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.