Thursday was Eva’s Marsh WMA. On Friday we plopped the kayaks in at Carpenter’s Marsh WMA.
Both parcels are quite near each other (about a mile apart “as the crow flies”) in Hancock and are similar in many ways; although Carpenter’s is quite a bit larger. Both parcels are “enhanced” wetlands… that is they both have a man-made dam to raise the water level. Both are also managed as water fowl habitat.
The weather on Friday afternoon was warm and sunny. Thus the odes were out in force.
There were large darners everywhere patrolling at grass/sedge top level and occasionally dipping down into the vegetation after prey. I did not see one perched all afternoon!
There were also many meadowhawks and spreadwings about with a few other species in the mix in smaller numbers.
The vegetation at the two sites is quite different. Eva’s Marsh has large areas of pickerel weed and there were many water lilies and much eastern purple bladderwort; spatterdock is absent. At Carpenter’s pickerel weed along with grasses and sedges dominate. Rushes are also present and the main flowering plant we saw was spatterdock. The arrowhead was also in bloom at Carpenter’s.
As for birds, we spent a bit of time with a group of eastern kingbirds both coming and going. They were perched in a patch of snags and we enjoyed watching their swooping forays for insects.
Our second pass by the kingbirds was just as the sun was going behind the ridge which encloses the wetland. Thus the really warm color in the last photo is not enhanced at all and less that thirty seconds after snapping that photo the light was the dull, flat and blue light of evening.
On the way back to the put in, we also had fun watching a riled up beaver. He/she kept swimming away from us and slapping its tail. I think that it was leading us away from a juvenile. A one point while my eye was on the beaver ahead, I heard a loud plop of something dropping into the water just behind my right shoulder.
Halfheartedly, I took a few photos knowing that a small brown lump in the water was not going to make for great images but hoping that I might catch an interesting pose during a tail slap; none are worth showing.
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