Meryl Grandy

Rerun

S wanted to do some bird watching today so I took her back to Bailey Creek, where I had been yesterday.  I let her sleep long in the morning, so our day started hours later than normal for me.  It was already in the 70's with a water haze in the air and a wind from the southwest that was moderately strong.
We set out up the Neck with the wind at our back and several osprey in the air all around us.  S practiced her bow steering strokes as we paddled through the meandering Neck and Bailey Creek, the wind and tide current creating a multidimensional problem of leading or lagging the steering so that the wind, tide and bend all add up to putting the canoe somewhere in the middle of the channel. 

Least sandpipers are commoon the whole way, dunlin hog the confluence of the East and Neck, turtles outnumber birds once we get into Bailey Creek, and the fiddler crabs up there outnumber everything. 

When the creek runs shallow we stop for a break and watch two willets hunting for fiddler crabs.  The wind dies down some while we sit, and then we head out.