Peace Like A River

Being a professional naturalist has given me the opportunities to either ride in or drive many kinds of vehicles.  I've been on ATV's, agency pick-up trucks equipped with infrared and night vision scopes, airplanes, motor boats, mountain bikes, John Deere gators, and even a helicopter.  These things make work in parks/wildlife easier, depending on where work needs to be done. Sometimes, not all wildlife is best enjoyed by a fast trail vehicle or the coolest aircraft.  Sometimes, it's all about something meaningful.

Potomac River sunrise

This past spring, I noticed a stretch of forest with bald eagle nests, a heron rookery, and a cormorant rookery. These rookeries are places where flocks of birds come to nest and congregate.   It just sounded like a little slice of wildlife watching heaven to me.  I had to get out there to see the birds and to try to photograph some of them.  The forest was only accessible by boat, and the boat I was dying to take out was in my backyard straddled upon a few sawhorses, on dry land.

The boat's name is Peace Like A River, and for the past 2 years, she had only touched a body of water a few times.  I wanted to change that. 

My desire to take her on the water increased when I was flipping through a small photo album of my grandfather's, from years ago.  This album was basically the story of how that canoe (and a few others) were built by him and of the adventures my mom and uncle had in those canoes, as children.  In between the pages of these photos are blueprints and plans that were used to construct Peace Like A River.  It doesn't seem easy to build one of these things, so it goes without saying that I'm thankful for having one so accessible to me.

Author's grandfather in Peace Like A River.

She's got an incredible amount of character in her wooden body.  She rides smooth, and although some maneuvers can be wobbly at times, she'll make every ride an enjoyable one.  It's even more enjoyable when you think about her history and character.



Author as a child (middle) with family on the Potomac River.

My siblings and I, as young kids, used to really enjoy going for rides in the boat.  My father would do most of the paddling work because as a kid, my main job used to be focused on not flipping the boat or leaning outside of it.  We'd fish from the canoe mostly, and often take breaks for lunch on the islands.  As I child, this was seen as an excuse to explore, an excuse that I still haven't let go of today as an adult.


As I was thinking of a plan to take the boat out and to see the bird rookeries, I figured I'd invite my friend Jeff.  He's a professional photographer with works and ties to National Geographic.  I found it fitting, as we try to find excuses to get out in our local parks anyway.  Plus, he takes amazing photos. He agreed and my excitement to go increased immensely. We paddled on the Potomac near where the birds were nesting.  We didn't disturb them at all, and Jeff got some really good photos of cormorants and herons. The "drop zone" of bird poop was quickly determined by us, so we knew to keep a bit of a distance from the animals.  The nests were probably between 40 and 70 feet in the air, and when a bird needed to poop, they didn't think twice about sending it straight down from that height.  It was an interesting experience, and I'll never forget the commotion of nesting cormorants and herons.

Cormorant rookery (nesting site).  Photo:  Jeff Mauritzen

Peace Like A River was originally a northerner, being built in New Jersey and taken out on bodies of water in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 

She now resides in Virginia, and her most travelled body of water these days is the Potomac River, turning her into Southern Belle with northern roots.


Brian Balik (author) in Peace Like A River, searching for birds.  Photo:  Jeff Mauritzen

 

-Big thanks to Jeff Mauritzen for taking amazing photos and coming along on my local excursions.  Click to see more of his work here:  Travel and Wildlife Photography .

Cold-Weather Blues

It's been one rough winter with snow still on all of our minds here in Virginia.  Spring is here though, and fishing season has already started for me.

The Potomac River has blue catfish.  These things are monster bottom feeder that bite well in March and April.  I've never caught a big one before, so going last week was something that I was really looking forward to.

Blue catfish are a non-native species here and were stocked in Virginia in the 1970's  (source: Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries).  They can get big.  Really big.  They feast on herring, shad, bass, crawfish, and other marine species.

The section of the Potomac River where we were fishing is also prime bald eagle and osprey territory, and even they seemed excited about the fish that we were catching.  Other notable birds that were seen from the boat were wood ducks, grebes, coots, and canvasbacks.

