September 16 on the night of the 14th the remnants of Hurricane Ike roared through mercifully ending a humid day in the mid-80s. We had gusts over 40 mph, and then showers that night and through the next day, not amounting to much. Today was cool and sunny. The wind was calm in the morning and didn't begin to pick up until I headed out in the kayak. I went to South Bay passing slouching geese and one or two heads-up cormorants. With their beak cocked up they always seem like they are on top of things. Coming into the bay I saw two osprey flying so high and over the land that I wasn't sure they were osprey until they zoomed down over me and found one of their usual perches. Both were fledges evidently showing off their flying ability. They didn't have fish enclawed, however. I scared only one small fish as I went down the south shore of the bay. It was too shallow to paddle to the end of the cove and I didn't go down as far as I could because I turned off so as not to disturb a log with both mallards and painted turtles on it, and rather close to each other. Evidently only we humans scare painted turtles. The ducks, about a dozen of them, flew off, leaving a half dozen turtles. Only a few lily blossoms remain and today there were no yellow jackets hovering over the lily pads. I saw one heron. When I got around to the north cove I checked for otter scats, and saw none. At the east end of the big flat rock along the south shore I saw grass matted down, and no goose poop, (and took photo later, when I hiked around the bay.)
In the water nearby I fished out a long green stick that had been half stripped by beavers. I almost took it back with me so I could get a photo of it. I've never seen beavers work on such an unripened stick, couldn't identify it.
But I left it in the water because there was much left to gnaw. I inspected the turtles at the end of the cove and then checked the beaver lodge. The lodge looked about the same, but there appeared to more work on the alders a bit up the shore. And a bit farther up, I saw some new gnawing on a willow trunk hanging over the
water. And at the next willow along the shore, a small flocks of grackles was working that and other trees, after bugs.
After dinner I hiked around the bay, taking the long way to Shangri-la Pond where I hoped to see the beavers. I got photos of what I'd already inspected on my kayak tour: the lodge that looked about the same
and the alder patch that showed that the beavers are still cutting, and left two branches behind, which makes sense because it might be too shallow around the lodge to drag branches back there.
Then I got a photo of the willow they are working on. I liked the wood chips on the green moss.
I kept an eye out for work on trees farther up on shore but didn't see any. I checked the otter latrines as always, but no scats. The only way I can keep my hopes up that otters are around is by imagining that otters completely new to
the area might be using new latrines that I have not discovered yet... fat chance. At the beginning of my hike, as I crossed the rock plateau, I saw a squirrel hopping around rather out of place because there were no trees nearby. When I asked what brought it up to the moss and rocks, it leapt in the air like it imagined a tree was there, and then scooted off. As I headed up to Audubon Pond, I thought I saw another jaunty squirrel headed straight for me, then I saw that it was a mink. It turned off the path and hopped up on a downed tree trunk, and galloped along shiny black on the dull beige, ignoring two foraging deer, now in their dull coats. When I took a few more steps, the deer fled and the mink half went after them, then disappeared back over the hill to the pond. Up at the pond I checked the area in front of the burrow
into the embankment where I think the beavers are staying, but there was nothing floating in front of the burrow to confirm that thought.
I checked out the woods west of the pond where the beavers had been cutting trees, and I saw that more had been cut, but not enough so that I could say the beavers were preparing for winter.
There were no nibbled sticks outside the bank lodge nor around the lodge in the pond, so I can't say the beavers have moved back there. I sat on the bench briefly, but no beavers appeared. I approached Shangri-la Pond from the northwest coming up to the rim of the cliff just a little east, and down wind, from the red maple they are working on.
