September part two 2008

September 7 to 13, 2008

September 7 no rain in the night and it dawned much cooler with hurrying clouds letting a good bit of sun through. I went down to see if I could see any signs of beaver activity in the pools above Boundary Pool and saw that the Last Pool was rather low. The upper part of it still had water but it didn't look like any beaver had plowed through the shallows
recently.

The lower water revealed a thick pile of twigs at the end of the pond. I've seen beavers leave piles like this, completely ungnawed, but usually in a more strategic location that would be easy to get to in the dead of winter.

The central portion of the pool was dry, and I couldn't make out any fresh prints in the revealed dirt.

The lower portion was a little bigger than the puddle. There was an old log in the middle, now exposed, that looked like it had been gnawed, but the beavers probably did that a while ago to ease a bump on the belly as they swam back and forth.

The water in the upper end of Logdam Pool was also meagre, but the thin maple trunk I turned around had been taken. Of course that might not prove that beavers prefer the trunks of cut saplings conveniently turned toward the pond. Maybe
the beavers just got around to taking the maple. I did see new work on both sides of the narrowing channel that now makes up the pond, but nothing major. They cut a log off a birch hanging over the pond and behind that birch, they stripped the bark off the exposed roots of another birch.

There were nibbled sticks just behind the log dam.

Judging from the color of water it is obvious that they are spending most of their time in Boundary Pool. At first glance I thought they had just cleared out clumps of saplings on either side of the channel, but looking closer, I saw that most of those cuts were old. I think the muddy water arises from the beavers rooting around to fish up the remains of those cuts. I think beavers are sloppy in their foraging just so they can have the pleasure of finding morsels later when rooting through the muddy bottom of the pond.

I took a close up of the elm stump I saw a beaver stripping bark off the other night. It is clear the beaver didn't take as much as it could, leaving more for another meal.

Branches on the long elm trunk had been cut and now the stumps of those branches hang down like udders on an elm cow that beavers come over every night to gnaw on.

I didn't seen any signs of more work on the ridge, that is, nothing new had been cut and brought down, but I should have climbed up to check. Instead I went down to Wildcat Pond and saw that the strong wind the other day blew down the elm that had been teetering on a bit of ungnawed trunk the size of a toothpick. No signs of beavers taking advantage of the windfall.

The canal nearby was not very muddy.

I headed up the east shore of the pools and saw more work on the elms on that shore in Boundary Pool. I thought the hanging tree was a maple, but can see now that it is an elm. It would be fun to see a beaver up on the mossy hump gnawing the trunk.

Farther up the shore I saw that they are working on another birch, behind the birch log they completely stripped.

I didn't expect to see anymore work, and just glanced over at the big poplar to ascertain that it looked the same. Then as I walked farther along I was surprised to see that two saplings had been cut, and a larger tree trunk half gnawed through.

I could have missed noticing these since I took various routes away from the poplar, but I think this is fresh work. So a beaver is still making a long, now drier, trek and concentrating on smaller trees. Then I headed down with Leslie to see how our closed gentians were doing. I expected to see more than ever, but we saw fewer and the few blooms looked none too healthy.

Perhaps we came a bit too early in the season for our gentians. Then quite out in the open, I saw the delicate white orchid plant, with a dozen blooms up a stalk. I saw the same flower a couple years ago, nodding ladies' tresses.

On the way back, just up from the Turtle Bog, Leslie showed me another white flower, almost starting to fade, pearly everlasting.

I have been remiss in not checking the Deep Pond and it struck me that I might be missing something if the beavers were still using the wallow they fashioned below the dam which was just up from a thick stand of willows and other trees they cut in the winter. I went down via the apple tree, and ate a very tasty apple. Then I saw a viceroy butterfly in the meadow

and managed to get quite close to it as it tried to warm up in the sun.

Once down at the pond I saw grass stalks on the near shore, out in the pond and in front of the lodge, suggesting that the beavers and not the muskrats are eating them

Then I checked the wallow and it was all dry. The only fresh prints I saw in the exposed mud nearby were from raccoons, and nothing had waded through the grasses to get to the willows and saplings. I did find several turtle head flowers not eclipsed by other vegetation as they've been in most of the places around the pond where I usually see them.

