PILEATED WOODPECKER AND MORE LODGES AND DENS

It's a misty morning on the pond with the temperatures in the 30s. The sunlight is gorgeous on the fall colored leaves.  Saw pileated woodpecker this morning on the walk with the dog; it was across the street in the neighbors yard. I heard this really funny noise (after the earthquake last night, I'm noticing funny noises!).  Finally decided it was a woodpecker, so I looked around and there he was in the tippy top of a dead tree, bright in the morning sun!

Somebody's digging under the tree at our landing. I've suspected something was going on, but haven't seen anything for sure until this morning. The sand right around under the the tree root has been disturbed. The hole is deeper than it was and the silt that usually covers the sand is gone. I'll have to keep an eye on it.

I paddled toward the upper end of the pond this morning.  I counted over 100 birds in the water until my canoe spooked them and they went flying. And that number doesn't even include the ones that were further up the pond. It was very misty and hard to see all the way to the mouth of the brook.  It looked like there was another kind of duck amid the masses that wasn't either a wood duck or mallard, but I couldn't see it well enough. Got to figure out a way to get close to the birds without paddling in and scaring them.

There was also a female duck with the usual brown markings, but it's smaller than the mallards and maybe even smaller than a wood deck. She was making a strange sound not the usual quack of the mallards.  I wonder what it is?  I'll probably never know given the brown female markings.

I found at least three more lodges up on the upper end of the pond, north side, just before it narrows. They look like muskrat lodges; of course I don't REALLY know, but that's what they look like to me.

Anyone know with this big tall plant is? It's probably six or seven feet tall has a top like wheat or some other kind of grain grass. It has long pointy leaves the leaves are about 18 inches long and look a lot like corn leaves.  There are a lot of them on the north side of the pond.

I also saw a great blue heron and the Kingfisher flew over very high in the sky. We have more water in the pond after all this rain. I think that helps the critters to get closer to our banking under that tree because in the summer it's fairly shallow right there.  I was able to paddle quite a ways up the pond, although I didn't go very far because I didn't want to spook all of the birds.  But, I was able to get close to the shore as well as paddling straight up the center without getting stuck in the mud and that is an improvement!