Great Swamp Above Patterson

I set out into the Great Swamp from the Patterson put-in. It is calm and partly sunny, maybe 40F, and the water is high enough to just barely creep out from the river channel.  It is definitely not high enough to cut any of the many meanders.

Once or twice a year, when the water is high, I will go upstream to see how far I can get. It is a beating ones head against a wall exercise, as I've never gotten to the first bridge, which is something like a half mile. The typical problem is that there are always some channel spanning deadfalls that are too problematic to bother with, especially when a return trip is part of the plan. 

Upstream of the 311 Bridge

So, I head upstream into the usual twists and turns, and wonder of wonders, I make it to the first bridge. The river opens up some at that point, but only for  a short stretch. It is nice to be in new water that I've never seen before.  I am regularly flushing Mallards, Black Ducks and Wood Ducks....and more Wood Ducks.  This beaver built environment is ideal for Wood Ducks, and by the end of the trip, I will have seen about a hundred of them.This reach of the river is much more of a tangle than any place in the river below Patterson.  The river often splits into two or three narrow channels and I have a few easy step-overs and one well built beaver dam that is about 18 inches high.
 

After that, is a good beaver pond.  I squeeze under a railroad bridge and continue a short distance.  At the top of the pond, the river resembles a flooded meadow with a handful of shallow channels With a few more inches of water, I'd keep going, but what I see is a mix of wading and log crawling.  I turn back.

New Lodge

The distance was not much, if one looked at a map. As the crow flies, it was barely a half mile, but that half mile was a hundred tight turns and narrow gaps to slip through.  The round trip took over two hours.  I continue on past the put-in into river that I know well.  I usually think of this first mile as one of tight meanders, but after that first two hours, I feel like I am paddling the Mississippi. All of the deadfalls and beaver dams are submerged and it is an easy paddle. I continue to flush Wood Ducks and an occasional few Mallards or Black Ducks. One thing I note is that I do not see a single Great Blue Heron. This freezes over in most winters, so they migrate out, and haven't returned, yet. 

I paddle down as far as the hunter's canoe stash, just a bit downriver from Cult Tower Hill. Then, I turn and head back, taking out after just under four hours of paddling.

Fog

Low tide was just over two hours ago as I put in at Bear House Hill Road. But, there is a very high tide coefficient, which basically means there will be a very low tide and a very high tide. My timing is good however, as I expected to have to wade a couple times before clearing the Gravel Flats, and I manage to do that distance without stepping out of the canoe at all, although I do have to thread a few narrow gaps between boulders. 

It is foggy and somewhere near 50F. There is a very light wind coming up the river.  It sprinkles briefly, and very sparsely as if just a few random drops are forming in the overhead fog. I spot three Osprey before getting to the Clapboard Hill Bridge.

The only shorebirds that I see today are Yellow Legs, and they are quite regular in the stretch between Clapboard Hill Bridge and the railroad bridge. I see none in the salt marsh below the railroad. There are no Willets, yet. 

With the tide still low, I stay in the East River, enjoying the fog, which has erased any man-made visuals from the route. Most of the Osprey nests appear to have both of the mates.  

The fog lifts as I paddle up the Neck River and Bailey Creek.  Only then do I spot a few Great Egrets, which were invisible in the fog. I flush some Black Ducks and Green Wing Teal in the upper part of Bailey Creek.  Black Ducks seem to prefer this out of the way area and I find them here all winter long.

I take the Long Cut back across to the East River, the tide having filled the narrow channel for easy passage. I return back up the Eat River with a moderate flood current helping me along. I can power through right up to my start point, all of the boulders and deadfalls of the low tide well submerged.

First Great Egrets

I put in on the far side of town, under the high bridge. There is just one more hour until high tide and the current is already starting to lessen. A Red Throated Loon is fishing about 50 yards ahead of me and a Common Loon is off to my right in the middle of the river. Just below the drawbridge, I find a second Common Loon.

The wind is out of the south and west and is probably blowing about 10 mph. Even with that and the flood current, it is an easy downriver paddle. When tides are higher than average, long stretches of slack water and eddies form along the east shore. I spot a good sized flock of birds at the far end of the marsh, almost a mile away. 

Upper entry to the Nell's Island maze

I head into the Nell's Island maze.  The upper entry has a fork in it, and for the first time, I take the left arm. It is more open than the right arm, but it returns me to Nell's Channel in a hundred yards. I find another way in off of the channel, but it has a patch of very shallow water that would be mud in all but the highest tides. I can write off this route.

Near the lower entrance to the maze, I spot a white pvc pipe standing vertical in the spartina. This needs to be investigated, and it turns out to be my first Great Egret Sighting of the spring. Nearby are four more Egrets. Aside from that, I am flushing some Black Ducks and finally, some small flocks of Teal The flock of birds that I saw earlier were Teal.  Black Ducks, Mallards and Teal are fairly plentiful in the marsh today.

