Sleepy Time Paddle

We put in on the Lieutenant River, making it a leisurely and rather late morning start.  The weather is great - maybe 80F with a light breeze and no clouds.  The tide is falling and has been for about an hour and a half, but that is not so much an issue here. We head upstream.

It is a peaceful upstream paddle against a light current. We pass a few boats right away, but they are the only ones we will see until we come back down the river.  Great Egrets seem to be the main large bird today.  We also see a couple of Osprey and a couple Great Blue Herons.  It is pretty bird quiet.  

Lieutenant River

There is quite a bit of milfoil weed matting in the river, and it is much more than I remember in the past.

S stays on the jb picking our way through the Boulder Swamp.  The water level is just perfect for many of the boulders to be just a couple inches below the surface.  This takes us into Mill Brook, which yes, did have a couple of mills on it at one time.  There was an Eagle nest near a house in here, but last year the owners remodeled the joint, which disturbed the Eagles for most of the summer.  They abandoned the nest after their young fledged.  But, we hear what we suspect to be a young Bald Eagle calling out repeatedly from the forest just opposite the old nest.  We pause for several minutes and let the canoe drift hoping to catch sight of the nest, but we have no luck.  There is too little water to pass under the bridge on Mill Brook, so we turn and pick our way back out.

Mill Brook

We pass our start point and head down to Watch Rocks.  Still, not much in the way of birds. We head up into the short Duck River, just because I don't go in there on a regular basis.  We turn back at the McCurdy Road culvert, which would have to be portaged, and call it a day.  It is warm and peaceful in a way that makes us both rather sleepy.