July 16 facing a summer of dry ponds, I toyed with the idea of stopping a daily narrative of my observations and instead attempt an analytical juxtaposition of photos making a then and now story, but I think that would only work if I was sure about what I was seeing, and I am not. Plus, I would have to be sure about what I had seen, and I am not. This is not like going back to an old city neighborhood where how the character of businesses and residences has changed can be grasped as a glance. Nature is too complicated. A beaver pond can give the impression that something understandable is going on. A sheet of water is reassuring to human reasoning and because so much is happening under water, it energizes the human imagination in the most benign way. Don’t probing scientists always find happy diversity in a pond? But water forms a false point of reference. To survive, natural things adjust to water and to its absence without romance or regrets. That said, I did go off to the Last Pool this hot afternoon armed with a 100 feet of tape measure. I wanted to measure the circumference of the beaver lodge in the Last Pool.
But I hadn’t used the measure since we built the house in 2006. The plastic spool soon broke; the wound tape was all stuck together. And I could see that knowing the circumference was meaningless, or at least far less important than what looks like the rather unique design of the lodge. When the plastic broke, I put the tape aside, on the poplar trunk that fell next to the lodge, and noticed that west end of the lodge appeared to be a loose association of sticks,
like an apron and there appeared to be nothing solid underneath, yet the area didn’t look a like an entrance either. Moving a few feet to the east, I took a photo of an entrance into the lodge, which seemed to be where that apron of sticks finally met burrowed earth.
Then moving a bit more to the east, there was a burrow forming an entrance with no apron of sticks.
This is now, and now I have to try to go back to then and search for a photo showing this spot before the beavers got here. My guess is that there was originally a mound of dirt that the beavers could burrow into and that they piled sticks on top and an apron of sticks around it. So that this is not the typical lodge made of mud and wattles (to quote Yeats) but a strange kind of bank lodge that wound up being in the middle of the pond. But I may be wrong about that. It is still too soggy to try to get a head into the entrance, with a flashlight, and too buggy with deer flies and mosquitoes, but I could stick a camera down and snap a photo.
That does seem to show that the beavers dug through a nexus of little roots that were there when the beavers burrowed into a mound. As I have suggested the heat and insects are not conducive to definitive study of this, but bugs don’t plague my files. For the moment I think this is a photo of how this area looked in 2006.
The beavers dug their lodge into the mossy mound on the far left of the photo above. I should have the uncropped original of the that photo on a disk somewhere. And I’ll try to take a photo with that view. Usually when I took a photo of the lodge from that side I was standing more to the right. The beavers began making this lodge back in late September 2010 and it took me by surprise. I think this is how the mossy mounds looked before they made the lodge.
But I may be wrong. I took the photo above in July 2009; beavers were using the pool but didn’t have a lodge. My clear view of this pool of water ended when the beavers felled a large aspen that fell across the middle of the pool in late 2009. Not that I had that clear a view of the area before that. I occasionally came down here twice or thrice year for 10 years, and never quite figured out why the mossy mounds were there. I never saw evidence for logging in this particular area, so I could simply assume that the mossy mounds are the remains of old tree trunks. Unfortunately, I didn’t make a particular study of the mounds before the beavers came. When I stepped around to the other side of the lodge, parts of the mossy mound that the beavers didn’t cover with sticks had holes into and probably through it. They looked too small for a beaver’s doing, but muskrats had been here too.
There remains a small pool of water on the south side of the lodge. When I got close to it, I expected to see much wiggling and maybe hopping, but the only living things that it seemed to be a last refuge for were snails.
which I will take pains to identify, but not today.
There is a large entrance on the south side of the lodge that is obscured by a fan of sticks over it.
I stuck my camera in the hole but the photos didn’t come out well. So that’s how my measuring of the circumference of the lodge stands today. When it is cooler, I will try to get good photos of the interior and see if all the entrances serve one main chamber like the usual beaver lodge or if the mossy mounds favored burrowing out separate rooms. Judging from the small structure the beavers fashioned on top of a mossy mound nearby, I bet there were no limits placed on their burrowing.
I put my camera in front of the that hole and luckily got a shot of a burrow going through and down the mound and meeting sunlight and vegetation on the other side, which of course would have been the bottom of the beavers’ main channel when the pond was full of water.
When I looked over at the now merely damp channel, I roused a few small frogs from the muck.
I could almost walk on the flat bottom of the pond
and from that perspective I saw other holes into mossy mounds that I'll soon be able to explore.
And then I have to figure out why the beavers dredged the main channel leading from this pool so deeply.
That’s the feature of their work that I fear will leave this area much drier than before the beavers came. I still had energy enough to grind one more scientific axe: how could I get a grip on the remains of their cache piles and piles of leftovers left outside the entrances to their lodge. I dug into the one on the north side and saw that there was some depth to the pile.
