July 6 no rain still and only a slight chance of a slight amount today, so I am pumping water for the gardens and that, combined with sawing logs for firewood took up my morning. A spring peeper appeared on tub after one of my breaks away from the pump.
The repetitive work suits me. I have much to think about. We go back to the island everyday to deliver vegetables and take a swim so everyday I am reminded of the high water level in the river caused by the heaviest spring rains in memory. Those spring rains should have swelled all the beaver ponds I watch, and they did briefly, but the Big Pond beavers and Lost Swamp Pond beavers didn’t repair their dams and most of the water drained away. The Last Pool beavers on our land left after the remaining kit died, and, to my surprise, their considerable dam sprung a leak and that pond has mostly drained away. Now drought is setting in and evaporation rules the valley. I am left with the East Trail Pond beavers who I will check shortly to see if they have kits this year; the two Audubon Pond beavers who never have kits; and the one beaver on our land. All but the East Trail Pond beavers live in man-made ponds. I will probably have plenty of time this summer to try to figure out why with such lush vegetation arising from the spring rains, there are so few beavers to take advantage of it. Meanwhile, in the evening at our land, I am thankful for that I have one beaver to watch. Since the beaver was not out around 7pm yesterday, today I went down at 8. I sat in my chair and enjoyed the songs of the thrushes as I scanned the pond. No beaver again. I went up to the Third Pond, in case it went back there. About 10 years ago there was beaver who commuted between the two ponds. I sat on the chair in the Third Pond and thought I heard some cutting. Then I focused on the grasses and saw the muskrat bring out a mouthful,
swim toward me and dive just below me. It must have a burrow there. A few minutes later, I heard it surface, saw it swim below me, then it dove sharply and I could tell by the bubbles that it swam back toward its burrow and before going in did that snap-tail dive which is the muskrat’s version of the beaver’s trying to tail slap an intruder away.
In such a small pond, it is bad form to upset an animal. So I headed down our trail back to the Big Pond. The beaver was still not out so I walked around the high bank of the east end of the pond and while I didn’t see that much evidence of beaver foraging on the northeast shore,
it was easy to see that the beaver has been feasting on pond vegetation on the southeast shore.
As walked over to investigate, I saw the beautiful sunset reflected in the pond.
I went over to the trail up in the grass where the beaver had groomed itself a few nights ago, which didn’t look just used,
but the beaver had certainly been foraging toward the shore. The muddy water revealed that.
Looking over at the bank lodge by the knoll I could see enough clearing of vegetation to suggest that the beaver might have been over there too. Then I heard a rush of water and saw air bubbles on the surface of the pond making a trail out from the knoll. The beaver surfaced well toward the middle of the pond, and then stopped still and started sniffing. The beaver was facing my direction. I was sitting down on the ground so most of my body was concealed by tall vegetation. It was a charming place to be with white daisies and yellow birds foot trefoil around, but I was right on the beaver’s trail. What if it had a notion to go up it? To make a long story short, the beaver kept coming closer to me. I could see its nose sniffing the air constantly.
It swam toward the vegetation along the shore, which it probably had planned to dine, then it would turn away and sniff some more. There was a light wind in my face, but that same wind blew over the tracks I made to get where I was. The beaver seemed to take a couple of bites of the pondweed,
And the beaver almost climbed out on the bank a little to my right but thought better of it. Then it dove twice as if to bring up something to eat, but thought better of it.
Then it swam right in front of me, 10 feet away, still sniffing the air. When it turned and swam quickly away from me, I readied myself for a tail slap but I guess the beaver thought better of it. Then it swam along the north shore all the way down to the dam where it climbed out and ate some grass. Crouching all the way, I retreated to the woods, back where I expect the beaver will soon cut some maple saplings if it stays. I was surprised to see huge elecampane leaves growing in the midst of the saplings. That flower fills our fields and clearings but this is its first invasion of our woods. I kept in the woods and got back to the Third Pond -- not an easy jog. Then I walked down the road and enjoyed the wood thrushes and lightning bugs.
