Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Reserve

So, last Friday I took the kayaks to Monroe.  As previously mentioned, I was a little uneasy about traveling with them.  I spent the hour and a half drive constantly leaning forward to get a glimpse of the kayaks' positions and looking for any change that might indicate that the 'yaks would soon be sailing through the air and wreaking havoc on I-20.  I needn't have worried.  When I arrived at "Granny's Garden Place Inn", the straps were still as secure as ever, and I am finally confident that this system will serve me well.  I might get some ratchet straps before I make the 850 mile drive to SC with them, though.

After a nice visit and a great dinner with Mike & Becky, I called it a night.  Saturday morning I picked Mike up and we headed to the lake before sunrise.  As we were putting in at the boat launch, we startled a small gator who was lounging in the swampy shallows about 10 feet from the launch.  All I really saw of him was a flash of tail as he thrashed the water announcing his less-than-graceful departure, but I'd estimate him at about 3 ft.  It was a quiet morning.  2 boats had put in before we arrived, and one was putting in as we were, so there was not a lot of traffic on the 2000 acre lake.  It took a few minutes for Uncle Mike to get in and get comfortable, this was his first time in a kayak.  We paddled around the launch for a little bit...well, we paddled away from the launch, relocated the cooler (water and Mike's root beer, no alcohol), Mike lost his glove, I went back to look for it, we gave up, we paddled away from the launch and finally out into the lake.

Uncle Mike early in the morning while he still had one glove

Not long after the above picture was taken, Mike's second glove went missing.  (We would later find the first under his butt, but the second has taken up residence, we assume, at the bottom of Black Bayou Lake.)

We slowly paddled around the eastern shore as we got comfortable in the water.  As we checked out "Alligator Point" a couple of fishermen boated up (apparently we were in their fishing hole).  They wished us luck with our day, expressed their concern for our well-being, told us of the huge gators we were sure to see, and promised to come to the rescue if and when they heard our screams.  They are an easily unsettled bunch of boys, those bayou fishermen. 

We continued out into the lake to check out an old duck blind.  I didn't get any photos of the blind, but I got to hear the old duck hunting stories, like the one where Mike and Dan forgot to shut the door on the blind and the boat floated off into the lake.  The boys refused to retrieve the boat, so Papa Joe had to strip down and dive in in the middle of winter.  I can't imagine that he was very good company after that!  While at the blind, I found a beautiful dragonfly caught in a spider's web.  I'm pretty comfortable with the circle of life thing, but the web was abandoned.  This poor little bug was going to have a meaningless death.  Actually, now that I think about it, I bet a bird would have swooped down and gobbled it up pretty quickly...oops.  Anyway, I had to free it.  This was somewhat of a challenge in itself, trying to navigate close enough the free the dragonfly, trying not to get so close as to discover that there was a spider there (not much bothers me, but spiders are on the list, high on the list), and trying not to kill the dragonfly in the process.  I freed her. She fell in the water. I rescued her.  I pulled out my pocketknife and carefully performed a spider web extraction procedure to remove the strong-as-steel threads from her slightly torn wings.  She flew off.  She fell in the water.  I rescued her.  She perched on the lifejacket at the bow of the boat.  After a while I noticed that she was gone.  I expect she dried off and flew on the have a nice, long, fulfilled life...right?


"Lucy" drying off on the bow of the kayak afer an encounter with a spider web.

We headed back to the eastern shore to continue our way around toward the "Fourth Lake".  As we glided over the massive lily pads (one benefit of a kayak over a canoe), we were visited by a lively little fellow.  I did not recognize this white and black bird, but he immediately became one of my new favorites.  He let me float up pretty close to get some shots of him.  I think he was even posing.  I later identified him as an Eastern Kingbird, though the white terminal strip is not visible in my photos.  On this little jaunt we also saw an anhinga in a powerful pose, but he would not let us get very close.

Eastern Kingbird



Anhinga

Meanwhile, back on the shoreline...  As we paddled around, I tried to maintain some sense of where the boat launch was and was able to do so satisfactorily I think, but not knowing the lake, I can't tell you exactly where we were now.  Paddling along we watched green herons, anhinga, and some type of small, beautiful duck that I never got a very good look at.  We continued into some type of lagoon-like "finger" of the lake.  I was watching the shoreline off to my left and finally said, not wanting to get my hopes up, "That stick over there sure looks like an alligator", to which Uncle Michael replied, "That's an alligator!" 

We watched her for a moment and then she went under.  We thought that was that, but she popped up again just a few feet down the bank.  She slowly followed the bank for a while and we eventually went on ourselves.  She was behind us now and I was keeping an eye on her.  She was circling around and kind of seemed to be following us.  I did say that I wanted to play tag with the gators after all!  She obviously had reason to stay in the vicinity, and with it being nesting season, I think she was just a momma-to-be keeping a lookout. 

Momma gator circling around

We were in search of the illusive "Fourth Lake" and as the "finger" of the lake that we were in continued to narrow it tapered off into a cut-through of sorts.  Being in the kayaks we were able to slide over and through the globs of water hyacinth and soil that were floating on the water and found ourselves in an area of the lake that is inaccessible to most and seldom, if ever, visited. 

As we snaked through we saw signs of alligator "trails", but none of the ancient reptiles made an appearance.  We were able to sneak up on a Great Egret that seemed to be doing some fishing. 

We watched him for a while.  He passively watched us.  Eventually he got tired of being the center of attention and made his fishless getaway.

When we finally got to a point where it was clear we wouldn't be able to fight through the vegetation and floating islands much further, we turned around.  We emerged back into the main lake and found the gator that we had previously harassed facing us, eagerly (?) awaiting our return.  I took a few more shots, but she clearly did not want to be bothered, so we let her be and moved on.

We continued through some areas of the lake that were more dense with cypress trees, a perfect place for gator spotting.

 And spotting we did.  I lost count at about a half-dozen.  Here's a decent shot of a pretty big one that we watched for a little while. 

This was the "big one" of the day.  Maybe 9 feet?  I dunno.

As we headed back toward the boat launch we paused for a minute so that Uncle Mike could decide not to venture out onto the eerie-looking wooded bank and so that I could watch a couple of green herons having a bit of a tussle.  Green herons have been a favorite of mine for about the last year and a half, ever since I saw (identified) my first one.  This guy looks pretty peeved, but in the end he won the fight.


The victorious green heron

Careening over the lily pads as we wrapped up our little adventure, we were kept company by a red-winged blackbird.  There were tons of these guys around.  I haven't seen any in years, so it was good to see them again.

All in all, we had a great morning on the water.  It was wonderful to be able to spend it with Uncle Michael.  And I'll leave out the story about me knocking the old fisherman out of his boat.  Better me than the 15 foot gator that (supposedly) bumped his boat the day before!  All these guys have stories about why we were lucky to make it back alive.  It's a shame there is so much fear of these beautiful, graceful creatures that really just want to be left alone.  They can get the adrenaline pumping though!

Looking forward to going out to Black Bayou again, hopefully next time with David and Elizabeth along for the ride as well.