The cache pile leftovers on the southwest side of the pond also looked like it would be difficult to characterize.
After dinner I took a walk down the road. As usual I stopped to look at the Deep Pond. I did this last night and didn’t see anything but deer flies and mosquitoes, and some birds sang sweetly. Tonight I saw a beaver out in the deep east end of the pond, just swimming slowly. It was too far away for me to pay a price in blood waiting for it to do something I’ve never seen before. I swatted away the flies and continued down the road. Last night I saw a muskrat in White Swamp, but it gained the cover of the vegetation surrounding the open water next to the road before I could get my camcorder out. Tonight I saw three muskrats in the same area and at first it looked like they were all going to hide before I got my camcorder out. Then I saw one still in middle of the pond grasses eating,
and then another swam back where I could see it.
I think White Swamp has recovered from the great muskrat slaughter of 4 years ago when the price for muskrat pelts briefly soared.
July 18 it clouded up last night, rain seemed to be coming. The thunder started at 4am, but the rain didn’t fall until 6 and lasted an hour, quite a relief. The morning remained cloudy and I took advantage of the even light to take photos of the lower part of the Last Pool and Boundary Pond. I started at the deep channel that the beavers dug through what had been a flat areas between two pools of water. Several frogs jumped in as I investigated.
In the photo above one is clinging to the side of the channel. I think if I put my mind to it, and get that tape measure working, I’ll be able to estimate how much soil the beavers dug out. The deeply dredged part is not long, but soon widens. Of course, the beavers dredged that wider part too.
It may be hard to find photos of this area before the beavers moved up. The photo below taken in July 2007 shows that ferns had taken over. The rivulet running through had probably dried up.
I keep insisting that this area where the lower Last Pool was formed had been logged years ago. Indeed, I had first called the pool “Logdam Pool” because of the logs from lumbering that I found near the dam the beavers made. Today I could only find one old log,
And I have been describing mossy hills as growing on large trunks left behind by the wood cutters. However, today I had a hard time finding them. I saw three downed trunks
The ones in the muck, one moss covered, could have wound up down there in just the way the one cut recently by the beavers is beginning its decent into the muck. And one big old stump I saw also looked unlogged.
I left those conundrums and entered the somewhat different world of the Boundary Pond.
The upper portion of the Boundary Pond has been under water for three years and vegetation has been slower to gain footing, even though there is more sunlight here thanks to the trees the beavers cut down and killed.
As I approached a heron flew up from a pool of water and I snapped a photo. It doesn’t show the heron but it does show the bare crowns of the trees there.
But the pools of water remaining are themselves green as if they were reflecting what’s to come.
The pond will have to get dryer before I can see how much the beavers dredged these pools. There were pools here before the beavers came though I am not exactly sure where. Now I can explore the shore and, for example, get a complete view of what I called the beaver’ hut, which I think the mother built to get away from her kits.
There was a small canal toward the east shore a few feet down pond which led to the trails the beavers took to get up the high ridge east of the pond.
Continuing south along that shore there are more pools, rapidly losing water. The beavers may have dredged there. It doesn’t look like it to me, and I am trying to think of a reason why they should. The beavers here did go well behind the dam to dredge up muck to take to the dam, and pools of water left behind are always a comfort to a beaver. They must well know how pond water levels can go up and down.
Closer to the dam the pools look deeper, and if they dry out perhaps I’ll be able to learn something. I recall that the size of the pools here was much smaller before the beavers came, and maybe I’ll find old photos to prove it.
Then I got down almost to the dam and there was a pool behind the east side of the dam. At first glance it seems that would be the place to dredge muck for the dam, but I think beavers know not to dredge too close behind the dam because that could weaken the dam.
Next year the rather impressive now dry dam should be even more vegetated, depending on how much the pond fills up.
Of course, I looked for a leak but saw none. Looking below the dam, it looked like water was still flowing down the creek that once drained this area,
Plus the area is obviously wet enough to support a jungle of small plants. I may still see a deep hole in the dam as the water drains out, but I may also have misjudged the beavers’ ability to make a dam without mud, just using forest litter instead. This area is at the very top of the watershed of Mullet Creek which flows into the St. Lawrence River and the few hundred yards of rivulet above it does not bring down much silt. Then I turned my attention to the lodge behind the dam. It is still surrounded by water so I can’t look into entrances. I saw beavers use this lodge for about 3 years and now I can better see the channels around the lodge which explain why beavers swam, dived and dredged where they did.
And here the cache piles around the lodge are much larger. Sifting through them looks like laborious work.
