Mattabesset River - First Trip of the Year

 

I put in at the old tavern launch. The tavern doesn't exist anymore, but the launch does.  This river would be one of Connecticut's best day trips if the traffic noise from a nearby main road wasn't so loud.  Even so, it is still a good area with lots of wildlife and a large marshland buffer that preserves a certain amount of wildness...it's just the noise that detracts.

The low winter sun is filtering through a the clouds causing a golden glow on the landscape.  The air is near calm and about 40F...pretty mild for this time of year.
Coming down out of the forest I spot a low beaver bank burrow.  It may be in use as it looks sealed well enough.  I would expect more winter feed than there is to be stashed in the water.  A few hundred yards further is a lodge that I remember from past trips.  It's another bank burrow, but it is collapsing and not in use.  Abandoned beaver lodges collapse quite fast disappearing from common view in two or three years although if you rummage around the stick debris lasts much longer.

The next lodge is just above the broadest area of the marsh.  Because of its high conical shape, I name it the Tepee beaver lodge.  The peak is a full 6 feet high and this colony, no doubt, is raising young.  Lodges get enlarged when the mated pair start reproducing.   I do a photo survey of the lodge, shooting pictures from the cardinal directions.

Tepee Beaver Lodge

I spot a perched Bald Eagle about a 1/4 mile below.  When I get there I find four muskrat lodges in plain sight.  I wonder how many the Eagle can see from its perch.  The nearby eagle nest doesn't look used.  I didn't see any activity last year.

Muskrat lodge - about 30 inches tall with old eagle nest in the tree behind

As I make the few meanders to the mouth of the river where it meets the much larger Connecticut River, I spot another pair of lodges situated about 75 yards apart (pretty close for beaver that are very much territorial).  The nearest is a low and fairly new bank burrow.  Farther in along a dead end channel is a much larger bank burrow built using the root ball of a downed tree...Root Ball Lodge and Near Root Ball Lodge go the names.

Root Ball Lodge

I turn back from the mouth of the river.  As soon as I can see it, I spot the Eagle still perched although it leaves soon after.

After passing Tepee Lodge I almost paddle under a Red Tail Hawk before seeing it.  I do get a nice close up view of its coloring as it flushes.

Clocking Ice Time

The wind was up a bit more than expected, but in truth it was out of the NW and there is little to interrupt any breeze for a couple miles other than some low treeless marsh islands.  It should be calmer up in the higher reaches of the cove. There was also a good chop on the water as the flood tide was opposing that wind.

I set the canoe down among a few small slabs of ice that had been windblown against the shore.  Then, I paddled my way north following the east shore where there was a bit of stagnation buffer from the wind.  A flock of about 20 Buffleheads flushed from the bottom end of Goose Island while I was a good hundred yards distant from them.

Spotted a male Red Breasted Merganser in the calm behind a finger ridge.

Goose Bay

There were two large smooth patches out in the chop of Goose Bay that could be nothing other than ice.  Ice from the nearest of those patches was up against the shore just around the point of the third finger ridge.  I picked a spot that was about 3 canoe lengths long to push through, swapping to an older paddle with a reinforced tip - reinforced because I'd split it a few times in the past.  I got halfway through, a process of pushing in and rocking the canoe side to side to bust the ice into smaller slabs.  It wasn't going, so I backed out and tried again right up against the shore, which went easy.  And, I have a paddle to repair when I get home.

The tip of one of the finger ridges

I stayed on the east shore until I got up to the small wooden bridge.  It was iced in with a thin skim that didn't slow the canoe.  Then I turned and headed toward the next cove up where there is a large Eagle nest.  The usual route was too thick with ice to make the passage, so I headed the long way around Coute's Hole.  Flushed about ten Common Mergansers on the north side of the hole and then four Canada Geese from the cove itself. 

The small wooden bridge

That was enough and I turned to head out.

Spotted three Hawks slope soaring upriver from Goose Bay, flushed twenty Canada Geese from behind one of the finger ridges.  The ice that had been on Goose Bay was nowhere to be seen - no slabs, no chunks.  The chop and wind seems to have dissolved it in the hour and a half since I passed.

Bailey Creek

The day is warm with the temperature in the upper 40's with a light southwest of no consequence, all of it backed up with strong low winter sun.  I pause, slipping the nose of the canoe into the mouth of the Sneak.  It is a good day and a good place to write in my journal.

The Sneak at low tide

I set out from the bottom halfway through the ebb tide.  My horizon was the dry tan colored spartina that was often no more than a canoe length away.  A mature Bald Eagle was perched high on Grass Island about 200 yards south of my start.  Before the first bend of the Neck River I flushed a single male Bufflehead.  There were no other birds for a few bends until I spotted a hawk high in a tree.  It was too far off to make a good identification.  