July 7 I got a chance to kayak over to South Bay in the heat of a relatively cool July afternoon, only 80 degrees. However the river water is no longer cold, so I worked up a little sweat paddling around the headland. More pleasure boat traffic seems to have kept the loons off the main thoroughfares of the river, nor did I see any cormorants, osprey, or common terns. Paddling down the north shore of the south cove of the bay I grunted with the geese. I don’t think they were impressed. I’d say there were three or four families with older goslings, almost indistinguishable from the adults, and one family of still fuzzy goslings, all told about 40 geese. Led by their parents the fuzzy goslings went up to graze on the area under the willow that I wanted to check for beaver or otter signs. I had to give way. Then as I approached an old otter trail up to the point of the peninsula, a heron was there. It flew off and I didn’t see any otter signs. Nor did I see any along the north shore of the peninsula. On a rock along where otters have latrined many summers, I saw three scent mounds but no otter scats. So I think a beaver made them, or muskrat. I didn’t see any beaver work until I got beyond the docking rock along the north shore of the bay. Instead of gnawing on the big willow trunk there, the beaver gnawed on a smaller elm somewhat entwined with the willow. I’ll have to go back and get a photo. I saw some lily and cattail rhizomes floating in the water. The latter were so large I assume they blew into the bay from some dredging project up river. The water lilies are not doing well in the high water, and all the pads in the north cove had just about as many insect holes in them as possible without falling a part. I put a part of one leaf on my bow to take home for a photo.
There are other flowers, especially the sticker bush rugosa rose, and the purple and yellow nightshade. I saw one small purple loosestrife. There were a few blue flag irises, but none of the usual yellow flag irises. I saw the shell of one ferocious looking bug on a blade of grass by the water.
I only saw one turtle. The water was cloudy, probably from geese browsing, so most of the fish got out of my way without my seeing them. I saw one relatively large fish suspended in the water, probably a bass. So I had a relaxing paddle, visually refreshing, but I didn’t sense that any otters had been around.
July 8 I took a quick tour of the lower ponds and went beyond the Third Pond to see how the clearing in the woods I created by felling several trees is faring. Even with the weather continuing hot and dry, the vegetation there is lush.
And I think it is getting more diverse. The thick, tall, juicy-stem weed has been topped here and there, probably by deer, and other smaller plants are spreading.
And underneath those waves of green, I found a patch of red baneberries, a beautiful but poisonous berry.
And where the green above thinned out at bit, I could see many pink flowers of herb robert plants.
Then back on the island, I took a tour of the South Bay otter latrines, Audubon Pond and the East Trail Pond. It had a promising start. There seemed to be more and bigger scent mounds on the high slope next to the old dock, but no otter scats,
And just beyond the docking rock, about 100 yards farther up the north shore of the bay, I took a photo of the gnawing a beaver did on an elm twisting around a thick willow trunk.
I saw this while kayaking yesterday. A nearby ash had a few gnaws too, but there were no stripped sticks or scent mounds suggesting that beavers come here often. At first glance it looked like several otters had scratched up the grass high up on the latrine overlooking the entrance to South Bay.
From the top of the scratching, I could look down toward the water and easily see a trail coming up and a series of scent mounds.
I expected to see generous scats, but instead saw one thin, hard scat on top of one scent mound,
The other scats I saw were much smaller. I hate it when I find scats like this in otter latrines, because I’ve seen what I think is duck poop look at bit like this, hard and glassy. I have seen scat like this where I don’t think otters ever go. Even so, if an otter did this, it is still only one otter, and I am looking for a family. It doesn’t look like the beavers are cutting trees around what remains of the pond below Audubon Pond.
However, the water is very muddy so muskrats at least are probably keeping the muddy bottom stirred up. The water level in Audubon Pond is now below the drain and it is easy to see how much mud the beavers have pushed in. When the cage was put over the drain in 2009 there was much more pipe showing. Here is how the drain and it cage cover looked on 3 November 2009:
Here is what it looks like today. The beavers have larded on in a good deal of mud.
I suppose if they worked hard now, they could raise the water level of the pond by larding in mud that will form a barrier higher than the top of the drain. Walking along the west shore of the pond, I could see that the beavers have been cutting trees in the woods. They cut down a small hornbeam,
and a larger bitternut hickory of which they only left the stump.
There are large vernal pools in the woods here, now dry, but they held water this year longer than any other thanks to the wet spring. I didn’t see any signs that beavers had a hang out in the nearest one.
They did half cut one tree at the edge of the pool. It had well exposed roots.
