Another walking-not-riding day

February 26, 2023

Back down to the C&O Canal

THE CONTRAST between yesterday and today could hardly be greater. Yesterday was gray and cold, with a high of only about 35 degrees and intermittent light drizzle or fleeting snow flurries. Today it's nearly 60 degrees and there's hardly a cloud in the sky, at least after about 11:00. I have a new tripod and want to take it for a trial run with real live subjects, not just still life compositions.

I head down to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park in hopes of catching some good bird photos. It's still early in the season but I've been hearing the early-arriving songbirds around my house, so there's hope. I hope further that the additional woodland and water habitats in the park will have enticed our small feathered friends to show themselves.

Arriving at the park not long after noon I start walking upstream on the towpath, away from the Great Falls Visitor's Center. The area immediately around the VC is always the busiest, but you only have to go a half mile upstream to leave 95 percent of the people behind.

There's not a lot of birdsong, which surprises me a bit. I can hear an occasional pileated woodpecker off in the woods but never spot the source. There's another bird (several, actually) making a "pew! pew! pew!" call much closer to me but despite my careful scanning of the area where the call seems to be coming from, I'm unable to spot anything with either my naked eye or the binoculars I've brought along as a spotting aid.

This looks like a good place to spot a woodpecker, but nobody's home today.

The only birds I spot in or right along the canal are a pair of Canada geese: hardly exotic, but easy and placid targets so they get their picture taken.

Fresh pawprints in the soft mud in the canal bed record an animal's passage; presumably a raccoon has been this way recently.

Hoping for better results and more opportunities by leaving the towpath itself I turn off onto the much smaller and less used River Trail, a loop of a mile or so that runs- surprise, surprise- right along the Potomac's edge.

I'm soon rewarded: rounding a bend I find a large great blue heron busily engaged in trying to find itself some lunch. It largely ignores me, which leaves me free to get the tripod set up and fire away. The results are pleasing.

It's also possible to see across the river without having to peer through the maze of twigs and branches of the woodland. Perched on a snag most of the way across the river toward the Virginia side of the river I spot a small group of what I believe are cormorants. Cormorants are pretty common in this area and I can't think what else these birds might be.

There are also a number of gulls on the river today but they're too far away for me to be able to tell what variety they are.

Rather than follow the River Trail all the way back to the Visitor's Center I turn and backtrack to the towpath and continue upstream. Along the way I find another heron, perched and preening itself. It's unconcerned with my presence, unlike so many others I've encountered recently that have taken wing the moment I've stopped and reached for the camera.

Most of the canal is no longer watered but there are patches here and there where water remains. I'm scanning for turtles sunning themselves in the late winter (really more like early spring, although that's officially still three weeks off) after emerging from their annual brumation (the equivalent of hibernation, for cold-blooded animals) in the mud.

It takes a while, but eventually I'm rewarded. A pair of red-eared sliders are perched on a log, just above the water's surface. Their shells still bear traces of the mud in which I presume they buried themselves last autumn.

Doing the turtle two-step. Ogden Nash wrote "The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks / Which practically conceal its sex. / I think it clever of the turtle / In such a fix, to be so fertile."

The wind, what little there is, is mostly from the south today which results in another form of aerial distraction. Every few minutes one of these files past, on its way farther down the river to a landing at National Airport.

They're landing so the engine noise is relatively muted but there's a constant stream of them to break the sounds of nature.

Suddenly I spot a good-sized hawk fairly close to the towpath. It's perched atop a tree trunk that's been cut about 15 or 20 feet up, and amazingly there's a clear line of sight to it. Before I can react, though, the bird moves to a branch a bit farther away, and much more heavily screened by intervening branches.

The best I could manage. The autofocus was utterly befuddled and before I could reposition myself the bird was gone. Alas, a missed opportunity.

It seems to be my day for nabbing herons, though. On my way back downstream I spy one perched on a log that's fallen into the canal proper. It's absolutely motionless, affording me a great opportunity to get off a number of shots.

There's also another turtle out soaking up late February sunshine.

Reentering the Riverside Trail, this time I do follow it all the way from one end to the other. Meeting another couple wielding binoculars and a camera with a serious telephoto lens, I ask what they've seen. "Not much, it's pretty quiet today" they tell me, but they also mention having seen a group of common mergansers on a rock most of the way to the Virginia side, just a bit ahead of me. So, I'm on the lookout for them and eventually, there they are.

Much closer to my side of the river a pair of mallards are swimming around and dabbling for dinner. Whether it's a trick of the light or some other phenomenon I'm not sure, but the male seems to have a purple head rather than the customary green.

Back in the area of the Visitor's Center I stop for a moment at the low dam that was created to help supply the canal, and later the inland population, with water. Thanks to recent wet weather the river's running pretty well today and the water's roaring as it spills over the dam and as it runs through an adjoining bypass sluice.

Never underestimate the power of water flowing under the influence of gravity. This would absolutely be a drowning machine to anyone foolish enough or unfortunate enough to get caught in it.

This rock is part of the structure of the canal lock adjacent to the visitor's center. Decades of wear from towropes passing over the rock as canal boats transited the lock have left deep grooves in the rock.

The Visitor's Center was originally a much smaller house for the lock keeper and his family. The building was later expanded to include an inn and tavern, and now serves as the Great Falls Visitor's Center. It also includes a small museum and space for educational events and activities.

It was a lovely day to be out and about.

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