Tariffville - Pinchot Sycamore - Tariffville

It might be 2 years since I've been in this stretch of the river.  I used to come here often, especially when S was flying more often out of the airport that is just a few minutes away.  It is a beautiful day with mid-70 temperatures.  The wind is light but there is an afternoon weather front coming through and gusty conditions are predicted.  But, the wind direction will be with me on the return, when it counts.

I don't paddle very far before I remember just how peaceful this stretch is.  Once in awhile a road runs along the river, but more often there is nothing but forest and fields out beyond the 4-6 ft high cut bank.  The current at Tariffville is barely moving, but as I head upriver it eventually becomes the 2:1 flow that is typical (2 hours paddling against the current, 1 hour to return with the current). 

One thing that I don't remember is the wild rice. Maybe I wasn't paying attention on previous trips, or they were at the wrong time of the year, but there is a fair amount of wild rice growing along the bank. It is growing is slower water, often in patches that are 15 feet wide and run about a hundred feet along the bank.  There is still grain on much of the grass (it is actually a grass and not rice).  Good for the birds.

I flush a few Great Blue Herons and a couple of Hawks, and one large mature Bald Eagle. Otherwise, a few Mergansers, Kingfishers and Sandpipers... and a small flock of Canada Geese.  The river has never been great for wildlife, which is probably due to development, farms and golf courses that prevent a large enough patch for many animals to exist.  

Once I am an hour out, I start passing landmarks that I remember from previous trips.  A bit farther on, I begin to hear gunfire from a Police gun range in Simsbury.  That means I am nearing the Gifford Pinchot Sycamore, a large riverside sycamore tree named in honor of the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

At 2 hours and 10 minutes, I reach the sycamore and turn back.  It takes 1 hour and 20 minutes for the return. The wind picks up some while paddling back, but nothing near the predictions.

Bushwacking the Marsh

S coaxed me into heading over to the Wheeler Marsh. There was no early morning rush with the high tide coming sometime after two in the afternoon.  It was also a very high tide backed up by near calm air, 70F temperature and mostly overcast sky.  

We put in at the refuge lot giving us more time in the marsh and missing out on the flood current that would be against us if we started upriver under the highway bridge.  There did not seem to be anyone else in the entire marsh.

We started by heading around Cat Island.  I do this once or twice a year and it might be S's first time doing this.  The increasingly narrow channel eventually became a wall of phragmites, although there was still one to two feet of water beneath us.  Once you're into it, that stuff is more difficult to back out of than going forward.  We grunted and pushed and poled through until reaching the upriver side of the island.  S told me later that it was fun.

After that, we headed to the Central Phragmites Patch.  There are few birds in sight but the patch always has possibilities, and it did not disappoint.  We flushed about a dozen Black Crowned Night Herons. Two were immature, and although they look a lot like their Yellow Crowned kin, I'm pretty sure they were also Black Crowns.  

Then, we wandered internal channels.  With the high water nothing was particularly recognizable, but my mistakes were easily corrected by short cutting through the well flooded spartina to somewhere I intended us to be.  

As we headed back across to finish our trip, we spotted a Martin, the largest of the Swallows. It was climbing, then diving, then carving a tight turn.  Clearly it was feeding, chasing airborne insects. Once we focused on the bird and paid close attention, we could spot the flying insects that it was chasing.  I'm pretty sure it was hunting Monarch Butterflies.  The Martin gave us a good show.

Osprey

Two Osprey are circling over Goose Bay.  Most of the Osprey have left for places south, but there are always a few that stay around right up until "real" winter arrives.  I don't, as far as an Osprey goes, see the reason for Osprey to leave so soon other than they have someplace else to be.  Perhaps some of them go because all the other Osprey are doing it.  The holdouts fascinate me.  They seem to be the rebels that do their own thinking.

It is partly sunny when I head out from Pilgrim's Landing.  The wind is something under 10mph coming downriver and the temperature is climbing up through the 60's.  The tide is coming in and the water is already fairly high.  No one else is around. 

This is the first canoeable day since Wednesday.  A Nor' Easter came through, which the news made out to be something like the end of the world.  As long as you don't live on a sandbar next to the ocean, it was not a big deal, just 3 days of 40+ mph wind and a ordinary amount of rain.  

Lord's Cove is a large marsh, partly fresh and partly brackish. There are two entrances, both of them on the downstream end. Route finding is not difficult with side route choices being either dead ends or loops that return to the main route.  The oddity is a big open pond called Coute's Hole, which is well in the marsh. It is near circular and 200 yards in diameter.  The main paddle route is in a channel that runs around the feature.  All the various theories for the "hole", one of which is as a meteor strike, have no evidence.  The hole is not particularly deep either, in case you were wondering.  One thing for sure, it defies common sense thinking about rivers and marshes. 

With the high water level, I refresh my memory taking some of the more obscure side channels that I haven't been through in quite a while.  I also head into Coute's Hole.  The hole has three entrances, one on the west and the others on the north, and all of them fairly close to others.  It is otherwise surrounded by a solid wall of cattails.  

I find about 50 Teal in the uppermost finger.  Otherwise, the already mentioned Osprey, a couple Kingfishers, a couple Great Blue Herons, in Goose Bay, some Great Egrets and a couple of Terns that I could not identify.  A small flock of Canada Geese flew over - I will never tire of their call. 

On the way out, I circled the shore of Goose Bay, just to make the trip last a bit longer.   

Doing the Wash

It is the time of the autumn winds. The forecast is for 10-15mph wind for the foreseeable future.  But, these fall season winds often have a mind of their own and just as often as strong gusty days might show up, an afternoon or morning might go calm.  Such is life.  It is about 70F and cloudy.