The way the water drains from the pool makes a nice path beavers can use.
Not that there is any impediment to their roaming around under the tall trees in this woods. Only one of the large trees, an elm, has been gnawed by the beavers this year.
The trail goes under a little bridge carrying the human trail around the pond. Just beyond that bridge, out int the pond, I could see a collection of logs, most old but some recently deposited.
The recent additions don’t begin to approximate a winter cache.
There is a beautiful line of blooming purple loosestrife beside the bank lodge on the west shore.
But more to the point of my beaver studies, some recently cut branches are in front of the bank lodge on the west shore,
and as I stood taking photos, I saw two trails of bubbles coming out of the lodge. Two beavers soon surfaced well out toward the middle of the pond. They swam the back and forth pattern of upset beavers.
Only one slapped its tail.
They swam too far away from me to make for interesting video, so I continued around the pond. I didn’t see any more beaver work up in the woods. The park staff is no longer maintaining the trail to the covered bench on the north shore of the pond so now the bench is well blinded from the pond by some tall blooming vervain, the first I’ve seen this year.
Other flowers were blooming below the vervain, some mullein, and I saw my first butter-and-eggs for the season.
The tail slapping beaver swam over closer to the bench and even close to the lodge near the bench, but it didn’t go in it. My guess is that they also den in this lodge when they get the notion, and will probably winter there again.
As usual at this time of year, I could hear several bullfrogs calling, and perhaps caught the eye of one.
I took the high road to the East Trail Pond. I also wanted to check Thicket Pond for otter scats. Of course, I checked the usual latrines around Audubon Pond and found no otter scats. Up on the ridge north of the pond, the grasses are very dry and despite the wet spring the vegetation on the rocky slope down to the ponds was a manageable as ever. However, once down at pond level, the grasses were green, tall and thick. Where I hoped to see signs of otters, where I had seen some scats six weeks ago was now trackless vegetation.
I continued on to the ridge north of the East Trail Pond. The lower part of the portion of the pond behind the beavers’ dam looks as verdant and concealed as last summer.
But the western end of the pond is much more open than it was last summer. I assume because of what the beavers cut there during the winter.
The water in the pond is noticeably lower as can be seen by looking down on the water retreating from the north shore.
The beavers had collected those stripped log on the edge of the water, now they are high and dry. I have gone down the ridge many times to get a closer look at such work along the shore, but today while doing it, I tumbled and cut my leg and hip on some mighty hard granite. I blame cheap and old athletic shoes and the slippery dry leaves. I was up in an instant and not bleeding much. I took a photo of the work the beavers have done on the basswood they had begun to cut two weeks ago,
They did a bit more girdling. I looked around for more new work and didn’t see any, but at this time of year, every time I see the beavers here, they are eating the shrubs, ferns and grasses growing in the pond.
July 12 we were away for the weekend and got back yesterday evening and spent the afternoon and early evening watering our gardens at our land. Then after dinner I checked the Deep Pond. The beaver wasn’t out but I could see a trail it made on the low shore on its right side as it swam out of the bank lodge below the knoll.
Of course, I took a closer look this morning. I was hoping that the trail extended back into the woods, that the beaver was cutting or at least nosing out trees to cut for its winter cache pile. But the trail only went a few feet into the tall grasses.
A week or so ago, I had speculated that the water in front of the bank lodge was too shallow to accommodate a beaver. That area now looks well traveled.
Indeed, the beaver draped one of the lily pads it had started to eat over the railing of the front porch of the lodge, so to speak.
I’ll have to get some old photo of the lodge to see if the beaver has added logs and sticks to it.
This lodge seemed to have been in pretty bad shape. That the beaver hasn’t cut trees for logs doesn’t preclude it from getting logs for the lodge. There are probably many dozens on the bottom of the pond. Judging from how muddy the water remains there, the beaver is still foraging in the southeast corner of the pond, in front of its other trail, where I saw it the other night. The pond weed looks like it has been trimmed back into a straight hedge.
That’s probably an accident more dependent on how the pond depth drops off there. Farther along the slope its easy to see that the beaver is eating the vegetation in a more typical ragged fashion.
While the beaver is obviously eating lily pads, the lily flowers are bursting out all over and many are quite brilliant. It looks like the beaver foraged around the one in the photo below.
