De Pan

I started the morning by reading a few articles in Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, a magazine put out by that state's Department of Natural Resources.  How lucky I was to grow up in a state that valued its environment.  In retrospect, what I do is not something that I came across by luck, but instead, a result of many seeds planted by many different people, people who hoped that something would grow, but knew, in most cases, that they would never get to measure the result.  True to my nature, I don't seem to have been involved in making the plans....I go where I end up.

I put in down in front of the house on a cloudless day if one excludes the ones that are way over on the east horizon...where I am not going.  A half moon still hangs overhead and a fine cool autumn breeze blows off shore.  The tide has just passed low and I can start from the minimal shell beach that shows at that water level.  I stay reasonably close to land, mostly for shelter from the wind but also because the water is beginning to cool off and in the event of a capsize I'd rather not be drifting farther from shore.  Rather than cut across the bays from point to point, I swing in, paddling extra distance knowing that this will delay my arrival at the mouth of the river, which just might make it possible for me, as the tide comes up, to squeeze through a gap in the breakwater instead of paddling the mile out and around it.

I portage the bar that leads to Charles Island.  It is awash, but only by an inch.  The portage is not much more than 15 feet and hardly counts as such.



It takes something short of two hours to get to Milford Point, at the mouth of the Housatonic.  I do, in fact, find a gap in the breakwater that lets me sneak a shortcut into the river.  There, I spot 7 swans with 5 brants and a bit farther off are 5 loons.  The loon calls are limited to a brief "hoop".  One surfaces 20 feet away, very close for a loon.  I wonder if they might be yearlings here for the first time.  They aren't particularly large and seem a bit too curious for loons.  They are common loons stuck somewhere between youth, adult, summer and winter colors.

Milford Point and the Wheeler Marsh

I stop inside the point to stretch my legs and eat some lunch.  There is barely enough water to pass through the deepest of the channels in the Wheeler Marsh, but it will get deeper on the flood tide if I run out of water.  The mud banks at the base of the tall spartina grass are exposed and as a result there are quite a few birds out feeding.  I pass 20 some swans, see many egrets, several of the night herons, a great blue heron, some lesser yellow legs, and something small, dark and very fast hunting other birds (I hear a lot of warning calls when that bird comes by) but I can't identify it.

a juvenile night heron

I've never been in here when the water is this low...the yellowing grass being well over my head, it seems like... paddling through prairie.


Link to Minnesota Conservation Volunteer Magazine

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Canoes they have, but these are not my people.  I find a huge party of canoeists at the put-in.  There must be a dozen whitewater canoes, round and bulbous, perfect playthings for whitewater - specialty boats that aren't much good for anything else.  It's too many people for me and I load my canoe quickly and make a get-away to the north.

Red wing blackbird

Two geese are on the rockpile.  I drift on the wind for a closer look and when I look up from fetching my camera, they are in the water.  There is no nest yet and I wasn't close enough to scare a mother goose off of her eggs.  Next, I paddle the few yards north and ease my canoe into the break of Broken Island.  This is a favorite nest site and I want to be careful not to scare a goose off of a nest.  I find one sitting on a nest eying me from behind a tree.  I back away.  The mate is not anywhere in site and it occurs to me what has been going on.  Before the eggs are laid, the pair will be aggressively defensive about their nest sight with anything or anyone that comes near.  Once there are eggs, the mate keeps a distance from the nest.  His presence would signal the existence of a nest to any predator with the female pretty much forced to stay put atop of the eggs.

There are quite a few great blue herons around today.  I see a half dozen just in the short channel by the West Islands.

There is a new goose nest on the West beaver lodge.  No eggs, yet, and the pair are together on the lodge, but she will lay soon, I bet.

I see a woman and a boy out bird watching by the north point.  I pull in for a chat since they are standing about 10 feet from a beaver scent mound and almost no one ever knows what those dirt piles are.  We have a nice talk.

One of the big flat backed turtles from the north marsh (18-20 inches long)

I pass two guys fishing from $15000 of boat with a 7000 hp outboard motor as I paddle into the NE lagoon.  I flush a ringneck duck.  This year, there won't be a goose nest in the lagoon because the little island has gone awash in the high water.  But, there are about 3 dozen turtles sunning themselves on drift logs.  As I leave I spot a cinnamon teal.

There is a new goose nest on the NE corner of the #1 railroad island.  I've never seen a nest here before.


I cross the bay to check for a nest on the Big Lodge.  It was the first nest of the year last spring, but there is no nest, yet.

In the east marsh, I head down into the big dead end just to listen to redwing blackbirds, marsh wrens, and from an unknown distance, the whooping howl of the tiny pied billed grebe.  The grebes are making quite a racket today.  Few will know what that sound is.

The workbench lodge goose nest is abandoned.  The pair is not too far off.  There are no eggs in the nest.

I pass by the canoe club - it is a class - a kind of paint-by-number canoe paddling thing that I've never believed in, but then again, I'm not in the class.  It does not look like fun.

I head to Portage Bay.