Wood River Trip 3

I checked my records and M was clearly overdue for a canoe trip. 

Overnight the humidity dropped and the day came sunny with a nice breeze out of the northwest. We put in just above the Alton Dam for a trip upstream on the Wood River. This was my third time here, but the first time that I've brought anyone with me. This section of the Wood, from the dam to about as far upstream as I've paddled (2-1/2 hours worth) is quite beautiful and varied. Starting upstream from a pond edged with trees and a variety of New England marsh plants, it narrows to swamp and forested stream. Then, there is a short portage, another pond, more swamp and more forest.

In the upstream direction, there are some route finding tricks. In most rivers, these backwater dead end channels are devoid of current. But, this is true swamp, and the river flows through the shrubs and trees. Even though this was my third time here, I managed to wrong turn us into every wrong turn that I made on earlier trips. 

M spotted a few deer, which eluded me other than their tracks which were all over a nearby sandbar that we had to wade. We saw a few Osprey, a few Kingfisher, and one almost mature Bald Eagle. White pond lilies were in abundance as was the pickerel weed flowers, yellow pond lilies, and magnolia. We didn't see anyone above the Alton Pond other than a couple of lost fishermen in ridiculously large bass boat (they were stuck in the mud), and two people fishing at the Woodville dam portage.

We turned back a little short of the logjam portage that I crossed on my last trip. Next time I need to remember to bring my saw as I could have cleared a couple of spots easily.

Shephaug

A hen Wood Duck with two Ducklings

 
I put in on Pond Brook. The day is overcast and humid, but the temperature is about 80F, so it is overall fairly comfortable. There is no wind, the water is glassy, and the slightest touch of the paddle on the canoe echoes back from the wooded hillsides. There are some large schools of minnow-sized fish and with the smooth water, I can spot them fifty yards or more away.

I head down and around the point and up into the Shephaug arm, a route that I am more likely than any to do when I start from Pond Brook. Distant trees have a gray wash - the result of the moisture in the air. I pass a couple of Great Blue Herons and go a full hour before seeing any other people. I reach the Shephaug cascades without seeing any other boats.

While taking a break, a motorboat comes into the last bend before the cascades. I've never seen anyone do this before. It is a good place to destroy a boat propeller due to a scattering of boulders that lie just below the surface. Anyway, he's just fishing and I follow him out from a good distance, and then pass him to leave him fishing for whatever he is fishing for. A light wind has developed. It is hardly worth mentioning except that it feels good on such a humid day.

I spot a mature Bald Eagle across from the private marina/park. While I'm checking a photo that I'd just taken, I hear a Bald Eagle call from a moving bird and look up to see where that Eagle is headed. But instead, I see a very young Eagle fly past. It's call is a hoarse whistle, much more raspy than normal. It is probably the fledgling of the mature Eagle. I know there is a nest back in the trees. I don't believe it is visible from the water, but I have heard the young Eagles squealing for dinner on past trips. The mature Eagle stays perched while the noisy youngster disappears into the forest.

 

Full White Bird Mix

I put in on the Menunketusuck River at the usual spot, a half mile below Chapman Pond and a couple miles above the sea. The tide is just starting to come in. There is a thick overcast and it begins to mist as soon as I settle in the canoe. It will mist and sprinkle almost the entire time that I am out. It is much more comfortable than living in the heat and humidity that would come with any sun.

An Osprey is perched at the first bend, and I flush a Green Heron at the second, which flies up and disappears into the tree tops. It is calm and still, and I do not expect to see anyone else.

The marsh is narrow in this upper section, 50-70 yards of spartina on either side of the river until it comes up against a hardwood forest. Near Opera Singer Point the marsh spreads out. A lot of birds prefer this area, probably both because of the distance to the trees and the better feeding due to the many small channels and pannes.

As I turn one of the bends, I find thirty some white birds on either side of the river. A few are Great Egrets - noticeably larger with a bright yellow bill, several are Snowy Egrets, identified by the yellow feet and black bill, and the others, perhaps half of them, are young Little Blue Herons - the size of Snowy Egrets, but with greenish legs and feet and without a pure black bill. One of the theories as to why young Little Blues are white is that they can mix with Egrets, a safety in numbers thing. There is one morphing Little Blue as well - its feathers patchy white and blue as it becomes an adult. 

