's and sunny.

1 Great Egret, 1 Snowy Egret, 2 circling Osprey, several Yellow Legs, a Kingfisher, and a few Ducks before reaching the Clapboard Hill Bridge.

In the middle marsh, more Yellow Legs, some non-migratory Canada Geese, and, at the lowest of the Big Bends, 2 adolescent Bald Eagles, their heads and tails starting to turn white, but still with lots of buff blotches on their bodies. 

The First Willet

Below the railroad bridge, in the lower marsh, I spot a pair of Willets not long after the river turns away from the rail line.  These are my first Willets of the spring. By the confluence with the Neck Rvier, I have a total of 8 Willets.  These are the vangaurd and many more will arrive in the next week. It will get quite active as the Willets pick out nesting sites and start mating. Their mating dance is one of the easiest to observe as they perform it right at the water's edge. It is just a matter of being here during that week or so. 

Mosquito control drainage trench - before 1934

Willets nest on the ground here in the marsh.  Most Willets nest in the great plains - Nebraska, Wyoming and eastern Montana.  But, to a Willet, a high salt marsh is not too different than prairie grassland.  Ground nesters, they need open views and a safe distance from trees and shrubs that would be cover for predators.  They are sentinel birds, in that they will fly up and hassle predatory birds and animals all the while calling out an alarm.  Ocean rise due to climate change will probably make this are unusable for nesting in the not too distant future.  By 2050, the ocean level is expected to rise a foot and a half, and while the nesting surfaces of the marsh currently flood a couple times each month, an extra six inches of water will probably making nesting impossible. I don't think that the marsh will accumulate soil fast enough to keep up with the ocean rise.

Not the first Willet

I turn up the Neck and then Bailey Creek.  Spot 8 more Willets.  The water is still low enough to see some of the old corduroy road.  

Corduroy Road 

I head into the Sneak, even though the water is still pretty low.  I run out of water about a hundred yards in.The Sneak floods from top and bottom as the tide comes in, I sit for awhile, procrastinating over my three options. I could turn back, but the wind has come up and I don't feel like paddling against the wind and the current to get back to the East River. I could wait for the tide, but as I sit and watch water slowly, slowly come in, I figure an hour before I can float through. Option three - portage - wins. The hardest part is getting up onto the flat and fairly firm spartina - the banks are goo.  I grab the bow line and carefully step the hummocks up to the spartina level.  It is as firm as a wet lawn, having a dense matrix of several seasons of roots knitting it together.  Since there are no rocks, I don't have to shoulder the canoe.  I simply drag it across the six inch tall grass.  It's about a hundred yards to get back to the channel.  

The Sneak at lower than mid-tide

The return is easy with current and wind behind me.