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Saturday, July 29, 2017

Morning canoe trip

So the other day we set out for a morning canoe trip until the wind caused us to turn around and come back home.  We then tried again in the evening when it got a bit calmer.  This is the morning one.


as you can see water continues to drop way down....we can now get onto the flats...


we headed down to check out those new martin boxes....as you can see it was pretty choppy already.


and there is one set of them...seems they moved an old box in with them just to get things established I guess.


lots of activity at the old set....my guesstimate was close to 30 Purple Martin's in the vicinity.


nice to see a few new Tree Swallow nesting boxes had also been put up along with the ones for the Martin....


speaking of Tree Swallows....there was one pair still caring for a brood....probably a 2nd batch I would think.


hard to get close ups when the canoe is bouncing so much, this appears to be a young male and it was checking out one of the new boxes....staking his claim on it for next year maybe.


so satisfied that all was well with the Purple Martin nesting colony...we headed across to the shore opposite our boat launch....


spotting one of the young Great Blue Heron on the way....saw a total of 8 of them during the trip.


and that Red-neck grebe was out there as well.  Still appears to just be the one who really shouldn't even be here.


headed up one arm where we sat for sometime as a Marsh Wren was singing and I was determined to get a picture...although he flew from the grass to the bush once, I never did manage a photo.


this young heron kept us company along side....


and there was this school (?) of what appeared to be tadpoles of some kind in the water, they moved in a tight group....have no idea what they were.


another unknown was this young gull....obviously a 'this year'....and one of several, all unidentified gulls we saw.  This one, at first was mistaken for an Osprey as it almost acted like one.


lots of dragonflies again....this being an Eight Spot Skimmer.

By this point it was decided that the wind was just not going to let up so we headed to shore, thinking we'd try again later in the day.

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