Meanwhile Leslie had gone down to Boundary Pool which she hadn't seen in weeks, and on the way back, not far from out cabin, found the perfectly presented remains of a smallmuskrat.

The intestines were spread out quite dramatically next to the body

The tail was twisted under the head

One foot looked to have been eaten off and the other still whole.

I got the impression that the fur had been peeled back.

Seeing the head almost bitten off, I thought an owl might have done it. But I didn't see the picking at things that I suspect a bird would do. Seeing one foot bitten off and the skin peeled back so delicately, I think a fox ight have done it. But we haven't seen a fox around. A mink is always a suspect, but minks cache their food and this small pile of remains seems easy to carry. I should have turned the body over but it looked too beautiful to touch.

September 8 I couldn't put off the day of reckoning any more. I took the boat to Quarry Point on Picton Island to see if there was any otter scat there. I hadn't seen any in South Bay for a month, but I hadn't checked Picton this
summer so I always could hope that the otters, as usual, were dropping by to scat at that strategic location. When I was last there, I saw scat more toward the rope swing and quarry so I started there, and didn't see any scats old nor new. I crossed
over to the sloping rock facing the main channel and while I thought I saw signs of digging in the pine litter, I didn't see any scats new nor old. Nor did I see any in the grassy areas between the rocks. A south wind was picking up so it was too rough to row along the shore to scout out other latrines. I did go back in the bay where the old beaver lodge is and saw no signs of activity there, by otters or beavers. So, I motored by the now distant point

and could still tell myself -- how can I be sure any otter around has to scat there? As a consolation I did see a loon fishing in Eel Bay. I docked on the upper end of the north shore of South Bay and got a photo of the recent gnawing on a willow there.

Then I went up to Audubon Pond, and presented with a thick front of tall burmarigold

and even taller pileworts

blocking a pathway that beavers had been using, I wondered if the beavers here might have left, unimpressed by the stand of remaining trees. Then I saw that another favored pathway was wide open and worn down.

I didn't have to walk far in the woods to see fresh work, beginning with a small ash, always a favorite with these beavers

and then a line of saplings, probably maples,

and even some thicker trees, elms, cut down and cut into logs

a beaver tasted at least one large maple. I didn't see any more work as I walked around the pond. I tried to figure out which lodge they are using, and still think they are in the burrow in the embankment.

There are a few more logs there and it is still convenient to the west shore where they are cutting trees in the woods.

I planned to check on beavers in the evening, but pooped out -- painting the house again, and there was a stiff breeze, not conduscive to beaver watching.

September 9 a little rain in the night and after the sun came out after lunch I had a chance to hike to Shangri-la Pond. I checked the beaver lodge at the end of the South Bay cove first and it didn't look like the beaver had piled any more logs on top of the dock nor sank any more branches in front of it.

Thinking that the drop in the water level in the river might have prompted the beavers to move, I continued up to where the beavers had been cutting alders, and found that they have methodically continued their cutting.

Most of the cut branches seem to be floating just off in the water. Apparently the beavers prefer keeping them in the deeper water. I also noticed a yellow flower new to me. Actually the yellow petals looked familiar but not the dark green leaves of the plant; somewhat like a Jerusalem artichoke but too
small and not enough petals.

Then I continued on to Shangri-la Pond. I expected to see more branches trimmed off the red maple they cut toward the end of the west arm of the pond, but I was impressed with how what looked like the upper end of the trunk had been dragged to a nibbling pile in the tall green grasses away from the tree. They had done the same with the other maple.

They don't seem to be taking logs to the lodge, at least not leaving them outside the lodge. But from that vantage point, I noticed they were foraging by and beyond the dam. There were cut cattails at the foot a trail that led up to a freshly cut tree. These beavers are eating a bit of everything.

I walked down and got a close up of that tree, a sugar maple, that they just cut, which proved to be more intricate than appeared from the ridge. I would have liked to have seen if one beaver did all the different cuts.