There are several blooming beside the route it takes when it swims out from the lodge.
However, I have never seen lily blooms surrounded by such a dense array of little pads.
The beaver would have much to munch just to get close to the blooms. I also checked out the Last Pool which is now too dry to call a pool any more.
It looked like one turtle had left the pond
However, while I can identify turtle tracks, in this case I am not sure which way the turtle was going. There is still water in the channel which two years ago was high and dry compared to the pools it connected.
As the channel water drains away some secrets I never suspected are being revealed. As I mentioned before much of the moss in this area is growing on rotting trunks left behind by loggers some 20 to 30 years ago. It looks like the beavers dug out some of those rotting trunks and made holes under the little mossy mounds.
And it is almost dry enough here to begin to try to figure out the lodge.
I’ll wait for a cool day when the deer flies have finally quit before I begin that study.
July 13 we spent the night on the island, and after a hot humid night, enough of a front moved through to give us a cooler morning. I kayaked over to South Bay. Today, there were no geese preventing me from inspecting the willow latrine on the north shore of the south cove. There were no signs of otters, beavers or muskrats using it. Still no water lilies blooming in the south cove. As I paddled back out along the peninsula, I saw an osprey perched high in a tree. It flew off and joined two other osprey flying high over the bay. Perhaps adult osprey are beginning to teach their fledglings how to fish. As I went around the point, I heard a heron croaking with displeasure. By the time I got around to the other side of the point, I almost convinced myself that an otter had gone up on the point, but the more I looked the less likely that seemed. I should get up on the point within the next two weeks. I’ll come out in the boat to do that. I saw no more signs of otters. I followed a fish up one of the channels into the marsh. Since the fish was big enough for me to see its dorsal fins above the water, I fancied that I could trap it enough to get a good look at it in shallower water. No such luck. Then I saw a duck family, a mother with three very small ducklings and a larger duck that I assume was a male. Both adult ducks looked to be getting in their new feathers which made it tough to identify them. They seemed smaller than mallards, and the male had a red eye. The male soon flew off leaving the female and ducklings to fend for themselves. They swam in among the cattails. I kept noticing how small the ducklings were yet not very fuzzy at all. I veered off from them and went directly over to the old dock, rather than to the end of the cove. No more scent mounds by the old dock. As I paddled up the north shore, I saw a couple of painted turtles on a log and then I saw a larger map turtle that I didn’t notice at first because its brownish shell didn’t stand out from the old barkless dead tree the way the darker painted turtle shells did. I had a perfect angle to look at the map turtle, looking slightly up at it. I could see its thick neck and thick legs, all boldly striped in curving black and white, with its relatively small shell seeming unable to contain the massive body. I was transfixed during the few minutes I could look at it. The parts of the mass seemed disproportioned the way some old masterpiece paintings are but every part was perfected. Nothing coy about a map turtle, until it senses you and quickly disappears into the depths of water. I looked for beaver signs as I paddled up the shore, saw none, and was distracted by five kingfishers. Most looked relatively small so here again were youngsters getting lessons. They were perched on the willows hanging over the water, diving down after shiners, and getting them too. One adult flew away going behind me with loud cackling. The others were loath to leave this classroom, and kept flying from willow to willow just keeping ahead of me, and still trying to catch fish. When we started running out of willows, they flew behind me, I assume back to where the willows began so they could resume their lesson. I finally did see some stripped bark bobbing right along the shore. I paddled over and was surprised to see a half stripped pine branch. I was about to conclude that it was likely old beaver work that floated into shore from who knows where, when I saw a pile of mud on the shore likely left by a beaver. Since the old otter latrines looked unvisited by otters, I took hard looks at areas on the shore that I fancied would make a good otter latrine, but I still didn’t see otter signs. I saw some of the yellow water lilies, that I call spatterdock, that were about to bloom in full. Then when I paddled across the Narrows to the bay west of the entrance to the Narrows, I saw many spatterdock in bloom, but no white water lilies. The water is much higher in that bay than usual, and the geese seem to have eaten a good bit of the vegetation under water. I expected to see even more schools of fish than usual, but I didn’t see any fish at all. Meanwhile when we returned to our land, to water the garden, I checked the Deep Pond after dinner and saw the beaver in the far east end of the pond. It seemed to notice me and it swam slowly back toward the knoll in the southwest corner of the pond, diving and swimming under water for half the trip. It surfaced in front of the lodge, seemed to sniff the air again
and dove into the bank lodge there.
