the Way of the Turtle

Eagles & A Beaver on a Rainy Evening
2 Mile Walk on the Mohawk Hudson Bike Path
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Woke up to a surprising amount of sunshine this morning. I left my Kent road bike (the one I usually ride) out at Ann's yesterday to force me to start using the Dawes... pumped up the tires and lubed the chain today, then noticed that the rear wheel wasn't true. Seems I had forgotten I broke a spoke some time last summer... by the time I had it replaced and trued the wheel, the storms I'd been hearing about all afternoon had kicked in and it was raining too hard to go for a ride. So after putting in a short appearance at class, I headed over to the bike path to do a bit of walking before calling it an evening.

One nice thing about the bike path in the rain - there usually aren't many other people there! Since it was dusk the birds were all chattering away - robins, catbirds, and blackbirds, mostly. Unfortunately the #@&**$#!! mosquitoes were out in force and chowed down on me whenever I stopped to snap a picture (it wasn't raining very hard most of the time... actually, by the time I turned around it wasn't raining at all.) I really hate mosquitoes.

Across the mouth of the Lisha Kill there were two large birds perched at the top of a tree... the eagle whammy strikes again! Spent a while trying to get some decent pictures and swearing at the skeeters... it was tough going because it was getting dark (and because I kept getting bitten!) Looking at the photos, at least one was probably the same eagle I saw about a month ago... a youngster, probably 3 years old, still coming into to his full adult plumage. Wouldn't it be cool if two eagles settled in that area and had some eaglets...

I had planned to stop at the bridge but continued on a ways further because I could hear a duck calling out in the wetlands... never saw the duck but I did see one of the beavers swimming down the stream. This is the first time I've seen any of the ones there, though the lodge and the dams make it pretty obvious they're living there.

As it got darker during the walk back I was treated to the sight of dozens of fireflies blinking on and off in the bushes along the path... someday I will figure out a way to get a photo of one of them.

JMH