Going along the northeast shore, I saw more smaller trees cut, but they were quite eclipsed in my view by the fall of the huge willow at the end of the north canal.

The beavers have been tentatively gnawing on this for almost a year, I saw a few tentative gnaws back on November 1, then they girdled the tree and a couple cuts, but of late they got their jaws working on this mammoth tree.

It fell into the pond and the top of the willow is now most convenient for gnawing. Obviously the death of one adult beaver last December, caught under a falling tree, didn't diminish this colony's ability or desire to bring down big trees. One has to wonder sometimes if the beavers fathom their
achievements, or if the sudden appearance of delectable knobs of willow branches to gnaw is a surprise to them.

Going up to the north ridge, I saw that next to the small ironwood they cut, they cut down a small elm.

They did nip a few branches off the ironwood. From the ridge I got a better look at the maple cut in the west end of the pond. Near the trunk there are a number of smaller stripped sticks.

They generally are very slow to strip bark off the trunk of a red maple. It's not one of their favorite trees, not like sugar maple or red oak, the trunks of which they love to strip. But we'll see.

September 10 I showed Lois and Stephen the beaver developments down to Boundary Pool dam. I kept seeing fresh work here and there but kept up my patter instead of taking photos. I did get a photo of a log, new to me, in the canal
between the two wider areas of Boundary Pool.

Wish I could tell if they had brought this log down from above the Last Pool or if it is part of the elm they cut just behind where the log lies now. Of course, I expressed no doubts to my auditors, and then as I waved my hands this way and that emphasizing the obvious extent of the beavers' work, Lois saw a beaver under the fallen trunk between the lodge and the dam. I at least had my camera in hand and in the photo below you can just see the beaver swimming toward the dam.

I don't think we scared the beaver out of the lodge. I think it was already out. Last night was cold, down in the low 40s, and perhaps that prodded one beaver to stay out later in the morning. It was 10:13 am when I took the photo. When we got down to the dam we saw the beaver swimming into Wildcat Pond. That's slow progress for a beaver in any way alarmed so I don't think its being out reflects some major change in the colony, such as moving back down to Wildcat Pond where the water might be a bit deeper. Or so I told myself, well knowing that when I next come out in the evening, if I don't hear the beavers right away, I will start worrying that they left. I didn't see much fresh work on the east shore, where I thought the beavers had been most active recently. I've noticed their gnawing of
raised birch roots, but haven't gotten a good photo. So I got one showing the extent of their gnawing

and a close-up. Looks like large teeth working to me, though you'd think this would be a good project for a kit.

When we went down to the Deep Pond, a beaver was out in the far corner where I met the beaver the other day. And as before, it prompted me to cut another aspen and haul it down to the dam.

In the afternoon we toured South Bay in kayaks. There seemed to be only one osprey in South Bay, noisy enough but a bit shy, and I saw one heron flying high. There were fewer fish to be seen in the shallows under the willow along the south shore, and, of course, the water lilies were singing "I'm Tired" which didn't prevent the yellow jackets from hovering over all the lily pads. It was too shallow to get close to the turtles at the end of the south cove. The end of the north cove
had a nice collection of painted turtles choc-a-bloc on whatever was floating. We had a cold night and the sun was just getting warm. From the kayak I can't quite judge the progress the beavers are making cutting alders. No bryozoa and I'd say their time is done so I probably won't see any. Steve, paddling more in the center of the cove, saw a pike. We paddled around the bay just west of the entrance to the Narrows and were entertained by an almost constant procession of fish from many bigger than a little finger to some as big as my foot. There were also geese who
grudgingly quit an island and swam in a line out to where it was worth ducking their heads into the water. A few ducks just flew off. I didn't see any beaver work, but as I paddled up to the big lodge, I saw a handsome osprey in the tree above, without fish in claw. Then as we paddled home, I saw an osprey with fish in claw, so there are probably still the usual number of ospreys about, just spread out a bit more.

