Thanksgiving at Wash Brook: Coyote Remains, Green-Winged Teals, Muskrats, and Harriers.

   

    This thanksgiving was a very strange thanksgiving. We had planned to visit family, like we do every year, but unexpectedly, We got sick. We took covid tests, and while me and my dad came back negative, my mom, and brother were positive, which really didnt make sense, because I had the exact same symptoms as them. I don't know whether I had a cold, or my body was responding to covid differently than my brother was. We had been inside all day, and we had no plans. At 3:00 pm, I went to Landham Brook Marsh Conservation Area, and walked to Wash Brook Parcel (a long patch of grassy wetland, that stretches all the way from Nobscot to Wayland). There is a place along Landham road with scenic lookouts, where I hoped I would find the harriers again. 

    After standing at the side of the road, for a minute, not seeing anything, I got bored and walked a little bit further down the road, where I found some abandoned train tracks that looked like they were going to lead towards the center of the marsh. I decided to follow them for a bit. I soon got off of the tracks, bushwhacked through a thick, muddy wooded swamp, and then finally reached the marsh. I didn't have time to walk 20 feet into the tall grass and cattails, before a female northern harrier soared past me, heading upstream. She was about 30 feet up, and was clearly avoiding my clumsy self...

...Then she flew through the sun, and I lost track of her. I tried squinting, and covering up the sun with my fist, to find her again, before realizing she had descended, and was flying very low, skimming the tops of the cattails even. She was hunting.

It only took a couple seconds of her gliding, to get 200 feet away from me...

...and then she turned around, circling back, and was coming right towards me. If it weren't for the cattails in the way, this would have been my best photo of the month, with the heron, and old osprey nests in the background, and behind that, nobscot hill, and in the foreground, an IN FOCUS harrier.

I realized that I should have just been patient, and stayed up on the road, shooting down on the harriers. Coming down into the marsh had been a mistake. I bushwhacked back through the wooded swamp, jogged back up the train tracks, and up onto the road. It had taken me fifteen minutes to resume my photography. I scanned the horizon for the white tail feathers of a harrier. She was perched on a tree stump hundreds of feet away... tearing at a vole? It was hard to tell.

I got impatient again, and decided to see if there was anything interesting on the other side of the road, where there was a little stream, and more marshland. I crossed the road, and saw a pair of ducks I didn't recognize. They looked like a mated pair of mallards at first, but they were too small. Were they mergansers? it was hard to tell. They were paddling away fast, and turned the corner, disappearing from view. I realized that if I was fast, I might be able to move to another riverbank upstream, and get a new angle on the pair. I finally got a few photos. This was a new species of duck for me. After my walk, I did some research, and now know that these were green winged teals.

I only had a few seconds of time to photograph the mystery ducks, before I got too close, and both the female and male flew away, flapping quickly downstream, and attracting a red tailed hawk, who flew out of the woods, realized how fast the pair were flying, and abandoned the chase, landing in trees on the other side of the marsh...

I started walking back to the road, when I saw the same pair of tiny ducks come flapping silently back towards me. They flew high over my head, over the road, and landed somewhere near Landham Brook...

...Then I looked down. I had almost stepped on a ribcage! it was the same exact color as the giant mats of dead grass that made up the marsh, and was falling apart. In that area, there were many trails of the scavengers that picked apart the animal's body. The ribcage was too big to be a raccoon, but too small to be a deer. The ribcage was almost too fragile to pick up:

I realized immediately what the bones belonged to when I saw another matted down patch of grass nearby. It was blanketed with coyote hair...

I spent a few minutes looking for the skull, but couldn't. I crossed Landham Road again, and was back to the side that the harrier had been perched at. It was now no longer on the tree stump, and was roosting in a maple near the riverbank, maybe taking a break from the hunt to enjoying the sunset?

Another harrier appeared out of nowhere, from upstream, passed the one that was perched, and flapped over the road. I guess there are at least two females hunting the same area. Up until that point, I had thought there was only one harrier.

Just then, something else grabbed my attention. A muskrat creating ripples in a stream on the other side of the road. I crossed the road a third time. It dove under the surface, near the edge of the stream, dispearing. I always see the massive ripples created by muskrats before the animals themselves.

             It's den wasn't very far away. There was some leftover food (grass), around the entrance.

...There was another one nearby, so I switched my attention over. This one was so large, that I at first though it was a beaver. It hopped up onto the ice on the other side of the brook, to eat...

I then headed home at only 4:00. I had all the photos I was hoping for, and more. The sun was also setting, making for bad photography. We had thanksgiving just the 4 of us, and got lamb ribs, which me and my dad grilled up. Not traditional, but I liked it more than turkey.