Nippenicket Pond, at the southestern edge of the great Hockomock Swamp. Paddled clockwise.
November 11th, dipped a paddle for the first time in ever-so-long, slowly
paddling nearly the whole pond over an hour or two. Autumn colors
around here seemed to dip a toe for weeks, then dove in This was the
best time on the water in a long while
.
An autumn meadowhawk (identified by the good people of iNaturalist) not only landed on my kayak, but returned after I accidentally scared it off.
Autumn colors nearby and close-up.
A couple of islands are large enough and high enough to be permanent, while several others are gauzy things with no dry land at all when the pond is high, as it is now with all of this summer's rain.
Tupelo can be told even from a distance by its deep, deep red autumn dress.
A naturalist's kayak gets messier than most.
Red maples losing their leaves.
The very northern end of the pond is too choked with floating vegetation to paddle easily.
Watershield is a little unusual in having leaf stems that connect to the center of the blade.
Land and water are not mutually exclusively categories here.
Nearly all the flowers that brighten the pond in summer (especially the two kinds of water lilies) are gone, except these that emerge shyly from the underwater stems of Carolina fanwort.
