Shangri La in a Bottle

 

Getting out on the water early was the key to beating the heat this past week.  In some ways it felt like I was racing against the rising sun.  On Tuesday, reached my turnaround point at Fairhaven Bay on the Sudbury River before 9 am.

Earlier in the week another early start had me reaching the confluence at Egg Rock before 7 am...

The inscription is sitting high and dry these days...

The early starts allowed for some good wildlife encounters such as this 8-point buck...

...and this recently fledged eagle at the Sudbury River nest site...

He'd just demonstrated his ability to take flight...

Previously I thought this nest had gone unused this season.  However the eaglet's calls alerted me to his presence.  As far as I could tell there was only one eaglet.  

The deer and eaglet were in addition to the usual herons (blue and green), kingfishers, and lots of killdeers along the Concord River.

Saw my first Cardinal flower of 2024...

Wrapped up my paddling week on Thursday with a Nashua River paddle launching from the Oxbow N.W.R. in Harvard, MA...

This big old snapping turtle pushed aside a floating bottle in order to climb out of the water...

More and more wildflowers are blooming such as this Joe Pye Weed...

Trash from last Sunday on the lower Assabet and upper Concord rivers...

...and Tuesday from the Sudbury River (mostly shore fishermen stuff at Sherman's Bridge)...

Thursday saw an uptick in trash especially "nip" bottles (55 of them) on the Nashua River...

An empty glass bottle of Shangri La found in the Sudbury River...

This bottle wasn't from Tibet, where I thought Shangri-la was, but instead from the top of Serra dos Cocais, in Valinhos, in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil.  Funny, my finding shady spots and a freshening breeze while out on the river had me thinking I'd found my own Shangri-la.  Sure beats winter!

On the Nashua River, standing out amidst the many plastic "nip" bottles, was this elegant and nicely embossed glass mini-bottle which originated in Ukraine (Nemiroff Vodka)... ...

It held only 0.05 liters. or a little less than 2 ounces.

A receptacle intended solely for mono-filament fishing line had trash left at its base by shore fishermen...