Boy, can't believe this was two weeks ago! on the way home I just couldn't wait to do a blog post, but I didn't get to it fast enough, and this is one of those times of year when work gets a little bonkers and I just didn't have the energy to blog after long days of number crunching. Wrapped up the last of the gauntlet of deadline projects today, though!
I'm just doing a writeup here but of course I took photos - click here to visit my Flickr album from the day.
So this really wonderful paddle was my first evening paddle of the year. I've been getting out on the water pretty regularly, but since I'm staying off the bus and don't feel like I have enough biking experience in the city to be out at night, evenings haven't really been an option - so when clubmates Etan and Andrea got in touch with me, invited me to join them and one more clubmate, Dan, for a Friday evening paddle, mentioning they had access to a car for the evening and could get me and TQ's bike home after the paddle, I was delighted to take them up on it.
It was a beautiful evening, nice temperature, very light breeze, high water and a nearly full moon rising. The plan was to paddle to Four Sparrows Marsh for some evening birding, but our first stop was at the "Jeep Marsh", a small marsh partway between the club and Mill Basin, nicknamed by club members after an engine block in the inlet that's visible when the water is lower (that's urban paddling for you). As we were paddling by, Dan or Etan noticed some interesting activity in the marsh, lots of tips of fins breaking the surface of the water, so we went in to see what we could see. Turned out to be a school of rays, probably cow-nosed - very cool to see! TQ had seen a school once a couple of years ago, so I knew they were out there, but I'd never seen them. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any pictures, the wingtips would only break the surface for a moment, but they were all over the place in the marsh and it was great to encounter a new critter in the bay.
oof, reminds me I had made a couple of promises about this Inktober drawing from last year that was very popular among the paddling groups with whom I shared it. I had "find a place that can do a really high-quality scan" on my to-do list early in the year - then of course all plans went off the rails. Things are opening up enough now that maybe I can resume that search. We didn't have this many rays, and they were swirling around hunting in the marsh, but still reminded me of drawing this, and I wonder what it would've looked like from above.
I'm just doing a writeup here but of course I took photos - click here to visit my Flickr album from the day.
So this really wonderful paddle was my first evening paddle of the year. I've been getting out on the water pretty regularly, but since I'm staying off the bus and don't feel like I have enough biking experience in the city to be out at night, evenings haven't really been an option - so when clubmates Etan and Andrea got in touch with me, invited me to join them and one more clubmate, Dan, for a Friday evening paddle, mentioning they had access to a car for the evening and could get me and TQ's bike home after the paddle, I was delighted to take them up on it.
It was a beautiful evening, nice temperature, very light breeze, high water and a nearly full moon rising. The plan was to paddle to Four Sparrows Marsh for some evening birding, but our first stop was at the "Jeep Marsh", a small marsh partway between the club and Mill Basin, nicknamed by club members after an engine block in the inlet that's visible when the water is lower (that's urban paddling for you). As we were paddling by, Dan or Etan noticed some interesting activity in the marsh, lots of tips of fins breaking the surface of the water, so we went in to see what we could see. Turned out to be a school of rays, probably cow-nosed - very cool to see! TQ had seen a school once a couple of years ago, so I knew they were out there, but I'd never seen them. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any pictures, the wingtips would only break the surface for a moment, but they were all over the place in the marsh and it was great to encounter a new critter in the bay.
oof, reminds me I had made a couple of promises about this Inktober drawing from last year that was very popular among the paddling groups with whom I shared it. I had "find a place that can do a really high-quality scan" on my to-do list early in the year - then of course all plans went off the rails. Things are opening up enough now that maybe I can resume that search. We didn't have this many rays, and they were swirling around hunting in the marsh, but still reminded me of drawing this, and I wonder what it would've looked like from above.
We hung out watching the rays for a while, then headed on to Four Sparrows Marsh, where a variety of egrets and herons were settling in for the evening. Etan spotted one very large object in a dead snag at the top of a tree as we were approaching the marsh; I'd brought binoculars along so he asked me to see if I could tell what it was. When I first looked, I thought it might be a very large raptor, but then it wasn't moving, and I couldn't see any details, so I downgraded my guess to Hefty bag or some sort of similar trash, blown up there by the storm earlier in the week. Wish I'd handed the binoculars over to Etan at that point for a second opinion - a moment after I'd said I thought it was just garbage, it turned its big raptorial head and spread its big raptorial wings and flew off to another tree further away from those nosy paddlers.
Still not sure what it was but it looked bigger than our local hawks, and darker then an osprey - really wondering if it was maybe a juvenile bald eagle. A friend and I had seen an adult near Floyd Bennett Field in March, and then during the Breezy Point Light paddle a couple of weeks ago, Dottie had spotted a pair of very large, dark raptors over the Rockaway Inlet (really not too far from Mill Basin, at least as the crow - or eagle - flies); she pointed them out to me and we agreed that they were too big & dark to be ospreys. It's possible we've got some young bald eagles in the area - it would be very cool if that was the case!
Click here for an excellent photo series showing bald eagle plumage from first year juvenile to adult.
We got well into Four Sparrows, the moon was rising, it was absolutely beautiful and we paddled around in there until we started getting chewed up by hungry little flying things. We paused outside the marsh to put on decklights and then headed for home under a beautiful sunset sky. What a perfect evening!
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