the Way of the Turtle

18.6 Mile Ride Along the Mohawk Hudson Bike Path
Friday, May 8, 2009

The first thing that struck me during tonight's ride was how green everything has gotten since I was last on the bike path a couple of weeks ago. It's a nice change from all the grey and brown, even if it does make it a lot harder to see the wildlife.

It's also nice to have the river back to its summer levels, now that the canal has re-opened for the 2009 season.

One minus - many of the waterfowl that were migrating through a month ago have moved on... but I guess we'll see them again in the fall. Happily, the eagles don't seem to have moved on - I saw one out on the river half a mile or so above the Lock 7 dam, and managed to get some good photos of him before a stupid powerboat came through and scared him off. Looks like a juvenile a couple of years old... his white feathers are starting to come in...

At the top of the old landfill I had a nice view of two swallows in/on a birdhouse alongside the path... they were pretty active around Lock 7 as well. Plenty of geese in view, and I saw a couple of big fish jump at different points. Unfortunately it was getting dark when I saw a heron hunting across the water, so none of my photos really came out... but he was a lot of fun to see, first stalking a fish or frog, then blasting into the water to get it (a bit unusual, typically they just dart their heads forward) and swallowing it down followed by several sips of water and a major shimmy, presumably to shake the water off his feathers.

While I was riding a storm blew through, cooling things down a bit - fortunately nothing more than light sprinkles of rain for me, though there was lightning off in the distance and some pretty strong wind for a bit.

JMH