As I came over the ridge I saw a beaver right where I expected one to be, next to the trunk of the downed red maple, but it immediately dove, and to my chagrin, began swimming toward me. I saw some freshly stripped logs down that way,
but the beaver stopped right below me, twitched a bit, turned to me, then swam up stream, past the maple and into the west end of the pond that was obscured by leaves. I moved along and down the ridge to get a better view. The water looked muddy and I soon saw a beaver hunkered down over a stick on the shore, and there were still ripples in the water near it. I scanned what glimpses of that portion of the pond that the foliage afforded and saw an almost handsome male wood duck swimming around. Its new feathers had not quite grown in. Then I saw a muskrat swimming rapidly up the channel along the south shore of the pond. Then I saw another muskrat swimming about 20 yards behind. As I zoomed in for a close up that muskrat stopped and seemed to look up at me. This was rather far away for a
muskrat to notice me, but I soon saw that these muskrats were rather keyed up. Indeed both of them eventually swam down to the red maple. The larger one ignored me and swam into the crown of the downed tree. The one that had already stopped to look at me, a smaller muskrat, had not cut the distance between us in half and it stopped right below me and looked up. I was a bit nonplused, the watcher was being watched. Then it ducked into the water, surfaced quickly and almost swam around in a tight circle before darting away. The larger muskrat headed over to the shore below me, briefly got up on a log and then went into a clump of grass on the shore below me, briefly. The muskrats seemed erratic, but they didn't seem to be reacting to each other.
A few years ago at this time in September in another pond I saw a pair of muskrats speeding around each other, spraying water up with their rotating tail, and almost fighting. Today the muskrats were getting a bite now and then. Of course I kept trying to see the beaver or beavers in the west end of the pond, and when I stood and moved closer, I saw a beaver swim into the water. I also thought I glimpsed another beaver in the water, and saw a blur of a beaver going up on the land. Anyway, I tried to pay most attention to the beaver that was soon swimming below me. It struck me as very reddish. The sun was going down and making a warm red glow on the pink granite across from me.
That added to the beaver's color, and I suspect that the beaver's back fur was dry since I saw it coming off the land into the pond, but not diving. I also thought it had a bare spot at the base of the tail. I could say it looked sickly but it seemed rather bright eyed and was soon looking up at me,
then it slapped its tail in a half hearted way, which I didn't mind, I wanted to see the other beavers. I looked up pond and sure enough something swam out, the wood duck, followed by a beaver but it seemed to swim in a circle as the duck perched on a log. So the beaver didn't seem alarmed and it swam back where I couldn't see it and then returned pulling a small branch. It took the branch down to the red maple and joined the other beaver. That beaver had given up looking at me and had cut a branch off the maple, but with me above it, couldn't seem to relax and just gnaw. Same with the other beaver. They both worked on the maple, then they both swam over to look up at me. Meanwhile the muskrats had not been inactive and I think there may have been three up in the west end of the pond. One swam down to where the two beavers were, below me, and swam right between them, and the beavers didn't seem to notice. Then with two beavers below me, I saw a beaver up on land down at the west end. Last fall one of the adult beavers foraged for acorns in that same spot. I think it was at it again, and if my hunch from the winter is right, that the matriarch of the colony died under the tree in December, then this was the male, and its new mate, one of last year's two year olds was below me (incest is not uncommon
among beavers) along with last year's yearling, now two years old. Of course I could be completely wrong about this, and now that I had the three beavers isolated, I walked around the rest of the pond to see if any other beavers
were out. No. I did see that the strong winds blew down the third trunk of red maple the beavers had gnawed on last fall, bringing down two trunks which they fed off of during the winter. Be interesting to see if they work on this red maple now. I had to
hurry to get home before dark.
September 17 after doing chores at the house on the island we went to our house on our land to spend the night. I haven't been here for a few days so I walked around the Deep Pond, dropping off another aspen log as I did. I nosed about to see if the beavers were eating anything other than grass, and didn't see any evidence of foraging up the west shore. Vegetation is dying back now and I got a good look at some turtle heads but their blossoms were old or had dropped.
I went over the knoll and down to look at the lodge which continues to be built up and once again the beavers put some cut honeysuckle branches up on it.
The lodge is quite a pile of sticks and will become quite formidable if the beavers lard mud over it. However despite that activity, I didn't see any nibbled stick in the water near the lodge nor along the shore, where they had been collecting and nibbling sticks.
I saw a large crop of a leafy plant under water,
evidently not what beavers like to eat, probably a pondweed, but I never see blooms here.
Precious little of the millefoil like plant they like to eat, perhaps it is elodea, remains in the pond. The water level of the pond is lower so I didn't have to go back into the woods to cross the inlet creek. I found trails in the
grasses, and bushes, but only cut grass stalks, and not many of them; no bushes nipped. The inlet creek is muddier than the pond, but there were frogs jumping into the water.
I walked among the bushes on the other side of the pond, mostly arrowwood and no evidence of the beavers eating that.
