Category: Kayaking

I went kayaking after work today on Irondequoit Creek. The carp were mating, and there were lots of dead ones floating around, thus my little perl joke in the title.

It was a great day to blow off work a bit early, and Rob and I went upstream from Bay Creek Paddling Center up just past the Elison Park dog beach. I was pretty tired on the way back, and it didn’t help that the wind shifted around and got cold, so we ended up with headwinds in both directions. According to the thermometer in my car, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees in the course of the hour and a half paddle, although it felt like the temperature change happened all at once when the wind shifted.

The weir was a bit of a challenge, but nothing like it had been last time I took a look at it. I nearly dug a rail under, and was grateful for my spray skirt. Rob took about three tries, but mostly because he tried hitting it from one side or the other instead of coming right up the middle.

A couple of times we saw a bird that at first we thought was some sort of Loon because it was so low in the water, but it had no white markings, only black, with a bit of red or orange near the base of the beak. When it flew, we could see very long pointy wings. And when it swam it held its beak up at a 45 degree angle to the water, rather than parallel like a Loon does. I guessed it was a Cormorant, and after looking it up, I’m sure of it.

We also saw lots of geese. At one point, we heard a lot of honking up ahead, and as we rounded the corner this goose left the shore and paddled out in front of us, and did a bit of a fake take-off, presumably to try to lead us away from his nest. But this annoyed another goose, who then flew into the first one and attacked him until they both flew off.

Lots of people and dogs in the dog park, including two people who kept asking us all sorts of questions about paddling and seemed put out that we continued paddling instead of stopping to talk after we’d answered a couple. And one canoe coming upstream just as we’d flushed the Cormorant downstream for the last time. They asked us what the bird was, I said Cormorant, and the woman in the front of the canoe said “See, I told you” to the man in the back.

Lots of fun.

It’s rare for me to get my second paddle of the season so quickly after the first (first was Sunday, second was today, Wednesday), but the weather cooperated and today was chicken wing day in the cafeteria so I wasn’t hungry when I got home, so away I went.

The creek was quite deserted by other boats, except for one flat bottom dinghy that two guys were fishing from. I’ve seen carp mating in that area, so that’s probably what they were after.

Considering that Sunday I saw almost no wildlife except geese, today was a bonanza day. I saw male red-winged blackbirds staking out their territories, several kingfishers patrolling their sections of the river (and raising their crests in alarm when I got too close), a few pairs of ducks, and I finally saw the famous Irondequoit Creek bald eagles. I rounded a corner and saw two soaring birds, one quite high and one just above the ridge line, nd immediately said “oh, turkey vultures”, but then the lower one spread his stunning white tail and I noticed that the head was bright white as well. I never did make out for sure if the higher one was a bald eagle as well, but I think it was. One thing that impressed me was that while it was soaring, it seemed to be moving back and forth much faster than a turkey vulture does. Maybe it’s anti-vulture prejudice, but it just seemed more, I don’t know, purposeful or something.

I also saw a crow or raven down fairly low, but he flew away rapidly as I got near so I didn’t get a good look. There were very distinct primary feathers curling up at the tips, which I think means it was a raven.

I went a little bit further than I did on Sunday, and I wasn’t as tired when I reached the weir, probably because I paced myself better. Probably just as well, because on the way home there were two stretches where I was paddling into a very strong wind. My weather widget says that the winds at the airport are 21G33 knots, or 24 to 33 mph, which I can easily believe. And when the wind is blowing in my face like that, my old canoe trip instincts say “paddle as hard as you can for the lee of the upwind shore, and don’t rest until you get there”, so that’s what I do.