In the next bend I flushed a dozen Buffleheads.  In the next I saw a rounded shape submerge.  It could've been mammal or duck.  I rounded that turn for the answer.  I'd seen a duck butt, it was a Hooded Merganser hen. 

A Sharp Shin Hawk crosses the Neck when I get to the mouth of Bailey Creek.

Buffleheads

Once past the last of the eroding corduroy road and into Bailey Creek proper, I started flushing Black Ducks.  This is a favorite spot for them.  First off went some fifty, then with each bend two to six more.  Another forty or so flew over that I can't take credit for as they came from well up the creek.  By the time I turn back I've seen about 125 Black Ducks, 4 Hooded Mergansers and maybe two dozen Buffleheads.

The uppermost section of corduroy road

I turn back about 200 yards short of the actual end as the tide water is running quite shallow.

As I head back I find myself drifting off.  It is the best and most seductive of canoeing - one bend at a time, the future is what's around the next meander, the past is what's over your shoulder.  Everything is through the senses, the spartina passes by, the sun shimmers off the surface of the water and off the wet silt bank that holds it in place, the paddle dips and slices as need be without thought.

A mature Bald Eagle is hunting in the upper parts of the Neck River.

After the Ice Storm

The nice days have been windy as hell and the calm days have been 40 degrees and raining.  For too long the weather has kept me off of the water.

I put in at the bottom of the East River, a favorite and well worthy of the first canoe trip in far too long.  It is, as well, always a safe bet - a bit of river that never disappoints.

I meet two hunters returning just as I get ready to set out.  They shot two Buffleheads and a Black Duck from a spot about a 1/2 mile upriver. They tell me the Buffleheads are just okay eating.  Black Duck's are almost the same as a Mallard, so I knew that would be a good meal.

Yesterday, we had a minor ice storm and most everything is coated with a thin layer of ice.  We can get some heavy ice storms, fortunately this one just makes everything glitter, if you ignore the fact that you have to scrape your way into your car.  Today, the sky is blue and sunny, the wind is light, and the temperature hovers around freezing.

The tide is just past low, so I head up the East River and avoid my secret side routes that require more water for passage.  I push a baker's dozen of Buffleheads up as far as the railroad before they fly up and head back from where we came.  Of note, there are no shore birds.  I usually see some Yellow Legs. 

a side channel in the Big Bends

I surprise a white tail deer at Cedar Island.  I cna't tell if it is a large doe or a buck that has shed its antlers.  It takes a few quick steps into the trees and then stops to watch me pass.

Just passed Beebe's dock I flush several Buffleheads and a pair of Hooded Mergansers.   But things really get busy up at the Big Bends.  By the time I've paddled through the three big 90 degree bends I've seen 60-75 Black Ducks.

While I pause on the upstream side of the arch bridge, a Great Blue Heron flies low over me and lands on the far bank.  I'm sure that I was out of view and the Heron didn't see me until it landed.  It gave me a brief going over and then flew off.  

I head back from here.  The weather prediction is for wind gusts in the afternoon and at this tide level I can only get another few hundred yards up to the Duck Hole Farms without wading.

There's no flood current until I'm just two bends from the car.  It seems that I've been paddling pretty much on the top of the tide lag since I set out with no help in either direction.  I'm a bit surprised at the strength of the current and how quickly the water went from slack to flood.

Art, Animals, and Deep Ecology

Pocket Knife Corner

And so the argument rages.  My morning check in with friends on social media finds the architect writing that only humans are capable of art and an artist protesting that as an arrogant and incorrect statement.  Such is the thought seed for my trip canoe trip.

The Gravel Flats

Several year back, a good friend told me, I think while we were out wandering about in a large forest, that I was a "deep ecologist".  This was a term that I was unfamiliar with and even now can't fully explain.  However, I read up on the idea and agreed that for the most part, that is where I lay.  It is a belief that all species have a right to exist, and a reason to exist, and that those rights and reasons are rather equal to our own.  It's the idea that you should have respect for the natural world.  Use it, but use it with respect and care. 

So, from that place where I stand, I see that humans are not the only species capable of art.  What we have learned about animals in my lifetime is quite remarkable.  Once, tool use was the difference between animal and man.  Then we found out that apes and crows and who knows what else were modifying found objects to use as tools in their daily routines.  Then some scientists taught a gorilla to communicate with sign language.  We figured out that whales communicate with each other over great distances and that elephants and Crows perform elaborate funerals for lost members of their tribes.  Male Bower Birds gather and organize blue objects to entice a mate...and a Bower Bird's display rivals any home-made valentine.  And., many other birds compete through dance or song.  The reason for these other-species arts are little different than our own.  As an artist I make a fairly large quantity of art while making a fairly small quantity of income from it.  My main reason for my art is to draw others into discussion.  My reason is not much different than the animal arts.