This area seemed much more open than I remember but I couldn't see any evidence that the beavers ate anything there to open it up. I also noticed trails in the grass from the pond, that I knew led to maples, but I didn't see any cut maples. I sat down to contemplate the matter, and a small watersnake, in its most becoming rattlesnake-like markings swam in the pond below me,
I followed it with the camera and focused on its tongue licking the air, expecting it to dart after a frog. Instead a larger water snake, with darker unmarked skin, swam up behind it and the young snake darted to the safety of the middle of the pond and the bigger snake continued along the shore, out of my sight. I noticed that there was a bit a of mud on the shore at one point, and a bit of a clearing showing the bottom mud outside a burrow.
Then while I was debating if the beaver was using that, I saw the beaver surface in front of the lodge and swim a bit toward me, close enough perhaps to catch my familiar odor, and then it went back in the lodge. I continued my walk
around the pond, getting a juicy apple from the old tree near the pond. Then I saw small stripped sticks in the pond below the high bank
and a trail into the grass which led to some nipped willow. So hat is their woody fare for the moment. I also saw possible burrows used by muskrats.
I checked the dam where there was another muskrat burrow but no signs of beaver foraging in the smaller willow bushes around there. I went home via our best apple tree and got a juicy, soft, and sweet apple, best apple from this tree
ever, amazing what a summer of rain will do. Just before dinner I checked on the Boundary Pool beavers. A barred owl was rehearsing as I sat near the pond. I chose a spot low on the bank which didn't necessarily give me a good view of the pond, but I would be close enough for a good photo if a beaver came out right below me .
And I had a pretty good view of some fresh work up toward the channel up pond.
I got there at 6pm hoping the colony had moved to an earlier schedule, but once again I didn't hear gnawing inside the lodge until 6:30 A beaver came out at 6:42 but it swam to the part of the pond that was hardest for me to see. At 7 I heard one kit humming. Then I saw the beaver that had been in the pond, briefly, since it then swam up the canal and out of sight. I still heard intermittent humming from the lodge and gnawing, but more exciting was hearing the Gray's Tree frogs warm up, perhaps for the last time, as well as a peeper. And the ravens were back in the area. I forgot to mention that when I was down earlier at the Deep Pond, I could see three pairs of ravens flying in close formation up and down over White Swamp. Anyway soon it got too dark for the camera, so I put that away and when another adult beaver came out, I could scarely see it in camcorder and I think a kit came out and I missed it because all of a sudden there was a splash below me and what made it had disappeared. There was also a beaver out behind the lodge, that I could just make out. Sometimes I fancy that the kits don't come
out early because of me, and now just when a kit thought it was safe to come out, there I was! what a panic! But that's fancy. I don't think I am that important in these beavers' lives. The shallowness of the pond is reason enough to keep kits confined. I wish this colony was as lively as it was earlier in the month, but it might get down to freezing in two nights and that might force more activity out of this complacent pond, which I don't say by way of criticism. What amazes me is that they managed to spend the whole summer here in a pool that for the past ten years
I've noticed in the late summer only to record that it was virtually dry.
September 18 I got down to Boundary Pool Pond in the morning, to see if a beaver might be out. No. I did see a lot fresh work. I noticed last night when I was sitting low on the ridge overlooking the lodge, that I was sitting under a maple tree quite the size beavers like to cut, trunk as wide as my two hands clasped together. They are probably saving this tree for cutting late in the fall or in the winter. This morning I saw that they had just cut smaller maples along the northwest corner of Boundary Pool,
and one a bit up the ridge. Judging from a branch of a maple tree just behind the log dam, they are still cutting trees around Logdam pool or even farther up,
They are crossing over the log dam,
but I didn't see any fresh work as I walked
along these pools where water is getting scarce. I think I can
see how they are handling the maple they do cut at Boundary Pool.
There were some nicely stripped right in the nearby channel
between the two ovals of the barbell shaped pool (though the
north bell is rather small.)
It doesn't look like they are parking many logs
right next to the lodge but duckweed still obscures much of the
pond. All to say there is no seemingly organized preparation for
winter, no cache yet, but I think they have an eye or nose on the
trees they plan to cut as winter nears. I went up the ridge above
the pond, above where I usually sit, and saw that they have
extended their foraging farther up the ridge.