September 11 cold last night and a chilly morning, perfect weather for my hike around the Big Pond to see if I could tell what the beavers were up to and if they have moved back up pond. I decided to go via the meadow and the ridge
behind the golf course. At first the going was no harder than usual at the end of the summer, perhaps the grass a little higher in the meadow. I had a bite of apple from the tree at the foot of the ridge, and it was not bad but there weren't that many apples on the tree. Up on the granite ridge the moss was coming back to life and as I headed into the woods I flushed from 5 to 7 grouse. I think I may have flushed two grouse twice. They were loath to leave the ground under the red oak trees. Running down the center of the ridge is a usually lush shallow depression and I saw that this year it is brimming with stickers. Getting down from the rocks to the trails I usually take was a trial. Then I thought I was on a deer trail heading straight for the apple tree. I paused under some osier popping with white berries, but denuded of leaves, which gave the small grove of small trees a ghostly appearance.

I thought this might have been a case of plants getting too much water and hurrying through the seasonal changes. However, everything else was quite lush, and my deer path disappeared and I was forced to try to break through honeysuckle to save myself from the stickers that surrounded the apple tree. I managed to get an apple, which was tasteless, and I tried to muscle along my usual trail but try though I might to dodge pass the stickers, I couldn't hack it. So it was either high step it through the shoulder high stickers or back track and find a
higher drier trail around the lushness. Then I saw another ghostly grove of osier a little ways up the trail. I made it to that oasis. Osier is usually thickly leaved and nothing had a chance to grow up under these osiers. From there I saw a way to
rocks, and once on rocks, I was OK. Going through the thickness I did see some interesting caterpillars, one rather ghostly, too,

and I saw several yellow ones, curling a bit, and I first thought they were sawfly larva that like to hang in an "S" shape, but I think these might be different, as it seems to have prolegs and thus is a true caterpillar. Some seemed stuck to leaves with a white glue, while other were inching along the stalks of plants.

When I got to the ridge overlooking the first swamp, I sat in the shade to recover from the ordeal of the stickers. I often sit on this ridge and listen for birds. I did see a bluejay, but the great commotion was from the chipmunks. It was like I was hearing the beginning of a dozen knock-knock jokes
without hearing any of the punch lines. The chips came from all directions. Then I saw a red squirrel and it bumped into a small chipmunk in front of me and chased it squealing away. There seems to be plenty for chipmunks and squirrels to eat, but I've never heard such a chorus of them. The going was easier down to the Big Pond and around the pond the osiers had fewer berries and more dark red leaves.

I walked up to my usual perch by the south end of the dam, and apparently this is no longer a spot where beavers dine on small stalks. Some grass was pressed down, not much, but there were no sticks around. I headed up the south shore of the pond and soon learned that the going was easiest by staying close to the asters, and avoiding the meadowsweet and tall grasses. But since I was trying to see where beavers might have come out of the pond, I couldn't just ride the asters which gallop well up the dry slopes. When I got to a point just across from the beaver lodge on the north shore, I could see cut cattail stalks in the water. Muskrats could be doing that, and I've seen a muskrat swim near that area.

It behooved me to get close to the pond water, and I was a bit surprised by how soon my feet got wet tiptoeing through tall grasses. And then not only did I stumble up a path made by beavers, but I saw evidence of their nipping the stalk of a plant.

The path was not just a straight shot down to the pond. It was more like a series of intermingling crescents, but I couldn't get a photo of that, unless I had wings.

I walked down the path and saw a pile of sticks, some nibbled, some not, next to the water,

and could see how they dredged out the channel to the spot.

I wouldn't say the channel to the pond was muddy, but this year when vegetation clogs much of the pond surface, it was easy to see that this channel has been well used.

It's hard to explain why I was so pleased to see this. Other animals browse roaming far afield and to understand what they are doing only recalls the universal pleasure of poking about. Beavers range all around the pond, but then commit to just a few seams of forage, making what looks indistinguishable to me into a special spot, and the way to it a lifeline. I'm not sure how many beavers are in this colony. I've only seen two at once in the pond. Coyotes killed a beaver here
in the winter. So now I continued going around the pond hoping to see more lifelines which might mean more beavers. I got to the pond above this one, where they spent the winter of 2006-7. The pond was small and showed no evidence, muddy water, parted grass, trails off it, of being managed by beavers.