This fishing trip kicked off my "official" start of spring.  Camera-traps, canoeing, and sunshine are now on my mind, and summer better come quick.

As for the camera-traps,  I've got them still out and taking photos.  Recent results from them have been more coyotes, red foxes mating, and the usuals (raccoons, deer, squirrels).

Deer Exodus

The melting snow in the Shenandoah Valley from last week and rain all around have made the Potomac River rise to "Flood Stage".  It's raging and is a dangerous monster when this happens.

Flowing on top of the water is a scattered garbage dump full of what I call "River Nonsense".  River nonsense is mostly made up of pieces of lumber, sticks, oil barrels, and general trash.  It's all the stuff that gets moving when the river floods its own banks.  It's not pretty, but sort of interesting in a weird way.

With the flowing water and garbage also comes another interesting sight.  Deer (the white-tailed variety of course) are swimming all over the place.  They're swimming to islands, from islands, to the mainland, and all over.  

They do this because some of them live on the islands of the Potomac River across from Great Falls, Virginia.  There are islands big and small, and when the river water rises this high, it makes for a very crammed problem for these deer. 

So what do these deer do?  The move, and to move away, they start swimming.

I saw this today and have only seen it once before during Hurricane Sandy's wrath.

I couldn't get a good picture of the deer since they were maybe around 300-400 yards away, but it was quite a sight.

A Puddle with A Purpose

A small puddle at the edge of a pond does a lot for the local wildlife.

Great blue herons use it to find their food...

 

Fox squirrels walk near it... Look at the size of those arms and muscles!  I cropped the image so you could be see the little guy.





 

White-tailed deer drink from the puddle...





And raccoons also use it to find their food.

 

The puddle offers a lot to the animals.  For now though, the camera is being moved to a new location.  I'll revisit the puddle with cameras in another month or so.



Beaver Signs

It was hard to miss these signs of beavers along the Potomac River.  I counted 65 trees in total that were chewed on or damaged by beavers.

The power of their jaws and durability of their teeth amaze me.

 

You better believe that I put up a camera near these trees.



Who Will Eat Pawpaw Fruit?

Pawpaw trees are fruiting now in Virginia.  In case you didn't know, a pawpaw is a tree that is common in Virginia's stream valleys and on riverbanks.  It's a tree that produces a fruit that raccoons, bears, and foxes eat.  People that eat the pawpaw fruit usually compare it to a banana and a pear, but I disagree and do not enjoy eating them.  It's texture is too mealy for me and I could do without the hard seeds inside of the fruit.



Pawpaw Fruit



 



Since the animals eat the fruit, I figured it would be a good idea to put a camera under some of the pawpaw trees along the riverbank in Fairfax County.

We'll see who eats  pawpaw in the next week or so.

Fishing While Waiting for the Cameras

With all of the cameras out in full force this past week, I've had none to check for a few days (for once).  I'm letting them all sit out there for at least a few days so that my human scent gets washed away from them after a few rains.  Also, an army of volunteers has been helping me check them, so I'm waiting on a few emails with some great results from the cameras.

In the meantime, I've been on the water fishing a lot for work and play purposes.  Here are some of my best fishing pictures from the past week.

19-20 inch smallmouth bass caught on a tube-lure.

Striped bass caught on live-lined spot on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

Kayak Camera: Trip 3

I scouted out some new camera-trap locations along the river today and found myself getting lost in this sunset while out on a kayak.

Few words are really necessary for this post.  Enjoy the pictures, folks.

Kayak Camera: Trip 2

Wow, I'm beat.  I've basically spent the whole day either working on the river, kayaking for fun alone, or kayaking with friends.  The camera-traps have hopefully been working hard lately, so I have taken my mind off of most of them for the past day or two.  Today was dedicated to the Potomac River.

The wee hours of the morning have been calling my name lately.  I was up and at it at 5:30 in the morning to see the sunrise on the river while on a kayak.

I hit the water just as the sun had come up over a ridge on the Maryland side of the Potomac River.  There was another man taking out a nice bass boat nearby so I said hello and paddled onward.

