Animal Time

In between paddle strokes, I catch the calling of Canada Geese somewhere behind me.  The calls are coming through riverside forest and I suppose they have taken off from somewhere in Lord's Cove. After a piece of a minute, I can tell that they are coming from behind me, getting closer as the calls become louder as well as coming down at an increasing angle.  The calls of a flock of Canada Geese peels decades off of my life as I am taken back to the first time that I heard and connected that noise to the bird. I lean back and look overhead waiting for them to arrive.  It is amazing.  It is two hundred Canada Geese in a giant V, half of the flock in each arm, and they look to be near a thousand feet up.  They didn't come from the nearby Lord's Cove.  These Geese are on a long flight northward.  I watch them as I continue paddling upriver. The formation becomes a thin smoky smear, still visible a couple minutes after they passed over. The thin line of smoke becomes more like a ball - the formation has turned to one side or the other. They don't disappear until trees on a mile distant hill hide them from view.

It is another warm day.  The tide is high, perhaps just peaking a few minutes ago. I set out from Ely's Ferry Road, heading upstream to Selden Island.  There are quite a few Common Mergansers in the main river.

Just short of the entrance to the Selden Channel, I spot a mature Bald Eagle high overhead.  It is several hundred feet up sharing a thermal with four Gulls.  Over the next three or four minutes, the Eagle flaps its wings only three times, as if to relieve stiff muscles.  

I head into the long marsh channel on river right.  I don't go back in here often, but it is a spot that should get checked every so often.  A few hundred yards in, I find a beaver lodge. It is an exceptional build, an Architectural Digest beaver lodge to be sure - perfectly conical with well packed mud and just enough branches to hold it all together.  

First Lodge

Beaver are colonial, and finding this lodge is a sign that I should continue on.  A second lodge is a few more hundred yards.  It is also well built, although the craftsbeavership is not up to the first lodge.  I find a third lodge farther in.  This one might not be in use, seeming a bit porous, but if it is abandoned, it wasn't vacated too many months ago.

Second Lodge

 I continue, knowing that the channel will peter out, although the marsh will continue.  A hundred yards or so up from the last lodge, the scent of castoreum is thick. I have no doubt that there are more lodges beyond this point.  Scent mounds are territorial markers.  Usually, the mounds are dirt piles on the bank, but these are grass hummocks.  The beaver have smashed down the grass and plopped a couple shots of mud on top of the hummock before leaving their scent. Also of note is that there is an occupied Eagle Nest between this channel and the main river.  

I turn and head back, crossing the channel and heading back into the Elf Forest, a marsh of stunted and twisted trees.  I flush at least seventy five Black Ducks as I head in, and spot, unexpectedly, two turtles trying warming in the sun. The wind has been coming up, and I decide that it is time to start my return, as I am going to have some angle of a headwind.

Fortunately, I have the river and tidal current with me once I get to the main river.  The water is choppy, particularly by some of the bedrock points that protrude into the river. 

Taking out, three kids on bikes arrive.  They tell me about there family canoe trip last year to Kilarney, a provincial park in Ontario. It's good to trade canoe stories.