They don't appear to be doing much stripping of
bark up on the ridge, and beavers often strip trees of some bark
where they cut the trees. So perhaps this is where they get the
branches that they take directly into the lodge to nibble there.
This beaver development is so small, I think I must surely know
all its ins and outs, but the more I think I know, the less I
know. Never has the pond itself and the ridge around it seemed
more like an organic extension of the beavers. I also walked down
to Wildcat Pond, that larger area where I saw them last year,
which seemed a more normal beaver development. Judging from a bit
of mud in the channel,
and especially the wallow just below Boundary
Pool dam,
a beaver or two still comes here. But I get the
sense that they are not counting on this for the winter, which is
a brave choice given that the pools above it are so shallow. Plus
along the east shore of the pools above there seems to be mostly
hemlock, and the ridge is rocky without many of the trees they
like. Around Wildcat Pond they could work both ridge and get
plenty of trees. Of course they do eat hemlock in a pinch, and
there are a few of the curly birch they seem to like in the
shadows of the hemlock. They haven't resumed work on the large
poplar above the Last Pool, and the cuts they did make are
beginning to look dull. My searching for elms they might have cut
around there was interrupted by my looking for dead or almost
dead ash suitable for making poles. Always bad policy to start
serving my own wood needs while still investigating what the
beavers are doing. We think about wood differently. I look high,
they smell low. They are much better at it than I. I also checked
the Deep Pond and saw that the beavers had stripped half of the
big aspen log I left them, and left the log by the dam. I picked
some apples. This has been an amazing crop. Apples carpet the
ground
and there is plenty of good ones to eat still
in the tree.
Yesterday when I walked by the Third Pond, I
saw a monarch butterfly with a busted wing hanging on a branch
for dear life. Today it was still there and as I tried to honor
it with a photo, it flew a bit, but not far.
Meanwhile Leslie caught a crippled snow cricket
missing two back legs.
Before dinner I biked over to the entrance of
the state park and then hiked to Shangri-la pond, not stopping to
check the beaver lodge at the end of South Bay. I wanted to set
myself up in front of the huge granite rock with a cave where I
could get a good view of the beavers working along the north
shore of the pond. Last year these beavers often came out
relatively early in evening. Of course last year there were at
least five beavers and this year there appears to only be three.
I got to the pond at about 5:30 and approached slowly to make
sure that the beavers were not already there. I saw something
swimming up the channel of the north shore but it was a muskrat.
The last time I was here, when I saw three muskrats, one made a
point of noticing me, and I thought that might have been the one
I was seeing, but as it came up to the area of the open pond
where I was sitting, it only glanced at me and then went over to
nose about the shore, sometimes nibbling grass in the pond,
sometimes going up on ground, but always being pretty quick about
it. I found a patch of low blueberry plants on the edge of the
ridge in front of the cave and I sat there. Back in the cave I
would lose a view of the pond. For a beaver looking up from the
pond, the bushes nicely covered all of me but my nosy head. So I
watched the muskrat and enjoyed my comfortable position cradled
by billion year old granite rocks with a good view of recent
beaver work
and a good view of the slope where I think one
beaver at least likes to forage for acorns.
In a few minutes I saw a mink walking along the
boulders just above the opposite shore. The muskrat had gone down
the same shore and when the mink paused and looked at the pond, I
thought of the muskrat but dare not take my camcorder off the
mink less I miss its leaping attack on the muskrat! But the mink
then continued prancing down the shore, and I scanned the water
for the muskrat. It was there, placidly swimming up the open
channel below where the mink had been. I kept seeing the mink so
I tried to concentrate on it. Then I saw another mink appear and
chase the one I had been watching. Perhaps the mink had paused to
think about attacking the muskrat. More likely it had caught a
scent of the other mink and was wondering what to do about that.
Just as other humans are the chief concern of a human, so a mink
worries about other minks. Then I began to hear some gnawing.
Since I was facing a granite cliff, I had trouble pinpointing
where the sound was coming from. Thinking it might be coming from
the top of the cliff, I wondered if it might be a porcupine, but
it certainly sounded like a beaver. I scanned the pond and saw
nothing but did decide that the gnawing came from the pond and
that it was a beaver. Finally I saw some ripples coming from the
grass along the south edge of the channel along the north shore.
