Upper Armand Bayou
May 23, 2020
by Kent Walters
The Group (click to enlarge)
We started our informal "Out and Back" at the Bay Area Park parking lot / boat ramp at 10:00 AM. We unloaded and prepped our boats, took the mandatory group selfie, and were on the water by 10:30. It was a beautiful day with a nice breeze. We paddled upstream through the wide bayou, keeping to the left shore on our way out. We investigated some of the small alcoves and false bays, enjoying the various shades of green from the variety of vegetation. In stark contrast to these greens was the occasional spray of coral honeysuckle flowers.
 |
|
 |
|
 |
| Christy |
|
River Hibiscus |
|
Alice |
Wildlife to this point consisted of fliers. First up was an egret, either a smallish great egret or an intermediate egret – I can’t tell the difference. Then a great blue heron and a pair of little blue herons.
As we continued up the bayou, it narrowed and provided more cover from the sun – very convenient. As we started up an offshoot of the main channel, we startled a small herd of water buffalo (cattle) on our left. The whole herd moved away from us at a fairly good clip. Someone behind me started making cow sounds, and must have been pretty good at it because he was getting favorable responses from part of the now distant herd.
 |
|
 |
| Joe |
|
Sandy & Dave |
Back to the twisting and narrow main channel, we continued through three separate right-of-ways (cleared swaths for power lines and pipelines) before we decided to turn around. This was further than I had planned as I thought we would be stopped by fallen logs well before the right-of-ways. Instead of the fallen logs, we noticed that much more trash had accumulated in this end of the bayou, probably as it was starting to get closer to and downstream from our careless and disposable “civilization”. The bayou continued unobstructed, but along with the accumulation of trash, we could see the vegetation was thinning and it did not look as interesting.
| |
 |
| |
Joe at lunch |
We passed most of the trash and found a nice little tributary for our lunch break. We ate as we sat in our boats and talked about life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and changes at the natural history museum.
Our wildlife observations now included fliers and swimmers, with the possibility of a couple of varieties of amphibious reptiles. Lots of egrets, maybe because they stand out so dramatically against the green background, a few more Great Blue Herons, and some flashes of red cardinals, some turtles, mostly in the water with their noses up. We saw some fish jumping, and quite a few unidentified swimming objects (splashes) that could have been carp, gar or alligators.
On our way back down-bayou, we explored several more semi-hidden entrances as they appeared on our left. Most were ideal alligator habitat, but without the alligators. I saw an apple snail in one of these forays, and Joe was pointing out apple snail egg clusters on several reeds along the margin of the bayou as we passed them.
 |
|
 |
Nice-looking
Flowers |
|
Helmsman
Dave |
 |
|
Multicolored
swallow nest
|
|
In our final stretch, as we went under the Bay Area Boulevard bridges, Joe pointed out how the swallows’ nests were made from multicolored bands of mud. We wondered if that was random or by design. Please see Joe’s pics for the best examples of multicolored nests. My photos that showed this phenomenon were all out of focus due to the wind pushing me around while trying to get a good angle.
We came into the boat ramp at 2:55 PM, better off for the 9-mile exposure to nature’s deliveries and the re-connection with each other.
 |
|
 |
| Where We Went |
|
Geo Track Stats
|
|
|
The author, Kent Walters |