Heron Yoga

I put in about 7am, the heat of the coming day making an early start advantageous.  One of Dante's circles of Hell is a calm, sunny, humid 95F canoe trip with mosquitoes.  It's not an inner circle, but it is there, for sure.

The tide is halfway in and I paddle against a current down to marsh.  It is calm and humid but still not much more than 80F.  Even so, a bubble of warmth envelopes me if I stop moving.

I head down Nell's Channel.  Quite a few Great Egrets on either side of the channel at the top of the marsh.  As I continue, I find Yellow Crowned Night Herons.  The Willets are laying low, but I hear their calls from time to time.

The tide is bringing in a trash stream of mostly aluminum cans.  It's only ten or twelve items, which I collect.  All of the cans have plant material inside - they weren't tossed in over the weekend.

I try the Nell's Island maze from the lower end.  On my last trip I passed through in the downriver direction, taking a circuitous side channel that exited at the side of the main lower entrance.  I did not notice on that last trip that there were at least three other channels.  I try a couple of them, but they dead end.  It's too warm to be messing about with this.  It's probably best to repeat the route and pay more attention... on a later day.

I head back up Nell's.  As I exit the marsh, I find a Yellow Crowned Night Heron doing yoga, or maybe just drying the underside of its wings.