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Jun252008

Seen in and along Salmon Brook

Filed under watersport, wildlife by andrew wolfe at 8:14 am

I couldn’t bring myself to the gym again last evening despite the rain, so I brought my kayak to the brook, instead.

 

Here’s what I found, more or less in chronological order:

 

One large splash, something between bullfrog and beaver.

Vapor off the warm water, despite the humidity of the cool evening air.

 

Two muskrat, maybe three. 

 

One blue heron.

 

Blue flowers in bloom along the grassy banks, the same sort I’ve seen in people’s yards. Surely they don’t belong here?

 

UFO:a bird about the size of a svelte duck but with a pointed beak (not a bill), a tuft at the back of the head, legs like a heron’s but shorter, in the multiple hues of dusty brown. It squawked an alarm and took off in flight as I passed.

 

Aerobatic swallows, too many to count, ditto for the bugs they were hunting. Scores of red-winged blackbirds.

 

Two little wood ducklings (or some other sort of duck with a tuft on the back of the head, good at diving but apparently unable to fly as yet).

 

Six deer, four in full profile, two waving the white tail of flight, all rather young. Three of them took cover over a ridge, then came back and poked their heads up in the brush to look back at the strange, half human creature floating in the river.

Low sunlight on high pines.

 

I saw loads of turtles, once I learned how to look. I spotted my first when it came up for air alongside the kayak, gasped in surprise (or so I imagine) and dove back into the depths. I kept seeing little wriggles in the weedy stuff that grows along the banks, and assumed fleeing frogs, until I checked one particularly vigorous wiggle and saw a painted turtle scurrying into the deeper water.

After that, I started looking harder, and saw loads more… not sure they were all painted turtles, but they weren’t spotted or snappers. I got close enough to grab one, but not firmly enough to hold it.

 

I would have gotten a better workout and burned more calories at the Y, but kayaking Salmon Brook is healthy in other ways, equally if not more important.

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