Soon I made out the beaver's head. I forgot to mention that when
I came up to the pond three wood ducks flew off. Now I saw one
wood duck swim into view seemingly coming from the end of the
pond. When I see that a duck doesn't fly away with the rest, I
always wonder if it is crippled in some way and can't fly. I saw
a lone duck the other night; perhaps this poor duck was always
here. But then I saw another duck. And then three wood ducks flew
back into the pond and there were five, beaking around the
vegetation together. This at least was a nice commentary on how
well hidden I was, even though I made no effort to put myself
behind a blind. A pleasant patch of blueberry bushes did the
trick. Then I began to hear a porcupine yowling from a tree up
and off the pond to the west. During past winters I had seen
porcupines over there. Then all the ducks save one flew off, and
then that one flew off, just rising above the pond water. And I
hadn't twitched, but another beaver swam up the south channel of
the pond just below me. When it got right below me, it dove and
swam under water but surfaced evidencing no alarm, and then
climbed up on the bank and rooted through the oak leaves. This is
what I saw last year and I assumed then and assume now that the
beaver is eating acorns. But I didn't hear any crunching. So
either the beaver eats the acorns whole, or it bites them with
its molars and that doesn't make such a loud sound. Is it
possible that beaver gnawing seems so loud because the open mouth
of the beaver makes such a good sounding board? Anyway I strained
to see an acorn go into the mouth, but I just wasn't close
enough. Then another beaver swam up, and it had reddish fur. Two
nights ago I saw it and somewhat discounted the reddish fur as a
tint emphasized by the reddish sunset glow. Tonight the sunset
was yellow, no red in it, and the beaver's fur seemed
distinctively reddish. I'll have to check last year's videos to
see if a beaver here then seemed distintively reddish. However,
it is common to see that in beavers. Just as it did two days ago,
this beaver made some hard looks at me, and kept its nose
sniffing in my direction. Finally it ducked and pulled up
something to eat. I had lost track of the beaver I first heard
gnawing and I looked for it, but couldn't find it.
September 23 we went away for the weekend and
came back to find our drought continuing. There are no clouds at
night so we had nights in the high 30s, keeping the garden at a
seeming standstill. But dry weather is a good time to move the
woodpiles, lining up the firewood for the winter. After lunch, I
kayaked over to South Bay. Thanks to the drought the water level
in the river continues to drop. The chilly nights have subdued a
good bit of the vegetation but there was enough choking the bay
to prevent me from going much beyond the willow lodge. As I
paddled down the south cove, a heron flew up toward me, then
veered over to the north shore of the cove and perched on a tree.
Another heron flew off from a rock under the tree and landed up
at the point. There still seems to be a pecking order though the
season is late, with other birds it seems to be catch-as-catch
can now. I was surprised when a noisy pileater woodpecker flew up
the South Shore. Woodpeckers don't eat midges but why not? As the
day warmed swarms of the small yellowish variety veiled parts of
the shore. Other insects woodpeckers do eat might also be
attracted to the lingering warmth of the water. I saw some
schools of fish fry but no bigger fish. When the vegetation,
lilyless pads and slouching pondweeds, choked off my progress, I
scanned the remainder of the cove with the binoculars. So I saw
several groups of mallards at the end of the cove, and nearer to
me I could see white down blooming on the browning lily pads.
Down was not the only thing "blooming." Where the cold,
the ducks and the geese had left a bare bottom of mud, there were
bright green blooms of algae. I paddled over to the willow lodge
and there might be a dollop of mud on it, but the water around it
is so shallow, I can't imagine a beaver actually living there. I
didn't get far down the north cove either, just got beyond the
flat rock that I always check for otter scats. None there. Just
off the edge of the rock back toward the marsh a beaver seems to
be widening its stamping ground, and I saw a dollop of mud there,
too, but not shaped and decorated with sticks the way scent
mounds are in the spring. I studied the beaver lodge at the end
of the cove through the binoculars and I didn't notice anything
new. I could get close to where they had been cutting alders and
I didn't notice anything new there either. The beavers evidently
have withdrawn from the shallow water. I paddled up the north
shore of the bay and checked the willows they have been gnawing.
