Rest Pond Doing Its Job

Self-seeded millet in the foreground with desirable
perennials (dark green) dominating in the deeper water

I received one of those memorable messages on my phone on Friday. Roy let me know that he had just been out in the Rest Pond assessing how much flowering rush (a nasty invasive plant) we may have deal with out there. Back in June and July, we took several boat rides out for that same purpose, and the initial signs were ominous.

However, Roy's discovery late last week: what we thought were flowering rush starts a couple/few months ago (when only 4-10" long and largely submerged in a couple feet of water) proved to be almost all cattail. "I don't know what else to say other than this is as good as it gets.  I only found one plant of flowering rush . . . the amount of cattail & bulrush coming up through the millet and smartweed is outstanding. The millet is also putting out a second seed crop as the terminal heads get stripped."

The restoration of these 40 acres couldn't be coming much better. It comes down to a combination of planning, vision, existing site conditions, good fortune, favorable weather, and some dumb luck. We know a lot of it is out of our control, but especially when it progresses like it has here, we'll take it!

A 10 x 10' island of Walter's millet pioneering in the Rest Pond

It's extremely gratifying to see some predictability in nature's response. What is unfolding is really what we had hoped to see -- the residual seed from last year's millet crop has resulted in new plants this year that may dominate as much as 20 of the 40 acres; smartweed, another highly prized, seed-rich waterfowl forage, dominates maybe another 10 acres; and then the final 10 acres or so is transitioning to desirable perennial plants, most notably cattail and soft-stemmed bulrush. We are also starting to signs of other attractive plants like Walter's millet (right) and arrowhead interspersed within the annuals.

A punt boat "path" through smartweed on the west side of the Rest Pond; the transition to fall red means
flowers are evolving to edible seed -- this crop is every bit of 6' tall and should be a magnet for passing ducks and geese

While I didn't take any photos, I spent Sunday evening in the blind (#15) with my brother and nephew. It was another memorable night. The teal didn't cooperate, but I can honestly say I've never seen more wood ducks and mallards fly over my blind. We witnessed literally thousands of big ducks cascade into the evolving buffet between 5:00-8:00 PM and watched just as many pull out and fly south for the night -- with guts full of seed. The Rest Pond is doing its job.

I took this blurry image on my phone; click to enlarge to see what several hundred mallards look like
-- these were pushed out of the Rest Pond to the Tower Marsh late last week as we finished up seeding the dike
(it was the largest congregation I had seen on property this year; we saw multiple times more this past Sunday night)