The only way I could account for all the dead grass is by assuming that despite all the rain this pond never filled up, the beavers never tended the dam, and the surrounding vegetation was left relatively high and dry. The dam was quite dry, with asters marking the easy way, just above the burmarigold.

Behind the dam there was a bit of clearing showing the muddy bottom, but on a minor muskrat scale.

Along the north shore of the pond the grasses were more ferocious, and I stayed away from them until I got to where I think there is a spring. I thought that might be a place where beavers would make a canal because above it is an easy way into woods, albeit mostly thick pines. The spring was completely
grassed over. Not a hint of it.

Continuing down the shore I could see where deer wondered down to the lush cattails and reeds, but I didn't see any evidence of beavers breaking out from the pond side.

There is an old lodge just off the upper reaches of this shore and I spotted it only because a few mallards were sitting on top of it. Early in the summer I discovered a beaver trail going back into the woods from the lodge the beavers are using. The trail is still there but doesn't look used. I walked back along it and saw nothing freshly nipped. So I only had the dam to cross to complete my circumpondation. The brim of the dam looked unforgivingly choked with plants. I
often see closed gentian near the north end of the dam, but not today.

Below the dam was easy enough to walk along, and it was dry. Last summer there were a couple of trails going over to alders below the dam. Not this year. Rather then struggle along the spillover of the dam, pictured above, I simply walked down the small meadow below that which used to be what I called Double-lodge Pond. I can no longer see the lodges and I thought the pond was completely dry but a mallard surprised me by flying up and I found a pleasant pool behind the dam with pondweed and burmarigold.

I took an easier way up the ridge on my way home. After my struggles the day no longer seemed chilly and I was looking forward to a swim in the river. But up on the granite dryness. next to some ghostly dry lichens, I saw a garter snake sunning itself.

Smart animals know this is the time to be greedy for sunshine.

September 13 I headed off after lunch to see if I could learn anything about the Lost Swamp and Upper Second Swamp Pond beavers under the noon day sun. I wanted to make sure the Lost Swamp Pond beavers were still there, and since they weren't cutting trees or bushes anywhere I could get to, unless they had started doing that, my only hope was to notice a new wrinkle in the grass on the dam or on the lodge near the dam which is where I think they might be. As for the Upper Second Swamp beavers, I had to look for the same thing. I wasn't going to try to wade through the meadow above the pond and hope to pinpoint their new digs. I suspected that thanks to lack of rain, that they had to have moved back to the lodge behind the dam. Anyway I took the easy way to the Lost Swamp Pond, no meadow, no
stickers, and even no perching osprey to slow me down. However, I did see a twisted, dead bullhead on the slope of the south shore of the Second Swamp Pond.

I suspect this in one of those bullheads that the ospreys often clutch and pick out the innards at their leisure as they perch on high trees. When I got up to the Lost Swamp Pond, the geese filed out of the west end of the pond
toward the south east reaches, and the ducks made a short flight up to the northeast end of the pond. I scanned the pond for beaver signs and saw nothing obvious. I sat on the rock above the mossy cove, which had a small raccoon poop on it -- so some
survived the anti-rabies cull. Down below I saw the red damselflies bobbing their tails into the water where I see them do it every year, and also bobbing out on the elbow of a floating log that in most years is encrusted with muskrat poop, but not
this bad year for muskrats. I did notice something white next to the beaver lodge next to the dam, but too white to be freshly cut wood. Then as I looked elsewhere, I heard a splash around that lodge. I looked back and saw a small coyote climb up on the lodge and look down. First I paid attention to the coyote and not what it flushed out of the lodge. It stayed on the lodge a few seconds and then ambled back on the rock behind the lodge, and then down to the water, where it took a lick of water, then as it walked along the dam it kept its head up snapping like it was getting stray berries or bugs. Then I looked out in the pond and there was a beaver, nose up, swimming back and forth behind the dam, certainly not hiding from the coyote even swimming toward it as the coyote looked at it. The coyote went the length of the dam and then down the slope and I could no longer see it. I stayed
put. The wind was in my face minimizing the chance that the beaver would notice me, and was I curious to see if another beaver popped up, and how long it took for the beaver to calm down. The beaver began to swim closer to the dam, and often stopped and sniffed the air.

