Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Wildness Around the Bend


This morning's ascent of the Sudbury River from River Rd. in Wayland demonstrated how you never know what you'll see around the next bend in the river.

However, before getting my boat into the water at the River Road launch, there was this Styrofoam cooler some fisherman had chose to leave behind...
 
It was filled with used bait and beverage containers....


Once launched I headed upriver and after rounding the sharp bend at Greenways several white-tailed deer were encountered.  This one kept a wary eye on me...

Yellow flag were abundant along the river today...

After rounding the last bend before the Power Lines, I saw a white-tailed deer in the river watching a critter swim across the river...

I stopped paddling and joined the deer in watching as the animal made several crossings.  Then I saw the grass on the riverbank moving around and realized there were young critters being coaxed into the water by a parent...
 
Once the young ones began swimming across, an adult watched over them from a log...
 
 
 
After seeing the adult (above), I believe they were fishers rather than mink. 
There was a lot of vocalization going on during the process...
 
 
Here the little ones await further instruction...
 
 
All the vocalizing stopped and the family disappeared into the brush.
 
I felt fortunate in having witnessed the procedure for it's not very often a fisher is seen during the day.
Perhaps the wildlife encountered today were more active due to the nearly full moon.
 
The day had turned out much better than what had been forecast with the predicted showers not materializing while I was on the river.
 
The trash recovered from this 4 mile stretch of river...
  ...included 28 recyclable containers (5 redeemable) and 47 pieces of miscellaneous rubbish including plastic bags, Styrofoam, a plastic milk crate, and a universal joint from a drive shaft.
 
YTD = 2842 
 
 
 





2 comments:

Lis said...

Love the shot of fisher running up the log. You really lucked out with that experience!

Al said...

Hi Lis, I did indeed get lucky to arrive there at just the right time.