I think I saw fresh work, and more willows nipped. Their major
gnawing was at the cove with three large willows that is about
even with the point, and at the willow just up from the where the
outlet creek from Audubon Pond enters the bay. There they had
taken some logs up on the rock forming the south side of the
outlet. I didn't see any gnawing on the willows at the entrance
to the Narrows, which is where there had been much gnawing last
autumn. Paddling up the north shore of the bay I saw dozens of
shiners leaping high and long in the air, quite a show, and given
their size, really an amazing leap, several times the length of
their body, and usually several fish jump at once. In the shallow
bay west of the entrance to the Narrows, I saw no leaping fish
but I did see schools of small perch and then a few larger ones
darting about. The flock of geese is still here, all up on the
hot rocks. And there was a mixed flock of geese and mallards
working the exposed grasses along the edge of the cattail marsh.
I imagined the fat bugs and bursting seeds they were eating and
didn't both them. I checked the big old beaver lodge tucked
behind some rocks on Murray Island and as I pondered the gnaw on
a log atop the lodge, I heard a splash coming from inside the
lodge. The acoustics of a large beaver lodge are curious. The
lodge looks so private yet you can hear every drip of water.
Finally I distinguished gnawing on wood inside the lodge from
growling in my stomach. I even heard a brief hum. Some of the
logs on top of the lodge suddenly seemed freshly gnawed, no doubt
about the sun's glare making them look that way. As I paddled
away I saw a small pike eyeing the deep channels leading to the
beaver lodge. Those deep channels make this a lodge where several
beavers could find refuge as the bays get shallow, or is this
just the old mansion members of only one colony come home to? No
osprey today, a few more cormorants than usual.
Before dinner I biked over to the entrance to
the state park and hurried along the trail to the first bunch of
willows that the beavers have been gnawing. I wanted some photos
of the dearth of new work at the lodge and the alder patch and
their progress in gnawing the willows. I can picture a beaver
standing on the lower trunk of one willow and gnawing a higher
trunk.
And I can see a beaver crawling under a trunk
and then arching it jaws back and gnawing the underside of the
trunk.
I wonder what prompts a beaver to gnaw deeply
in the willow and what keeps its teeth just seemingly caressing
the thick bark?
I also saw that a beaver cut a smaller tree and
a green sapling. So willows don't blind them to other treats.
I tried to get a photo of the cove showing the
three willows that have been gnawed.
I didn't get photos of the other willow work
farther along the trail because I wanted to get situated at
Shangri-la Pond before the beavers came out. I approached the
pond the same way I did this time and straight away sent a wood
duck flying off, but there was nothing else swimming in the far
west end of the pond. So I sat and waited, and appreciated how
telling my perspective on the pond was
and then decided I wanted to see down pond more
and might see more if I was just a bit higher.
I propped myself a little higher and I could
see a small pile of stripped logs right below me.
Wood ducks kept trying to reclaim the part of
the pond I surveyed, but as I perched myself higher they were
more wary. A crow fluttered above me several times as it made
three circles above me then went caw-cawing to the northeast.
Bluejays were pinballing up and down the trees along both sides
of the canyon and now and then shook a dead tree I was near.
There screaming punctuation combined with the constant knock
knock of the chipmunks forced me to strain to hear what I thought
might be gnawing. I would almost decide that a beaver must be out
and then it would sound a bit like a woodpecker. This debate wore
on until I heard a beaver slap its tail making a large splash in
the north channel in front of me. Yet, I still couldn't see the
beaver.
Then I saw one in the south channel looking
right at me. I don't think it could have worked through the
grasses in the middle of the pond that quickly. The beaver dove
and swam underwater so that it surfaced right below me. I saw it
pause once while underwater which suggests to me that it had a
way of measuring the distance it had to travel in order to get to
me, though I can't reasonably figure out how a beaver could do
that. Anyway it came up looking and sniffing, yet here I was
fancying this beaver a top notch scout and then it dawdled so
indecisively below me. I began to think that the closer it got
the more it lost its conviction that I was there. Then it began
sniffing the grasses on the north side of the south channel and I
finally got the idea that it was trying to sniff out the fresh
work in the north channel. It could pinpoint me, but not exactly
where there was something to gnaw. Eventually it dove and once
again swam underwater and surfaced just about at that fallen
tree! Now I thought I was watching a genius of a beaver who was
just making difficulties for itself to overcome, estimating a
point in the pond and then perfecting its underwater swimming and
coming up directly at that point! But genius though that beaver
might be, I was distracted because I heard and saw another beaver
eating a branch roughly where I heard that tail slap. But then I
was puzzled by hearing gnawing when the beaver I was watching was
ducking its head in the water. Finally I saw a stripped twig
bouncing all white over the brown green grass. I had accounted
for the three beavers. The beaver that swam underwater to its
meal had back tracked a bit and I was worried that it was still
worried about me, but then it swam back to the tree and found
something to gnaw.