The first Great Egret of the spring

Yesterday, one of my canoe contacts posted a question about what type of GPS watch people preferred. My first response was, "Don't you know where you are?" Later, I added that I use a map and compass, my GPS works only if you slap it just right, and I leave it at home anyway, and my flip phone doesn't have a browser. Canoeing long ago became a way for me to connect spiritually with the environment. I learned pretty quickly that the use of GPS for route finding or route recording was not only superfluous, but actually detrimental to my spiritual intentions. Every time I referred to the device, I found that it took several minutes to get back to where I was. I've described it as a sky-down view when what I was really looking for was an earth based view.

Selden

I put in at Ely's Ferry Road.  It is near high tide, but with the river running high, there is a stiff current to paddle upstream against. It is in the 40's with a light downriver wind, and cloudy.  It feels cooler than it actually is.  As soon as I turn the canoe upstream, an immature Bald Eagle swings out from the top of the forest, and an Osprey arrives, fishing out in mid river.

Unlike the section of the river near the Mattebasset (see yesterday's entry), the river in this area has a good amount of buffer space - marshes, coves, and tributaries where excess water in the river can spread out. The water here is probably on the order of a foot above normal, although the current has an extra half mile per hour behind it.

It is a slow paddle upstream against the wind and the current. As I near Joshua Creek, the call of a Hawk...it's a Red Tail and it turns back flying away from the river. 

At the bottom of Selden Channel, I hear the whistles of Osprey.  At this time, Osprey are migrating through or finding their way back to nests in the area.  It is a surprise to find a mated pair already at their nest, and they've been doing work as the nest is looking quite solid. 

There is a good deal of beaver sign on the shoreline. In fact, it is rare to pass more than a few yards without seeing a cut saplings, a drag, or feed site.  A pair of beaver slip off the bank to my right. I only see one, but there are two bubble trails heading in different directions. The bubbles come from air squeezed out of the fur as they swim. The beaver surfaces ten feet ahead and gives me a good tail slap.  I spin the canoe and wait for the beaver to surface, then take a photo and leave it in peace.

Unusually, there is a strong current in the Selden Channel.  It took an hour to paddle up to the bottom of the channel and it takes another full hour to get to the cove at the top of the channel. I flush about a hundred Black Ducks and Mallards while in the channel. There are a few Common Mergansers as well.

Muskrat

At the top of the channel I turn and head back. With the current, it is an easy paddle, even without the wind, which has gone to calm. I spot one very fast muskrat as I head down the channel.

Giants in the Earth, the Castor Canadensis Edition

 I have new thoughts on the Mattebasset River. The title of this entry refers to Ole Rølvaag's novel about Norwegian homesteaders in the Dakotas.  The novel ends rather bleakly when the promised land turns out to have some hard edges.

Gusty wind is predicted, but I make an early enough start that I seem to have evaded it.  Putting in, it is already in the 40's and warming with a very light wind.  The Mattebasset is my go-to river for windy weather, being well protected by hillsides and trees. The water is high, the result of flooding in the Connecticut River, which this river joins just a few miles down.  In this reach of the Connecticut, there is a shortage of riverside marshes and tributaries to absorb high water events. Today, the water is about 5 or 6 ft above normal.  Five days ago, there was another 8 feet of water in here! This is an important detail for today's entry. 

I cut the river bank through a narrow bit of shallowly flooded forest into the Hummingbird Marsh.  It is worth the effort as I spot my first Osprey of the spring, high overhead circling and hovering, on the hunt. Two more Osprey arrive a few seconds later.  I also flush several Wood Ducks as I edge the more open water at the edge of the marsh.

The Mattebasset has always been a good place to come for the chance beaver sighting.  There are usually a few lodges to find and lots of beaver sign - scent mounds, gnawings, and downed trees.  It is unusual in that it lacks stability as a beaver habitat.  While there are always beaver here, lodges don't last very long and it is rare that any lodge gets enlarged enough to show that there is an active and producing colony.  And, that gets back to the high water that I mentioned.  

At first glance, whether or not you are a beaver, this river seems to be ideal habitat.  I can imagine a newly arrived beaver writing home to the folks to tell them of the forty acres of bottom land forest with running water and no competition for territory, sort of like Rølvaag's settlers when they arrived in the Dakotas. Unfortunately, once a year, if they are lucky, the river will flood.  And it will not flood just a little, but rather the water will rise up until it is five, six or ten feet above the top of the beaver lodge.  This forces the beaver out of the safety of the lodge.  If the flood is short lived, the beaver might return to their lodge, but more often the flood lasts a week or more.  At that point, the beaver will abandon the ruins and build a new lodge.  And, if that keeps happening, as it has recently with two or three flood events per year, the beaver move on.  