For its first year and then some, this pond had two large pools connected by a long channel. Now that the water has drained out, I can once again walk around on terra firma and look at the lodge from the north. One of the entrances to the lodge seemed to be emerging as the water level dropped.
This was the direction from where the beavers brought most of their logs and stripped tree trunks. Of course, save for twigs, beavers don’t consume the wood of the trees they cut so, in a quite striking array before me, I could see the remains of most of the trees they cut; most of the rest were on the other side of the dam.
The beavers did leave smaller piles of stripped logs here and there along their long channel up to the upper part of the pond.
I suppose the major challenge I’ll face in trying to figure out how the beavers changed this area, is figuring out if there were any ditches here that helped determine where the beavers dug their channels.
As I approached the upper pool of the pond, I had to go back closer to the old shore. I took a photo looking up pond. Some bark had fallen off one felled tree and the fresh orange color of the now bare wood looked just as if a beaver had just stripped off the bark.
But no such luck. I continued up the valley to see how the vernal pools were doing. The one in the woods, close enough to the beaver development to have a few trees around it cut, was now dry.
The valley pool still has water, as does the Teepee and First ponds, no surprise there. They too are at the top of a watershed but are man made, exploratory holes in the search for road fill some 20 years ago. I was surprised to see a beautiful clump of pickeral weed in the still wet canal between those two ponds.
I have been blaming deer for eating the pickeral weeds, but there are many deer prints in the mud going by this clump. As I was studying the First Pond standing on the north bank over an old muskrat burrow, wondering it a muskrat was still there,
I saw bubbles below me, and then a trail of bubbles and a crescendo of wakes as a muskrat swam under water across the pond and into the old beaver lodge. Then I checked the vernal pool above the First Pond. It was completely dry, but there had been enough water to spur a swamp milkweed plant to bloom and a small butterfly was enjoying its nectar.
Back on the island I decided to take advantage of the relatively cool temperatures and check the beaver ponds. Since the humidity was high, I expected to sweat and to swat and I did. Indeed, getting to the shade along my trails didn’t relieve me from deer flies. It seemed that they too were getting tired of the sun, or, more likely, were attracted to the moisture from the early morning rain which still informed the woods. I soon saw that moisture had been baked out of the ponds. The Big Pond is shrinking,
But it is still there. There were deer trails in the grass leading to it. I suppose technically speaking the dam still holds back water,
And I saw a leech wiggling in it. However, I think the muskrats are done using the burrows they dug into the back of the dam.
The north end of the dam now has 10 feet of mud or dry ground behind it, then a rim of mud. The bright green grass makes it look lively now, but the pond is shrinking and drying out.
The lodge along the north shore of the pond is now high and dry.
And the lodge up pond where the beavers spent the winter has been swallowed by a meadow, and the pond narrowed to the old creek.
On a cooler day I’ll hike up there and see if I can find the lodge. As I approached the Lost Swamp Pond through the woods, I quickly saw the pond still worked for some animals. Three herons flew off, and I managed to get a photo of one.
There was also a kingfisher working the pond. Three ospreys flew high or perched high up in the dead tree behind the dam.
And there was a family of mallards. The ducklings made neat flicks with their beaks as they nabbed bugs off the surfaced of the water. They were rather busy. Unfortunately, they were behind enough tree trunks to ruin the video I took. Once I had the birds sorted out, I tried to get a perspective on the pond. Viewed from the rock above the mossy cove latrine, the pond looks pretty full. However, you can see how the old beaver bank lodge is too far up from the water to be serviceable.
The southeast end of the pond still has water, but there, the lodge in the middle of the pond looks rather high, and, I assume, of no use to beavers.
So if the beaver is still in the pond, it is probably using the lodges in the middle of the west end of the pond and next to the dam. They both appear to have entrances under water.
Before I walked around the west end of the pond, I investigated a large maple that fell just off the south shore of the pond. It was still alive,
But no beaver had taken advantage of its leafy crown. As was the case of the big tree blown over in Shangri-la Pond meadow, this tree had been gnawed at the base of its trunk by beavers which undoubtedly weakened the tree.
The pond has shrunk enough along the west shore that I could walk over the downed trunks where the otters had their dens and latrines in the winter.
I last saw beaver signs along the north shore of the pond. I saw goose and heron prints in the mud, and goose poop, but no beaver trails up the grassy shore, and no more vegetation cut up there.
I was wrong about one thing. The water flowing through the hole the otters made in the dam did not wear down the hole much deeper than the otters dug, which is why the pond still has a modicum of water.
Other ponds are suffering from deeper holes in their dam. The mostly mud dam of the Upper Second Swamp Pond was worn down and that pond is now a pool of water. (I should define those two terms, pond and pool.)