This was pleasant but I began to plot my
escape. I had a story and dinner was waiting for me at home. Then
I heard the beaver farther down the pond hum and it began
swimming up pond, the beaver next to it followed. This was quite
dramatic, two beavers swimming up pond one after another, heading
for the third beaver. The lead beaver swam to the end of the
pond, and the trailing beaver stopped, and, yes, looked over at
me. I lost track of the third beaver. The lead beaver then went
to the far north shore and climbed up to where I fancy it looks
for acorns. The guard beaver soon gave up on me and swam up to a
fallen cherry tree, just where the other beaver went on shore,
and it gnawed the portion of the tree in the pond. Then I spied
the third beaver, down where the other two beavers had been
munching away earlier. Then the beaver that I fancied was on
guard swam back down pond looking at me. Pretty convincing
evidence that it was indeed delegated to keep an eye on me while
the other beaver, very much the biggest and bossiest beaver, was
up on the slope. I snuck up to the top of the ridge, kept low and
got to the trail which is on the other side of the ridge, out of
view of the pond. Then when I came up again to get a view of the
end of the pond, there was the guard beaver swimming below me
like it could see through, or smell through granite and knew
exactly where I was, and the boss beaver was happily nosing
through the oak leaves
Forgot to mention. Just as I was leaving my
perch along the south slope of the pond, a muskrat swam smartly
below me, either completely oblivious to everything or seeing
through the lot of us big, slow witted creatures with all our
fool posturing and spying.
September 24 we went to our land after lunch
and when I went to empty our sawdust toilet I found two bees in
it. At first I thought they were beetles with eggs or hatchlings
on their back, but then I saw that those "eggs" were
moving all over and not to the bees' liking.
The poor things were being devoured.
I helped them out and even tried to use a stick
to get the mites off one, to no avail. So they fled along the
ground, unable to fly, tormented. I wonder how they both got into
that predicament. I planned to check on the beavers just before
dinner, but I wanted to see how many trees they had cut and how
much water was left in their pools, and I couldn't do that while
I was waiting for them to swim out. So around 3 pm I walked
around the pools. The hot dry day didn't bode well for seeing
fresh work in the upper pools, and I didn't. The Last Pool was
virtually dry,
and the long canal down to Log Dam pool was
also dry, but the mud was fresh. I looked for prints and maybe,
just up from where there is a bit of water in Logdam Pool, I saw
where a beaver might have pushed up some mud.
But there was not great show of dredging. The
edges of Logdam Pool were drying up but it looked like beavers
still came over the dam, and upper Boundary Pool didn't seem
startling lower, probably because of their dredging.
I examined the maples they had cut and stripped
in the northwest corner of the pool. They began to cut another
clump,
and it looked like they had stripped some bark
off a maple log a little ways up the ridge.
I looked higher on the ridge and didn't see any
fresh work. Then I sat on a rock and contemplated the lodge.
Sunlight filled the pool not only because the beavers had cut
down several elms shading it. The leaves are slowly falling off
the trees that remain.
The beavers didn't make a peep, but two ravens
made up for that. One deeper in the woods imitated a cuckoo and
then a bell or a bong. Never heard that before and rather than
think there is now a beast that sounds like a Buddhist prayer, I
think a raven is enjoying a sound it just created. That mystical
interlude was interrupted by a grey squirrel that came down a
nearby tree and protested my presence as loudly as it could.
There are more grey squirrels relative to red squirrels this
year. The channel through the duckweed directly from the lodge to
the west shore still looks used, and I saw a little stripped
stick floating in the middle of it.
I climbed up the ridge to see if they had
extended their work up there. They didn't cut the maple trees I
had sat under just a few feet up the ridge, but then I saw they
had ranged far up the ridge cutting several small maples,
easily identified because there were sports
with leaves coming out of the remaining stump.
I saw one leafy maple sapling layed out on the
ridge, trunk facing down, ready for hauling to the lodge.
