Lock 25

August 29, 2025 — Day 9

Rivers Crossing Campground, Savannah NY

Lots of Life Maintenance this morning. We’re almost done with laundry. Yes, clothes get dirty when you are on the road, just like home. After lunch we headed out to the nearby Lock 25. Paul really wanted to see a lock. On the way to that lock, we passed a sign for May’s Pond, a birding hotspot in the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge. The plan was to hit the lock first, then do bird stuff. But bird stuff showed up first so it was birds before locks. (susan here: birds wait for no one. Even Paul.)

Warning: There will be lots of bird pictures from today. And probably tomorrow. But first something not bird related we saw at May’s Pond—probably a Pickerel Frog.

Wait, that’s a fish! Yes, there was this large fish jumping and presumably catching bugs. Paul tried to photograph the fish but the problem was the fish jumped when fish jump.

We continued down the same road to Lock 25 only to find No Parking signs everywhere. We couldn’t get out to see the cool boat tied up there. Susan managed to this picture of the boat out the window of the Jeep as we crossed the bridge to the other side of the canal looking for parking.

And we parked illegally–for about 20 seconds–at Lock 25.

Now for birds, and maybe fish. We stopped by the Tschache Pool overlook and saw… nothing.

It was actually very beautiful there. But the Main Pool, and evidently Tschache Pool, have been drawn down. The marshes are drawn down every 5 to 7 years to maintain a healthy marsh. Curiously, we first encountered this in Bosque del Apache and later Chincoteague. But, in Chincoteague they draw it down every year!

It was really cool watching the tall grass dance in the wind.

We made it to the Visitor’s Center at the Montezume National Wildlife Refuge. They’d closed about 20 minutes earlier. No precious stamp for our book so we’ll console ourselves with driving the loop road. Curiously, you can’t stop on the loop except at designated areas and even then, you must remain near your car. We guessed that this was to prevent morons from hiking into the marsh, sinking up to the armpits and scaring the birdies. A typical pullout looked like this:

This one didn’t have water, remember, it is drawn down, but it did have raptors.

We came across a spot called Seneca Flats and spent about an hour there. We found out the next day that you should never stop for more than 5 minutes. That’s not going to happen. Nobody spends 5 minutes at these spots because they’re THE spots. Secondly, why not post that with the other half a dozen rules?

We did see several thousand tree swallows. (susan here: not kidding. I’m thinking tens of thousands because for miles everywhere you looked there were swallows. But those lil’buggers are so fast you’re left wondering, “barn?” “tree?” “bank?” swallow.) In retrospect this is probably a barn swallow, based on other pictures, which is a life bird. (susan here: It’s still a damned fine picture that I wish was one I’d done.)

Around the bend we found yet another pool, and had this comedic shot, the two Greater Yellowlegs must have been spooked and flew away from each other, moments later they joined up again. But we did get a life bird, the Hooded Merganser. We didn’t know it at the time, Paul uploaded some crappy photos to iNaturalist and we had an ID by morning.

Back at camp Paul heated up BlocksOfFood™. He’d made a lot of “one bowl” meals before we left. Turns out that the Harissa and White Bean Chili has been put in the same Zip-Loc bag as the White Chicken Chili with Salsa Verde. Susan got the Harissa and Paul got the other. The Harissa looked great in the setting sun. It’s certainly added to our recipe rotation because it’s really yummy.

Life Birds: 1 — Hooded Merganser