June 21: Leeches

Some days I really love my job. This afternoon I got to join my director and some volunteers on a site visit by canoe to a property along a pond in Waldo County. We paddled across the pond and up a narrowing, winding inlet, enjoying the birds and other wildlife along the way.

Dragonflies and butterflies dipped in the reeds and cattails. Marsh wrens chattered from shrubs, while swamp sparrows trilled unseen and blackbirds flashed their red epaulettes. A great blue heron flew in and perched on a nearby tree as we paddled past. Along the pond's edges, bullhead lilies and water arum bloomed.

Water Arum

Green frogs croaked like banjos from within the reeds, and in the shallower water, we could see foot-long small-mouth bass lurking in the shadows. Along the inlet, we startled a deer getting a drink, a buck in velvet, and where he'd been, we noticed a beaver trail over which beavers had been dragging trees to enhance their lodge. 

At one point we had to make a short portage over a pile of rocks augmented by beavers--not the hop over sticks pictured above--and it was there I noticed the leeches. They were several inches long, with red bellies, and moved through the water like pieces of ribbon unfurling. I'm not normally a fan of leeches, but today I found them worth watching. Perhaps it was the influence of the landscape around me on this beautiful afternoon. On another day, in another setting, they'd have undoubtedly been creepy--or if one had attached to my foot while I was standing in the shallow water, hauling on the canoe. But today, I found them fascinating. 

See the leech, above the white thing in the lower left?

Even a leech has
its good points: grace in water,
a rouge-red belly.

July 30: Loon Chick

This evening we spent time with my four-year-old niece, who is staying with my parents for the weekend. We had dinner al fresco in the back yard, and then Fiona and I decided to sit on the dock and watch the river. Water bugs skittered across the surface, and Fiona was excited to see a couple of small fish slip past us underwater. As my husband got his fly rod ready to do a little casting before sunset, we all noticed the loon family in the middle of the river: two adults with one fuzzy brown chick between them. They seemed to be teaching it how to fish. Fiona looked through binoculars at them, but I'm not sure she knows how to use them well enough to see the birds. My mother tried to explain to her how loon calls are different depending on where they are, that the place, not the bird, determines what they sound like. I think that too was beyond Fiona's interest and comprehension at this point, but we'll make a birder out of her yet!

Fish began jumping as sunset burnished the clouds. Fiona was impressed with Uncle Paul's dragonfly fly. She'd probably have been even more impressed if he'd caught something with it. Four ducks that I think were wood ducks flew past. A beaver slowly made its way upriver, as it does every evening, a silver vee trailing behind it. And the loons drifted upriver too, still fishing. My dad built a small fire in the fire pit, and we all stayed outside in the growing dark, past Fiona's bedtime.  

Loon chick with parents--
family night on the river.
I watch with my niece.