We weren't feeling up to a long paddle today, so a quick trip around our home waters of The Gorge seemed like exactly the thing to do. We headed over to look at the sculpture we've dubbed The Iron Man...
...but these days he's starting to look a little like the The Rust Man.
From there we paddled slowly against the current, up to a tree I call Cormorant Tree because there's always cormorants in it. Except for today, apparently. I was wondering if we'd hit the water too early today as there did not seem to be any birds about. But I was so busy looking up for the cormorants, that I wasn't looking down and almost missed this heron.
Continuing on, we soon found plenty of birds as this flock of geese went by. There were eight adults, so I'm assuming four families were travelling together. We've seen this sort of behaviour before, so it seems that geese don't mind travelling in large groups with other families. 18 goslings by my count.
Under the bridge and into Portage Inlet, and we started looking for the local swans. We spotted them near their nest and we cruised in a little closer to see if their were any swanlings this year.
There appeared to be only one...
...unless there were still some in her nest. But that didn't seem likely.
Still, we felt like drinking a toast to all the new life we were seeing, and it was just our good fortune that a bottle of red wine floated past us.
It was empty, alas.
The forecast cool southerly breeze that was supposed to kick in during the afternoon arrived a little earlier than forecast, so we headed back...
...and saw that the swans had hunkered down in their nest against front that was coming in.
We passed by the geese again as well. They'd landed to enjoy a meal of fresh grass and plants.
And soon, we also landed, just as the wind and clouds moved in. Perfect timing..
Trip Length: 7.67 km
YTD: 80.04 km
More pictures are here.
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