The Point Lodge - only 2 feet exposed.  It is a 4 foot tall lodge.
The water level was about 8 feet higher five days ago.
I expect that this lodge will be abandoned.

This is without considering the need to reproduce.  Beaver have kits in late winter or early spring. They have a set each year and the kits are allowed to stay until their second year, at which point they are pushed out and must go colonize new territory.  With two or three floods each year, reaching a stable colony has to be very difficult, and based on the rarity of large lodges, it's probably not often happening in the Mattebasset. 

I make it down to the Coginchaug River just as the wind arrives.  It has come up quickly, and rather than head up into the Coginchaug, I turn back.  This is the wrong side of the wide open marsh considering the wind.  I spot an adolescent Bald Eagle on the return. It has the white head and tail, but still has light blotches on the body. I pass the put in and head up as far as the railroad trestle, which I manage to pass without portaging.  And that is far enough for the day.  I head back out.

The Home Turf

I set out into a murky day just as the morning mist dissipates. The tide is very near high and there is no wind with a temperature somewhere under 50F. I follow the east shore down the river to the marsh.  I was just thinking about how I hadn't seen any Common Loons in their normal fishing area around the bridge when one surfaced in mid river.  

At the top of the marsh, I head over to Nell's Island.  With the high tide, it is a perfect opportunity to head into the Nell's Island maze. I flush some Black Ducks and scattered Canada Geese in the maze, and make it through to the south end of the island with only one wrong turn, although I seem to find the exit via a secondary channel that I've not before been in.

Ducks and Geese are well distributed throughout the marsh, which I credit to the end of hunting season a few weeks ago.  I flush some Geese, which sets off a chain reaction of Ducks and Geese going to wing.  But, unlike during hunting season, I watch them settle down in the marsh again.  In hunting season, they just leave the marsh. I flush a flock of seventy five Green Wing Teal from the center of the marsh.  I saw a hundred or so Green Wing Teal yesterday in the Connecticut River, so they are definitely on the migration. There are more Teal scattered throughout the marsh.

I somehow miss the passage leading to the Central Phragmites Patch, so I back out, interrupted very briefly by a Snipe flying at high speed across the top of the spartina. I take an obvious route over to the east shore, then cut back into another inner channel that leads to the top of the marsh. A Harrier sweeps through. I really like watching Harriers hunt, gently and silently gliding low across the top of the marsh, weaving and bobbing at times to get closer looks at possible prey.

 

Nest Check

A couple hundred yards before the Boulder Swamp, I spot a mature Bald Eagle soaring in a thermal about 300 ft up. The only wing motion over the next couple minutes is a subtle dip of one wing to adjust its turn. When I reach the Boulder Swamp, the Eagle is directly overhead and about a 100 ft higher.  Then, it turns east and glides off until disappearing behind the trees. In another minute, another mature Bald Eagle comes in from the north.  It heads towards a nest that I am familiar with.  I get to the nest just in time to see the Eagles do a shift change, trading off the hunting and egg sitting roles.

The old mill race, which is about the same size as the river at this point

I make my way through the Boulder Swamp. At a lower tide one has to slow down to avoid pasting one of the many barely submerged boulders, which I assume are substantial leftovers from the ice age. The Lieutenant River narrows significantly after the boulders, coming down from Rogers Lake as little more than a steep creek. The river presents its usual M O. with the channel blocked by a good sized deadfall. I have only once made it up the next 1/3 of a mile to a old mill dam. I don't need to go up there bad enough to clamber over this deadfall. On a positive note, the deadfall is the result of beaver gnawing halfway through the trunk.

Common Merganser - male

I back out and take the other arm, a meandering dead end  that heads into a dense cattail marsh.  I flush some Black Ducks and several Wood Duck pairs. Then, I back out of there and head down river, passing my put-in with intentions of going to the Watch Rocks. I retrieve a wandering paddleboard, which is in new condition.  I deposit it on the nearest dock as it should belong to someone nearby. The winter winds have been tough this year - (I noticed that the canoe abuse guy at the top of the Boulder Swamp - he owns an high quality canoe that he leaves outside to rot in the UV light... the new discoloration in the kevlar laminate looks like it must have gone sailing around his property)

There is a Red Throated Loon at the railroad bridge. It is actively fishing and with each dive it moves away from me. It's the first Red Throated of the spring. 

Green Wing Teal

I's quiet down to the Watch Rocks. But then, there are about a hundred Green Wing Teal in the bay just above the rocks. I take a short break on an island near the rocks, and then wander back exploring some side channels, which it turns out, connect.