A gusty breeze kicked up whitecaps near the mouth of the Connecticut last week as our flotilla of six kayaks approached the southern tip of Great Island.

High-pitched chirps of circling ospreys and cries of swooping gulls rose above the whistling wind, while more than a dozen snowy egrets leaned over the water, still as statues, along the shore to our left — or should I say port.

“Feeding time,” Nick Schade said, as we swept past. Joining us were Curt Andersen, Elyse Landesberg, Andy Lynn and Bob TenEyck, all part of an informal group known as the Tuesday Night Paddlers.

Startled by our appearance, the tall, slender birds sprang skyward, flapped nearly two-foot-long wings, resettled 100 yards away, and resumed stalking small fish and fiddler crabs.

Just before we reached Poverty Point, a canal leading into the heart of Great Island beckoned.

“Hey, have you ever cut through and made it to the other side?” Nick asked me.

“Years ago,” I replied, “but has to be high tide.”

“Well, it’s high tide now,” Nick said, and headed for the narrow channel. The rest of us followed, and began paddling on a serpentine passage through Great Island’s eco-rich tidal marshes.

The trill of oystercatchers joined the avian chorus as we snaked along the narrow canal, passing only feet from dozens of osprey nests.

I turned to Andy and asked, “Ever seen so many ospreys in one place?”

“Never,” he responded.

We had entered a serene world, teeming with wildlife, and seemingly as remote as the Amazon.

“This is why we don’t live in Nebraska,” Curt said.

The Nature Conservancy regards Great Island and the rest of the lower Connecticut River Valley as “one of the world’s last great places”; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization calls this part of the river “an estuary of global importance.”

Great Island encompasses the 588-acre Roger Tory Peterson Wildlife Area, named in honor of the internationally renowned naturalist, educator and artist whose books are considered the gold standard of bird guides. Peterson, an Old Lyme resident, died in 1996 at age 87.

Great Island — a mile and a half long, and half a mile across at its widest section – also is part of a 52,000-acre swath of Connecticut’s southeastern coast that last year was designated the country’s 30th National Estuarine Research Reserve.

The island is easy to circumnavigate by kayak, which we set out to accomplish after launching from a state boat ramp at the end of Smith Neck Road. Our route became more complicated, though, once we veered into the sinuous network of interior canals.

“I don’t think this is the right way,” Nick said, after passing a fork in the narrow channel. He paused and studied the other route. “I don’t think this one is, either.”

So we turned around and tried a different canal. That, too, narrowed to a dead end, as did a third canal.

Nick said it had been two decades since he last cut through the island, and theorized some of the canals may have filled in over the years.

This is not hard to imagine, since the lower river shoreline is a dynamic area, constantly reshaped by tidal forces and, now, rising sea level. A winter nor’easter in 1994 ripped open an inlet in nearby Griswold Point that continues to widen.

And so, we abandoned Great Island’s placid but impenetrable canals, and paddled back to the choppy Connecticut River.

I welcomed the breeze, which drove off clouds of no-seeums and gnats that swirled through the island’s marshes.

Once we passed Poverty Point and steered east, I expected Long Island Sound would be bumpy near a notoriously turbulent stretch known as The Zipper, but a north wind flattened the seas, making for an easy paddle back to the boat launch.

The western sky glowed orange as we pulled ashore. Moments later, we clambered up a viewing platform next to the boat ramp, munched snacks and watched a glorious sunset.

The route through the canals may have eluded us, but we agreed that the impromptu detour had been the best part of our excursion, making for a great paddle at Great Island.

Mea Culpa Department

Attentive readers have pointed out a couple of places where my facts drifted in a column, “Navigating through history on a Niantic River paddle,” published June 9. Waterford Town Historian Robert Nye notes that the 19th-century mill on Oil Mill Brook processed flaxseed into linseed oil, not cooking oil, and that the Beckwith shipyard just west of Golden Spur and tucked in a small curve of the shore, was started by Elisha and Gurdon Beckwith, but not until the mid-1800s. Their father, Jason’s shipyard of the early 1800s, was located east of Sandy Point along the Eastern Shore of Keeney Cove, he accurately reports.

Christopher Cooper of Niantic, who describes himself as a lifelong sailor, threw me in the brig for using the terms “flood tide” and “ebb tide.” He points out that currents are either flood or ebb; tides are either high or low. They are often colloquially, but improperly combined, he notes.

Thanks, gentlemen, for these course corrections.