I saw how selective they were as to the size of
the trunks cut, cutting the smaller trunk of a tree and not the
larger.
Then at the top of the ridge I was surprised to
see them varying their fare. They cut a small white oak, two
small hemlocks,
and a hornbeam. The path down to the pond
looked well worn
and going down it, and I saw another cut leafy
maple sapling at the foot of the ridge. Last fall they cut on the
ridge east of Wildcat Pond and I recollect that they cut larger
maples there, so I shouldn't draw up any lessons yet about their
cutting smaller trees. I didn't check Wildcat Pond but walked up
the shady east shore of the pond where the tall hemlocks keep the
small hemlocks, which these beavers like, from growing. However I
did find some new work at the end of Logdam Pool. The beavers are
gnawing the exposed root of a huge maple,
and a cut a curly birch nearby, pretty good
sized one too,
but there are some around considerably thicker.
Then I walked up the valley and saw that the valley pool still
has a small ring of water that raccoons and deer visit, judging
by the prints in the mud.
Teepee Pond also retreats
but has enough water to last until we finally
get some rain,
and I saw large and small muskrat prints in the
apron of mud there,
as well as what looked like a muskrat tail
print heading into the pond.
The canal between Teepee Pond and the First
Pond is drying out, and I saw what looked like a turtle trail
there. I fancy it shows the Blanding's turtle going from the
First Pond down to Teepee Pond.
Going down to check on the Boundary Pool
beavers before dinner, I recalled how back in the spring and
summer, I was full of calculation when I walked down the valley,
trying to figure out the wind direction and angle of the sun,
trying to figure out a novel approach that would get me closer to
the beavers. Obviously these beavers and I have reached an
accommodation and as long as I don't go sliding down the hill, I
can get relatively close. Plus I think there is a distance up on
the ridge that is less likely to alarm the beavers. They don't
like it when I am too high, perhaps showing too much of a
silhoutte against the still bright western sky, and I can't be
too low. So I parked myself about ten feet up, behind the double
trunk of a small maple, sitting on a rock so that when I shifted
around I wouldn't crackle the leaves. I don't think these beavers
are too worried if I am there, but they don't want to keep being
reminded that I am there. Unlike at Shangri-la Pond, no one in
the colony is delegated to keep an eye on me. Beautiful as the
Shangri-la Pond canyon is for watching beavers, there is
seperation enough in the colors and shapes and noises, let's be
scientific, there are niches and roles to play. Boundary Pool is
a womb of intimacy. Separation seems impossible. We are all
duckweed green and earth brown. I hear the kits whine. They hear
my camcorder whir. Three deer walk up the other side of the pond.
I hear the chick-burr of a scarlet tanager. Yet there is no
turning about and surveying the scene; most lines of sight are
blocked by trees and shadows except my view of the pond. But I
only a got a glimpse of a beaver, an adult, that surfaced just
outside the lodge, paused a few seconds, and swam up pond. In
larger beaver ponds beavers customarily swim several yards
underwater away from the lodge before surfacing. These beavers
can't abstract themselves from one area to the next. In large
ponds I can fancy that ripples from the beavers' wakes unifies
the pond, but not in the same way the soupy green duckweed on
this dark pool of water does. I soon lost sight of that beaver.
Then I concentrated on the whining from inside the pond, first
hearing the louder kit and then the more plaintive one. There was
also gnawing. Another adult came out, much like the first, but
disappeared through the duckweed in the east end of the pond.
More whining. Then an adult came out with a kit at its side,
though swimming a little behind it. This was the plaintive kit
because I heard a whine from inside the lodge. I imagine the
parent has made a point to come out with this less capable kit.
They swam up pond and this kit displayed none of the
rambunctiousness of the other kit that I've seen. Then I was at
loss. I heard gnawing but could not see the gnawers. Then I
glanced down into the duckweed and there was a beaver almost
below me. Was this the other kit? In late September kits no
longer act so erratic, so spontaneous. They have more of the
measured behavior of the adult. When it swam a way and dove this
beaver had a kick that suggested kit to me. Then as it got dark I
saw two beavers together, near the lodge. Perhaps the kits almost
together, both of them did a bit of twisting when they dove.
video clip to come
Kits often give the impression that they are
about to chase their own tail. I headed home while it was light
enough to see.
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