Left to right - Little Blue Heron, Little Blue Heron, Snowy Egret, Great Egret

If someone told me that they wanted to see a Glossy Ibis or a Little Blue Heron, this is where I would send them. I don't know if it is real, but it seems to me that the population of Little Blues and Glossy Ibises has been increasing in this marsh. 

Little Blue Heron morphing to adult

In the tree above the abandoned opera singer's house is a mature Bald Eagle. I'll bet that 4 out of every 5 times I paddle here, there is an Eagle on that perch. The white birds are just far enough away that they would see and have time to evade the Eagle.

The tide is right for returning through the railroad underpass, so I head down to the Post Road bridge. There are four young and one mature Little Blues up in a some trees, and a couple of Great Egrets along the river. I spot a fox loping along the river near the Post Road, but it is raining too hard to pull out the camera.

On the way back, three Glossy Ibises fly past, one seems to be being chased by a mature Little Blue Heron. 

With a few more inches of tide, I can now scan across the broad spartina flats. I find four more Glossy Ibises on river left feeding in a panne with a few Egrets.

A Fresh Wind

The day might become to warm to put the effort into going to one of my more distant rivers. It seems that being off the water by noon is a good plan. At least the humidity is down from yesterday's gas chamber conditions.

I put in under the highway bridge. Two Yellow Crowned Night Herons are immediately downstream. I usually don't see them until I get to the marsh, but it is no big deal.

 

There is a stiff south wind, 10 to 15mph, coming straight up the river. I might complain if it was 60F, but it is not, and after yesterday, it feels great, even if it is a bit of work to paddle into. The tide is all the way out and the top of the spartina is well over my head, so my view will be somewhat enclosed. I head down Nell's Channel, one of the few choices that I have with the tide out. I spot four old bottles as I make my way. Unfortunately, all of them are out of the sediment layers and just laying on shoreline silt. I collect three of them just because they are interesting. One has a molded divider inside. It reminds me of a yogurt container where you mix your own fruit into the yogurt. It might be a baby food jar. The second might be a dairy container - half pint with an old milk bottle lip. It is embossed with lots of identifiable details. The third is a Singer Sewing Machine oil bottle with the cork pushed inside. It is cracked from freezing. There are bubbles in the glass, so it's probably over a hundred years old.

Short Billed Dowitchers

There are a couple flocks - maybe 20 birds each - of Short-Billed Dowitchers, which would already be migrating south. They're about the same size as a Yellow Legs, without the yellow legs, and with a much longer bill. There are also quite a few turtles. I get spy hopped continually while writing my notes.

It takes a full hour to get to the bottom of Nell's Channel - close to twice the time it normally takes. I head back the way I came.

On a Contour Line

It is going to be a hot day and I don't feel like driving over to Rhode Island where I have been exploring some rivers that are new to me. I pick my place for the shade that I will get, at least during some of the trip. I put in on Pond Brook, back in the quiet sheltered cove that it has become. I'll head out and turn down river.

Before I reach the confluence with the Shephaug, I have spotted at least six Great Blue Herons. They seem to be preferring this spot just below Pond Brook. I spot a good number of fingerlings in the shallows along here. 

I take only one photo. I have taken this shot, or something like it, dozens and dozens of times. It is not because it is a particularly good setup. It is simple put, where I like to paddle. It is the edge - the boundary between open water and the forest, the line between light and shade. It is where the birds feed, where the animals come to get a drink, where the little fish thrive in the shallows.

I head downriver finding more shade than I expected. I tuck under the trees and follow the shoreline closely. It is not a natural shoreline. No matter how hard I look, I will not find evidence of an ancient fishing camp or even an old cabin. This shoreline is a contour line, one of those faint green lines on a topographic map that denotes constant elevation. The original river is some 70 feet down, with the old fishing camp, the cabin, the old trails and roads. There is a trail paralleling the shore for a short while, but it came after the dam. There is even an old stone wall that runs along the shore, but this is by chance as soon enough, it slips into the water. The shoreline is mostly cobbles and boulders, but it is not river rock. It might be the same geology as the river rock below, but this is glacial drift with the soil that held it for so long having been washed away. The glacier rounded it off and smoothed off the rough edges, but it hasn't been water polished and tumbled with sand like the stones in the old river bed. No one ever made a point of walking this shoreline until perhaps, the geologists, foresters and surveyors connected with the dam building came along. I think that I will plot my route on an old topo map when I get home.

I paddle down to the dam, losing the shade as the shoreline bends around. I cross above the dam and find more shade for my paddle back, crossing back over when the shade disappears.