The point of getting out this early was to  not only see the sun rise over the river, but to just relax alone before the work day started. This sunrise just happened to be the earliest of all sunrises because of it being the day of the summer solstice.

I completed 12 laps from Virginia to Maryland and back and paddled a little upriver to an island to take a short break.

Silt and dirt were still in the river from rains a few days ago, but the river was flowing at a decent pace.  Cormorants, great blue herons, bald eagles, baltimore orioles, and mergansers were doing their usual calls and activities at this time.

Common mergansers showing their summer colors:  a rusty-reddish head and a gray body

I drifted and paddled back to the Virginia shore where I was greeted by a raccoon messing around with some leftovers in a trash can near the boat ramp.  Clapping didn't make it budge so I got a little closer and yelled at it.  It ran up a tree and gave me a few glares before coming down and disappearing into the woods.

Kayak Camera: Trip 1

I was not alone on my solo kayaking excursion today.  You're never alone in the outdoors around here.  Mosquitoes and flies are constantly battling your swatting arms, birds are whizzing by, and snakes are hiding among the thousands of species of flora and fauna that may be within a few hundred yards of you.

To get away from the fast water, I hit this calm stretch of a creek for a few minutes.

Today's kayaking was to relax and to get some pictures of, well, basically anything I could find, including animals and the scene.

A kayak is not the best place to have electronics, so I left my camera at home. If kayaking has taught me one thing, it is limit the amount of items on board, because I will spill from time to time.  If being in the outdoors has taught me one thing, it is that a camera is almost a necessity.  I have had so many missed opportunities while being outside without a camera, so I bought a waterproof plastic case last year that houses my cell phone (and of course, its built in camera) while on a boat.  The goals here are to protect my camera from the water, to capture as many great shots as possible with it, and to not miss anything.

I missed a lot today though with it.  It's tough to whip out a phone in a case, that is in your pocket, while you are sitting in the tiny cockpit of a kayak, while your body struggles to keep balance in the dips the ripples that make up the Potomac River.  It's a hard task

I heard a great blue heron's mad call from about 30 yards ahead.  It flew away quickly without giving me a chance to fish my pockets for the phone's case for a photo opportunity.  I paddled upstream farther, seeing a large cormorant on a rock.  I got close to it, really close.  There was time to get the phone out of the case that was now sitting in between my knees in the cockpit.

The kayak moved downstream about 5 feet in the time it took me to balance my body, balance the paddle, get in my pocket, grab the case, open the case, and turn the phone's camera setting to the "on" position.  I put the camera down, now exposing it to the air (and possibly water, if I capsized), grabbed the paddles again, and worked fast to gain the 5 feet that I lost when the kayak became a subject of the swift current a few seconds earlier.

I couldn't believe how close to this bird I was, and just as soon as I thought that, it flew away.  I was maybe 2 seconds away from taking its picture, and it was gone.  On to the next subjects!

By this time, a friend of mine was on the water as well.  He came up to me and we shared stories of the river, work, and animals.   We came up to a large slab of stone.  It was composed mostly of metagraywacke (if you even care to know about that sort of thing).  A large northern water snake was basking the stone's silvery surface.  We saw one more on it, then another, then another!  There were 4 snakes on it in total, 1 moved off and glided into the water.  Another snake got spooked as well, and moved towards our kayaks that were now touching the rock.  The beast went right on my friend's kayak, but didn't go near the cockpit or his body, and eventually went into the water when the kayak made menacingly wicked turns and clunked along another rock.

Northern water snake on the top, left of this rock.

Another snake on the rock heard the commotion and slid into the water as well.  I took a few pictures of the remaining water snake, and it too, slid off the rock and into the quick waters of the Potomac.



We passed by turtles, more cormorants, and about a half-dozen or so squawking, great blue herons. The biggest disappointment of the day came from missing a picture of a bald eagle that flew right above us.

If that is the biggest disappointment of the day, then I still call the day a success.  It was a nice day kayaking with the thousands of species of animals that call this area home.

A small, serene tributary of the Potomac River.