I put in at Indian Well on the reach I call Housatonic 2, which is above the Derby Dam and below the Stevenson Dam.  It is not my favorite place to paddle, having a busy road on one side and a bit too mny shoreline houses, but it is near home and being in a forested valley it can be a good paddle on a windy day.

I put in and the wind is coming in gusts up the river, close to being exactly the opposite direction of the forecast, which is a NE wind.  I cross the river to the east side and find it near calm.  Up river I go.

I flush a Great Blue Heron from the bank.  It does this twice. Herons often do this, short flights up and away from the oncoming canoe until, at some point, they circle around and return to near where they were first seen.  At the second stop, I avoid direct eye contact and slip by just 3 canoe lengths away without flushing the bird.  Add to that another Heron, a couple Kingfishers, an immature Bald Eagle and a dozen or so non-migratory Canada Geese.  Add to that two guys fishing from an aluminum boat and a rowing Shell. That's the traffic report.

I head up an hour, to just below the shelf, then turn and head back.  I feel washed.

Because I am Still Curious

It is overcast with a possibility of rain, but there might have to be more vertical motion in the cluds before anything noticeable comes of it.  There is a very light wind, so light that I don't care what direction it comes from, and it is humid and about 80F.  I ut in under the highway and head down to the marsh.  The tide is rising, but not quite halfway up, so it is a good time to bird watch.  It was a good time to feed my curiosity.

The milk bottle was pulled out just above the paddle blade

The upper entrance to the maze is still too shallow for passage.  I divert to the upper Nell's channel entry.  I find and recover a milk bottle from the cut bank just inside the entrance.  It is 3 paddle blades deep - about 22 inches.  It is a well embossed bottle from the City Dairy, wherever that is. Without dating it, the depth suggests about 1940, as my current calculations for soil accretion in the marsh are 50 years/foot.  I find another bottle about 20 yards in. It is a surface find that won't help in the dating process, but it is old.  It's a small bottle that was cork sealed, mold made, but the glass has an uneven blue tint and there are several large bubbles in the glass.  It will probably date to about 1900 because of the bubbles and blue tint.

As I head into the maze, I flush a Night Heron here and there - one at a time.  There are also a few Great Egrets, and a couple Snowys.  The water level is just perfect to get under the root ball log, and I should note that this is just above the minimum level for a passage through the maze.  At most tides, the log blocks passage and requires a short detour.  I jot down the time, 2:10 pm so that I can check the tide level for future trips (tide is at about 4.25 feet and flooding). 

The tide is flooding and at 4.25 feet.

After exiting the maze, I head up to Milford Point by an indirect route, and then into the center of the marsh. About 30 Egrets fly by, too far for me to be the cause, but they must have been in the marsh somewhere west of the Central Phragmites Patsh.  

I work my way over to the east side, and then head back out via the inner Sneak.  With the flood tide, it is an easy upriver paddle. 

Afternoon in the Big Marsh

Our plans changed due to A's schoolwork, but it all worked out as by afternoon the tide was near high and we could go most anywhere in the marsh.  As a plus, the winds of midday had started to subside, so we wouldn't get pushed around, yet there was still a gentle breeze to keep the no-see-ums at bay.  We put in at the refuge launch.  It is mid70's and overcast.

First stop was the Central Phragmites Patch, where we flushed five or six Black Crowned Night Herons. Then we headed up and into Beaver Brook.  The brook was unusually quiet and while we flushed a dozen or so Mallards, we didn't find any of the tree perchers such as Night Herons and Osprey.  But we did scare up a Green Heron on the way out.

Next was to see if I could find that hard-to-find inner channel that I miss more often than not.  We find it on the second or third try and only make one wrong turn as we head down.  But, no birds at all in there.  We check the time and A decides that we should head to Milford Point.  From there, we cross back to our put-in where we find three early season Goose hunters preparing to set out.  We have a little chat while taking out and loading the canoe.

The Most Perfect of Days

When I brought S her morning coffee, I asked her what she had planned for the day.
"Canoeing?"  she answered.  My clever ploy of bringing her coffee every morning for several decades has panned out.

There is no hurry with the high tide at about 2:30 in the afternoon.  The weather is about as good as one could hope for to be out in - 70F, sunny, and with a wind that is of no consequence.

We put in at the old stage crossing about halfway into the rising tide.  The water is plenty deep and there is no wading or dodging of rocks.  Autumn seems to be arriving noticed by the lower sun casting shadows out over the river.  I would gladly trade summer for extra autumn and spring.  

There are few birds in the forest section.  A few very boisterous Kingfishers try to make up for that.  The day is so beautiful that I ease up and try to draw it all in. 

Just above the Post Road, a Kingfisher makes two spectacular dives, catching a fish with the second one and flying off to a nearby tree. 

Below the post road is a small flock of Laughing Gulls, hanging out on one of the junk docks. 

Once in the lower marsh, we take the Long Cut, a snaky and narrow passage to Bailey Creek.  It is grown in with cord grass more than usual, but with the high water we push through easily.  We flush one Black Duck at the upper end of the Long Cut.  Later this fall, this will be a favorite hang out for Black Ducks. A pair of Osprey are perched in the dead tree island nearby.

We head down Bailey and start our return by heading through the Sneak, another "secret" passage, a reward for being curious.  We have some flood tide current with us for part of the upriver return.  At the highway bridge, crashing in the brush alerts us to a pair of deer - I think a doe and a yearling.  S gets a charge out of the close up view.

The rst of the return is spent thinking about what a wonderful day it has been.