Then when it swam back toward the lodge, I'd click on the camcorder expecting to see the beaver go back into the lodge. Instead, it slapped its tail right outside the lodge. In the next half hour it did that three more times. Was there another beaver still inside the lodge? But what was the alarm? I
imagined the coyote had moved on, and I even tried to read the chorus of chipmunk chips fancying I could hear spreading alarm as the coyote move. Then the beaver began swimming up to the east end of the pond. I thought the alarm might be over, then it swam back. However, this time it didn't go near the lodge by the dam, it swam over to the lodge in the middle of the pond, and finally, about 40 minutes after the coyote's visit dove in the water and went into the lodge.

Right away I head humming. My guess is that while one beaver confronted the coyote, the other swam under water from one lodge to the other. Perhaps at the tail-slapping signal from the guard beaver. The humming continued off and on for a few minutes. The beavers evidently had a lot to talk about.

I walked around to get a closer look at the lodge by the dam. The last time I looked at it, I thought it was too unprotected for beaver occupation. Now I saw that some grasses had been pushed up on the lodge.

Then I heard a splash coming from the Upper Second Swamp Pond. I went up the rocks and looked down at the pond and saw another splash and the nose in the air of the beaver that made it. I also saw the coyote walking back from the dam
into the tall cattail meadow below. I was close enough for the coyote to notice me. The beaver kept swimming back and forth.

I eased down the rocks but didn't see the coyote again.

I didn't have time to wait around and see how long it took this beaver to calm down. I assumed it eventually went back into the nearby lodge. So thanks to a coyote getting restless at the same time I did, I got a partial census of the beavers, answering the questions I thought I didn't have a chance of answering at two in the afternoon. Plus this is the first time I have seen beavers react to a coyote and it was clear that the beavers did not cower and hide, and the coyote showed no inclination to dive in the water after them. But just as when
they confront otters, the beavers did not gang up on the invader. One beaver monitored the situation while the others layed low. Walking down the south shore the of Second Swamp Pond, I saw another bit of dead bullhead, this was fresher, closer to the pond, and there was a stain of dead moss next to it.

If I suspected that there were otters around, I would credit otters for eating the bullhead and squirting out enough pee to kill the moss. But there are no other signs of otters, so perhaps a mink, fisher, fox, do coyotes eat fish?

We spent the night at the land which gave me a chance to check on the Boundary Pool beavers. I wanted to make sure that sighting a beaver in the pond at 10 in the morning didn't mean the beavers had moved. I nestled on my slope at a
little after 6 pm and scowled at the unparted duckweed between the lodge and dam, but the duckweed above the lodge was quite open, which only proved that the wind had done a bit of blowing from the north.

At 6:30 I heard some gnawing. Either I missed seeing a beaver come out, or one had already been out because at 6:45 I saw the duckweed part as if a beaver was swimming from the east shore toward the lodge. Then I saw a beaver surface in the channel heading up pond and it reared up to nip a stick hanging
above the pond and gnawed on that for several minutes. I think that beaver went up pond, but it is possible that it swam back to the lodge. I soon saw some movement next to the lodge. Then another beaver came out and also went to a log a bit up pond. A little after 7 I heard the two kits humming in the lodge. It's possible one came out. I saw a beaver come back down from the channel up pond and swim over to the east side of the pond where I couldn't see it. Then a beaver that certainly acted like a kit, doing quick, curling dives, with no evident purpose came around
the lodge, and dove into the lodge.

It was a cloudly evening, with rain coming, and I left when I still had enough light to get back to the house for dinner