The Long Cut

I set out from Foote Bridge on a spectacular sunny autumn day.  The morning 35F temperature and sunlit surface of the waters put a thin low fog over the marsh.  The tide is high and the current nonexistent up in the forest where the water is still backing up.  My course is often set by covering the harsh reflection of the sun on the water with the bow of my canoe.

When I get below the railroad bridge I take the alternative route into the Long Cut.  On my last trip here, a hunter asked if I'd seen any ducks and I told him that I often spot a lot of Black Ducks in the area near the Long Cut knowing that they weren't going to figure out how to get back there anyway.  So, I head back there today to satisfy my own curiosity.  It is an easy go with the water high and the narrow gap is about as wide as I've ever seen it.  By the time I am down to the confluence with the Neck River I have flushed no less than a 150 Black Ducks and half that many Canada Geese.  It's a pretty busy place today.

The state boat launch

From the flooded state boat launch I return up the main river. 

Pocket Knife Corner

A squat shorebird draws me over to the bank at the first railroad bend.  It looks somewhat snipe-like.  Then, it stands and stretches out and it is a Yellow Legs that had me fooled.  I spot a couple more off behind it.

Foote Bridge...also, the old stage coach ford

Low Tide East River Day

It is windier than I expected, somewhere in the 10 mph range, but according to the weather service this is the calm day of the week and so it goes.  According to myself, this is also the sunniest day in the last week.  I head out with a light chop on the water, the result of the ebb current going opposite to the wind.

The west bank has been exposed to the sun for several hours and it is now populated with fiddler crabs.  While the air temperature is about 40F, I suspect that down in that inch of air where the fiddlers live the sun on the dark silt has raised the local temperature to maybe 60F or 65F.  It won't be long until they stay burrowed all day.

Fiddler Crab

A Hawk circles low near Cedar Island.  I don't get a good enough look to ID it, but I suspect it is a Harrier.  But, without a better look it remains just Hawk.  The bird of the day right now is the Yellow Legs.  There aren't more than a few sighted as I head upriver, but they are content to let me pass and then get back to picking the mud at the water's edge.

At the bottom of the Big Bends I flush a large Hawk from the trees on the outside of the bend.  It gives me a good enough look that I can ID it as a wintering Rough Legged Hawk.  The dark patches on the bottom of the wing leading edge were quite obvious, even if I didn't get a photo.

I pause for coffee in the Big Bends.  It's been an hour against the current, but more to the point I have found a small spot near the bank where the canoe does not drift.  There are a good many raccoon tracks in the silt.  Some are fresh from after the tide started dropping but there are many more older tracks that have had the tide wash over and fill them.

I turn from above the Arch Bridge on a line between Duck Hole Farms and the smallpox graveyard.  The water is getting shallow enough that my paddle is touching bottom on most strokes.

The return is unremarkable except that it is an easy cruise with the current and wind, and with the wind dropping the lower marsh is particularly calm and peaceful and a sense of solitude washes over my soul.

First Autumn Loon

The local art festival season just finished and that along with inclement weather when I did have a day or two free has kept me out of my canoe.

I waited for high tide which arrived not long after noon.  That extra time also brought the temperature up from freezing to about 40 degrees.  I made the short drive across town to marsh put in.  And, for the first time since spring, I put on my cold water gear - my drysuit.  I set out into a fairly steady stiff west wind.  I suppose it was 12-15 mph.  But, with the sky clear and sunny and the cord grass spartina having turned gold, it felt much warmer.  I paddled the grind into the wind to Milford Point seeing no birds other than a few Ducks.  They were all true quackers - either Mallards or Black Ducks.  From Milford Point I turned upriver into a channel. 

 This marsh is a low salt marsh - about 90 percent cord grass that floods daily.  On a higher than normal tide like today, it is possible to push the canoe through the grass, but it is also more difficult to figure out exactly where you are as it tends to all look the same.  I;m heading for Nell's channel, but I miss the correct turn.  So, I follow the long blue fingers of water deeper into the grasses.  When the path splits, I follow the one that looks longest. When none looks good, I peek up over the grass for the next patch of open water and forge on through the grass....just keep heading west.  Without warning, the broad Nell's channel appears.

Upstream a hundred yards is a wintering common loon.  It has already lost its speckled back colors and I need to scope it to make sure its not a cormorant.  It stays a hundred yards ahead of me all of the way up the channel until we go in different directions.

To add to the Loon and the dozen or so Ducks, I spot 3 Great Egrets and 2 Great Blue Herons.

I try to round Cat Island, but the spartina is too dense and perhaps the water is just a couple inches too low.  Anyway, it doesn't go.  I back out and continue to the take out.