The Second Pond also has a dam mostly made of massed mud, though once very well vegetated, for awhile supporting small trees. But that mud is so worn down that it is dry behind the dam,
dry all the way up to the lodge along the north shore,
and a shrinking pond in what was the widest section of the old pond.
This was a humbling day for a beaver enthusiast. Dams that were the keys to so much enjoyment have failed. I blame a lack of mud for the failure of the dam on our land, and too much mud for the failures of the dams on the island. Foolish categorizing. All failed because the beavers are not there.
July 19 a cool front nudged down from the north and I took advantage by paddling over to South Bay. It was still humid and the sky was a blank white glare. The wind was up to tricks. As I paddled out of our cove, the wind was still but there were a couple dozen swallows crisscrossing after bugs much higher up that usual, and over the water. Bugs usually seem to get their up lift over land. One seagull was up there with them. Then when I rounded the headland, I ran into a refreshing northwest wind, so perhaps bugs and birds rose up into that excitement. There were several seagulls out on the small rock off the headland. One was completely brown and it picked over a dead fish undisturbed by the other seagulls, who were white save for one speckled bird. The brown gull was large but I wondered if it was a black backed gull fledgling protected by the fearsome reputation of the adult of the species. As I approached the south shore of the point in the middle of South Bay at least four blue herons flew off, all quietly. The usual osprey was perched high in the tree and stayed perched even as I paddled under it. Last time I was here I thought the yellow water lily, the spatterdock, was getting started, but I only saw dull dying flowers today. No white lilies, even their pads are scarce. On the surface at least, high water has made the bay a rather dull place. The water level has dropped almost a foot from its high point so an otter could get a foothold on the old latrines along the shore, but there were no signs that any had. I didn’t go much farther than the latrines on the north shore of the peninsula. The rugosa roses and purple loosestrife were pretty. Thank goodness for invasive species. Back at our land, I went down to the Deep Pond after dinner. I didn’t see the beaver but I did see two deer, one up on the slope and one down in water along the edge of pond eating the vegetation.
They finally noticed me and when I followed the one that had been down in the water up the slope, I noticed a third deer, which looked bigger than the other too, just at the edge of the woods. One deer joined the bigger deer and I think they went off, and then with a series of snorts persuaded the other deer, with the usual artful leaps, to follow. It is a marvel how deer can be so consistently beautiful. North America would be a far more pleasant place if we made the deer our sacred cow.
The insects were too voracious so I didn't wait around for the beaver to come out.
July 20 heretofore the summer has been rather warm. Now it is hot. Unfortunately, the wet spring has given us unusually large swarms of mosquitoes and deer flies. While mammals wilt and shrink in the heat and humidity, insects speed up. Usually during hot spells that preclude doing chores, I’ve had a number of shady ponds to sit by. Not so this year. So we water the garden, then seek refuge in what relief the house offers, and we spend more time in our house on the island that has electricity and relatively cool river just down the hill. Much too hot to kayak. This morning I went down to check the lower ponds, and I surprised a raccoon foraging in the middle of the Third Pond. It scampered away before I got my camera out. I sat by the pond hoping the pickings in the shallows were so irresistible that the raccoon would come back out,
But it didn’t. Then I went down to the Deep Pond. My wood cutting in the winter helped open our way to deer paths down the wooded ridge which are not claustrophobic like our trail under the honeysuckles, but the footing on the dusty rocks can be tricky. The Deep Pond continues to support a variety of vegetation but because of the beauty of the water lilies, I can’t pay much attention to the rest.
The beaver has a trail through the vegetation down to the dam, but I couldn’t say that it has been dining along it. The pond behind the dam still has lilies and plenty of vegetation.
One could almost guess that the vegetation is growing as fast as the beaver can eat it. Over the years beavers had denned in the lodge under the knoll and also in burrows into the high slope along the east end of the pond. I saw what could be trails to that slope, but a beaver would also make them if it only went to forage there. I keep expecting to see some collection of nipped vegetation or logs outside the burrows, and I don’t see that.
As I continued around to the lodge, I enjoyed the many water lilies.
I wish I could offer some scientific commentary, and not just say that some lilies seem so bold and other so shy, and some too perfect, so beautiful that they can dispense with the pads that support them.
Back to the beaver. As approached the southwest corner of the pond, it looked like a beaver couldn’t be denning in the bank lodge there. So much vegetation was in the pond in front of the lodge that had not been eaten,
However, it wasn’t difficult to tell that sometimes the beaver pulls itself up on the bank lodge.
And up on the shore near the lodge, I could see a collection of nipped weeds.
There are other herbivores working this pond, but, in my experience, only a beaver leaves its meals in this crisscross fashion.
No comments:
Post a Comment