Sunday, August 19, 2012

Here we go to Hirundo!

While Mommy learned some yoga teaching skills, Reid, Tim and Liam went to Hirundo Wildlife Reserve for their family day.  Wow.  We'll certainly be headed back.  We took out a big war canoe with a couple of other families and our extremely informed and kind guide Bucky Owen.  We saw painted turtles, damsel flies, pond lillies, king fishers, a great blue heron, pilleated woodpeckers, the list goes on.  It was a gorgeous day.
 Oh, and the war canoes are are awesome.  Note how everyone is on one side, and yet no one fell in the drink!

A purse seine in action.  This is one form of active fishing gear.  We also saw a fyke net, which is basically a net funnel.

the catch, including a crayfish.

 about half of what we caught was exotic, albeit not necessarily recently.

The second active gear type was the electro-fishing boat.  What a rig, and a dangerous one at that.

They caught a lot more large fish with the electro-fishing boat.


 We waited for the catch.  As we waited for the electro-fishing boat to finish, we took a stroll down an interpretive trail.  Reid took notes:

 We visited a 7000 year old native fishing village site.  This is the view.
 Somehow, I fell in love with this ancient place, even though we only visited for about 2 minutes, because Reid wanted to get back to his electric car.' 

We didn't get to hear Steve (Coglan, UMaine Wildlife prof) or Rory (similarly expert) explain the fish types, but I believe this was a native catfish of some variety. 

Reid, fish.  Fish, Reid.

Hide and Seek before heading home for naps:


The End.

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