We’ve been getting lots of rain lately, some of it coming in short but intense downpours. The river is beginning to flood and, when it does, it backs up all the tributaries that flow into it. “Our” pond connects to the river by a slow-moving channel, most often obscured by vegetation so it doesn’t appear to be a “tributary”, but, nevertheless, it is. And when the river floods it backs up and pushes retained water up into the usually dry land around it – as you can see in this photo. When this picture was taken, the water was about 32 cm below the back end of the cabin. When I left, around noon, it had dropped by about 2 cm. Hopefully this recession will continue, at least enough to absorb the forecast rains, so that we don’t have it up to the door again. Keep your fingers crossed. The flooding affected 5 of the 6 nets that are up so far:
You will notice that Net 2 isn’t pictured – it is high and dry. But, Mother Nature being the tease she is, also brought strong winds which would have billowed it so I didn’t bother to try to open it.
But…hope springs eternal…..I set out 3 traps to try and catch ground feeders. But even they disdained the fine buffet set out for them. Hopefully the wind will drop, along with the water level, and we can get going tomorrow.
But there was some action: Tree Swallows were checking out the bird boxes and 2 groups (19 & 12) of Northern Pintails blew by up high using the river as a general guide. [Interestingly, the 100’s of swallows that I reported yesterday over the river downstream from the York bridge were gone; I didn’t see a one.]
Rick