 

 

Low Tide Mattabesset

The river runs through freshwater tidal marsh and swamp, and the tide is all the way out. With the extra gradient, there is a current at the put-in that is rarely seen. I get an almost early start. The day will be humid with temperatures in the upper 80's, but it looks like the overcast will hold and there will be little wind if any.

Even with the nearby highway, the river is peaceful. No one else is around and it looks like I am the only one that has put-in, so far. The call of a Woodpecker comes over my right shoulder - probably a Flicker. A hundred yards in, I pass a Great Blue Heron and take the obligatory photo. This is good Heron terrain and I will see fifteen or twenty during the trip. 

Near the Point Beaver Lodge, I spot a Green Heron. It will be the only one today, and it will be in this same area when I return. The lodge looks like it might be in use although I can say exactly. We had three flood events last year that topped every known lodge in this section of the river. There is a noticeable lack of beaver sign - no cuts or peels, no scent mounds, no leftover feed sticks floating in the water. Each of the floods lasted about 2 weeks, and I suspect that the colonies moved on. Farther down the main river at Salmon Cove, the beaver responded to the high water by adding height to their lodges, but they were dealing with 5 feet. of water, not the 15 feet that the Mattabesset was getting.

There's a heavy growth of a plant that I don't recognize. I pause to take a look and realize that it is yellow pond lily fully exposed by the low tide. I did not know that the stalks were stiff enough to stand. I spot only a couple of white pond lilies today. The white lily is a floater and it may be that it doesn't do well in the tidal zone.

Yellow Pond Lilies

A muskrat crosses the river in front of me. 

 

As I round the point near where the Coginchaug enters, there is a young Bald Eagle. Its feathers are mottled - probably a 2 year old just moving toward the white tail and head coloring of an adult. It stays pretty calm and lets me take several photos. As I turn away, there is a whitetail doe swimming the river.

I head up the Coginchaug. It is running a bit more shallow and faster than the Mattabesset. The beaver lodges look abandoned and there is no sign. There are a lot of Kingfishers. In fact, by the time I come out, the Kingfishers will have outnumbered the Great Blue Herons by a good amount. Besides fish, they may be feeding on some bugs, there is a healthy horsefly and green head fly population. The other day, I saw a Kingfisher snatch a cicada out of midair, so it can be done. 

I manage to get to the first big log jam. I wasn't sure that would happen with the low water. Anyway, this is the turn-around point, as it is also the point of useless-to-continue being that there are more logjams and only a couple hundred yards of canoeable river above this.

I pass the Green Heron pretty much where I last saw it.

 

Storm Trash

Morning brings a pair of thunderstorms that dump three quarters of an inch of rain. Afterwards, although the sky is a thick overcast and more rain is possible, the weatherman's radar shows that thunder is over for the time being. 

I put in from O'Sullivan's Island near the upper end of the tidal section of the big river. Here, the river is somewhat enclosed in a deep enough valley to give me some protection just in case the weatherman's radar missed something. The tip of O'Sullivan's is also the confluence of the Housatonic and Naugatuck Rivers.

As I paddle downriver, it is impossible to ignore the amount of floating plastic trash. The last time I saw this was also just after a storm that flushed the rivers. And, just like the first time, all of the plastic is coming out of the Naugatuck. The Housatonic is clear and not one single floater is visible, but the Naugatuck has dozens and dozens of trash items in near view. Note that this does seem to be a high water/storm related phenomena, so somewhere, trash is getting flushed.

The two rivers are quite different. The Housatonic doesn't pass through any large cities and I suppose that most of it's surroundings are either forest or farmland. The Naugatuck runs through a deep and rather scenic valley. And, it runs through series of old milltowns and one large and somewhat dilapidated city. It also has a major state highway sharing the bottom of the valley. I can paddle the majority of the Housatonic, but the Naugatuck is a different matter. The Naugatuck is shallow, fast, rocky. It's one of those rivers that when it is safe to paddle, it's too shallow to, and when it's full of water, it's a torrent. And. that is without considering that it just doesn't have many places to access it.

I would not be surprised if something like 90 percent of the plastic debris in this lowest section of the Housatonic comes directly out of the Naugatuck.

I paddle down to Wooster Island - an hour out, and return. I fill up the bow of my canoe with trash. It would have not, at all, been difficult to fill the entire canoe up to the gunwhales.