I continued my walk in the road and saw a red salamander crossing it.
July 14 to water our gardens we have a well with a cistern pump. The wall is next to our house and both well and house are well shaded by some huge red oaks and many smaller ironwoods. I also have piles of logs in that shade, waiting to be sawed, and, after sawed and split, piles of firewood seasoning in the sun at the edge of my bower. Save for when I deliver the water to the lower garden or go out to bring back logs from the woods, my domain is shrunk to those rather pleasant dimensions.
Needless to say during my hours there I can keep my eyes on my neighbors. Apart from the mosquitoes, my closest neighbor of late has been a spring peeper. I first noticed it back on July 6 and I took a photo of it and even confined it in a small aquarium long enough for Leslie to get a look at it. Since I had caught it in a net, I expected the little thing to learn a lesson and not return. But it has. The aluminum sluice I use from the pump to the tank has been stained beige by the water and it matches the color of the peeper better than any tree bark. As it clings to the sluice, the peeper looks awake, but one evening I realized that it is sleeping. I started pumping and the water rushed by it and it hardly twitched. Then it grudgingly moved up to the edge of the sluice and I fancied it was on guard for mosquitoes attracted by the running water. Probably not. When it began to get dark a little after 8:30, remember this all occurs in the shade, the peeper suddenly animated itself, almost like it inflated. Its body rose up, as well as its head. Now it was awake. It leaped from the sluice onto the screen I have covering the tank. Then it leaped from that onto another screen leaning against the tank. Then it leaped onto the ground and off for its night’s adventures. Tonight I didn’t notice that it was sleeping right in the middle of the sluice. The rush of water didn’t wash it away, and rather than panic, it crawled steadily up the flow until it got under the spout of the cistern regaining some peace and quiet. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was sleep walking. I have several chipmunk neighbors. As it gets dry during high summer, I expect them to sneak up to the cistern for water, but they haven’t done that this year. However, a baby red squirrel had been barreling through, almost out of control, and I think it is out of control because the third time it came over to me it had lost all its spunk and awareness. I splashed water around which just caused it to hop off a few feet. Then I saw it coming up the path next to me, going three feet and pausing, three feet more and pausing. I got a banana peel from my breakfast which I pushed under its nose, but it just hopped along. I think it needs its mother and is starving. I heard her a week ago but not since. Every summer we have a vireo singing near us and so we do this summer, but perhaps not as persistent as usual. In the evening a veery sings next to us, and some times a wood thrush. We occasionally see a black and white warbler. The whip-poor-will makes a brief clarion call near us in the early evening and as vigorous a call, which in its case can be a rather long series of calls, in the very early morning just before the other birds start to sing. The whip-poor-will is never mournful. So far we have had no visits from a porcupine. We hear some strange mammalian calls at night, probably from raccoons. We have seen hares and rabbits between us and the garden. Last year I watched a hare eat our banana peels, but not yet this year. I hear barred owls in the distance. We had been hearing coyotes but not so much the past two weeks. No frogs singing, no crickets yet. One katydid during the day. A good neighborhood. After she finished watering the gardens, Leslie went down to see the Last Pool. I stayed at my pump building up tomorrow’s flood. She reported that she saw a turtle along Grouse Alley, small, but she still thought it was a Blanding’s. She also thought that the area around the Last Pool lodge smelled like a beaver had just been there. I got my cameras and headed down Grouse Alley. The turtle remained under the ferns where she saw it, looked about 6 or 7 inches long and looked like a Blandings.
We seldom see a Blanding’s turtle this small. I picked it up and took a photo of its bottom shell, which showed the typical Blanding’s turtle shell pattern.
I have been checking the Last Pool regularly and today it didn’t look or smell much different than before, except there was less water in the few remaining pools.
Leslie had also been excited by the small lodge near the main lodge and thought it looked like the beavers dug out the stump of a big tree long since cut down. That made sense to me.
As for a beaver just leaving its scent there, much of the mud in the drying channels and pool was still pliable. I saw canine tracks,
but no beaver tracks.
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