Buck Pond

Backed up against Lake Ontario and only a few miles from Rochester, Buck Pond offers a pleasant escape from civilization. Though most of the marsh lies within earshot of automobiles and motorboats, you will feel alone here exploring the rich, bird-filled marsh. The few buildings on the northeastern shore and vacation traffic along Edgemere Drive do not seem to spoil its wild character. Though less than a mile across, Buck Pond offers long, winding, inlet channels and hidden coves to explore that could occupy you for several hours. By early summer, marsh vegetation—cattail, bulrush, bur-reed, swamp loosestrife, arrowhead, pickerelweed, fanwort, duckweed, tuberous waterlily—chokes the shallower channels. Although cattail dominates the shoreline, a rich diversity provides for the needs of the marsh ecosystem’s many animals. At the end of June, we could still paddle up the western inlet—where the current seemed nonexistent—and under the Lake Ontario State Parkway, though thick vegetation impeded our progress in a few places. Habitat type: cattail swamp