Posts Tagged ‘Audubon’

Watch the birdy

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Watch out all you lower Mississippi River rats, there’s some muddy water heading your way. We had a 15 foot rise in four days on the lower Missouri and Middle Mississippi River. It’s flood stage around here. And what are we going to do with all this mud and water? We’re going paddling, of course.

Maple Island / Mississippi River Birding Tours
After last week’s awesome Wings of Spring event, and to help develop our partnership with the St. Louis Audubon Center, we are now featuring sunrise and sunset birding tours of Maple Island. Maple Island is a pristine river habitat located just below the Alton Dam on the “free flowing” Mississippi River and is part of the Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary. Our bird tours by canoe enable you to experience some of the best birding habitat in the USA. Sunrise trips usually put-in at 6:30 AM and finish at 9 AM. The sunset trips put-in at 5:30 PM and return at 8 PM. The basic fee is $30 per person. We have special group rates for this trip. Contact us to schedule and customize your trip.

Canoe Rendezvous and Mississippi Water Trail Dedication
On Saturday, May 16, 2009 Big Muddy Adventures will be a featured partner in the 3rd Annual Great Rivers Canoe Rendezvous being held here in the Great Rivers region. This year, the Army Corps of Engineers and its partners will be opening and dedicating the next sections of the Mississippi Water Trail. This great effort will extend the water trail and all of its benefits, right down to the Arch in St. Louis. Of course, that means, Big Muddy Adventures should be your guide to the trail. Nobody knows it better. Nobody cares for it more.

There are a number of great canoe and kayak events planned. BMA will be providing canoe rentals and guiding for the “social paddle” that is planned. Also, we will be running guided trips on “Angela’s Ark”(see below), an authentic 19th century flat boat. These trips will take you up Piasa Creek, a storied tributary of the Mississippi River. For event details, you can go to the web site of the event. To get involved via Big Muddy Adventures, contact us.

Angela’s Ark
Big Muddy Adventures is excited to be providing a completely unique and awesome, “old timey” river experience. Join us on an authentic early 19th century flat boat. “Angela’s Ark” is a hand hewn and constructed flat boat, the kind that Mike Fink made famous. It accommodates up to 10 guests. It is moored at the Great Rivers Land Trust’s newly purchased, “Piasa Harbor” complex. Contact us and we will schedule a Big Muddy Adventure on an especially cool river craft.

Flocking Together- Wings of Spring

Friday, April 24th, 2009

The 2muddy.com site is now coming together. The time for such things as web dev has been in short supply. Alas, it will await another day, yet again. Why?

It’s Wings of Spring and John Ruskey and the Mighty Quapaws are coming upstream via the “double nickel” I-55 with the King Beaver, the Ladybug and a pile of gear. We’re going to be paddling and guiding for this cool event. Three trips, Sunrise, MidDay and Sunset. And some canoe carving in between. The registrations are good and it looks like there’ll be a lot of folks getting some river time and some birding in their lives this weekend. Many thanks to Dr. Patty Hagen and the St. Louis Audubon folks for allowing us the opportunity.

Maple Island and Pelicans

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

Yesterday, we paddled from the Alton Dam-Maple Island access, where the free flowing Mississippi begins, to the Confluence Canoe and Kayak Access in the late afternoon. Truly Audubon’s delight! 50 + Amercian Bald Eagles, 25 Great Blue Herons, 2 flocks of twenty or so American White Pelicans, a few large flocks of Canadian Geese, a thousand or more sea gulls, and towboats making busy, busy, while we moved downstream into a magnificent sunset meets river horizon, all that and the remnants of the ice pack lingering about, making some of the route seem like we were paddling through a slushy.

The pelicans have been a pleasant surprise these past two weeks. I hadn’t seen them since the middle of the Fall. Their graceful glide in the air is one of my favorite bird flight sights. At the Maple Island channel entrance, we came upon a flock. They flew off in a ruckus. All but one, a poor pelecanus americanus whose right wing was damaged beyond repair. I watched with much sadness as this great bird flapped furiously. We slid silently by as he swam slowly in the eddy, warily watching us, a castaway, destined to remain there until its circle of life is complete.