September 22 I set out on Antler Trail planning to check the South Bay otter latrines and Audubon Pond, but it is my birthday and a few times on my birthday hikes over the past 17 years, I have seen otters in the interior beaver ponds. So I changed my mind and headed for the Big Pond. There was nothing new there. A heron flying off was the only hint that otters might find a meal there too. I always approach the Lost Swamp Pond looking for otters and when I don’t see any, I always go straight to the rock above the mossy cove latrine to see if otters had left any scats there. I haven’t seen any there for since April 21st. I was last here five days ago. Today, I could see scats all around the rock: a big smear just behind where I usually sit,
two dry scats shaped scats on a neighboring rock outcrop,
and an older looking smear on another outcrop.
I didn’t see any new scraping up of moss or grass, which otters often do, even up on this rock, when they scat.
I didn’t linger too long over the scats because I wanted to sit down and scan the pond in case otters were still out there. But before I left the rock, I took two more photos. These were not typical otter scats with black fecal matter laced with fish scales and bones. I am not sure what these otters have been eating.
The close-up I took of the biggest smear had leg bones that did not come from a fish.
Since a cormorant has lingered in this pond for so long, there are fish to eat, but all the neighboring ponds are depleted. So to survive, otters probably have to eat other things like frogs, crayfish, and perhaps small mammals and birds in the meadows. I moved up to other rocks affording a better view of the pond. Looked at straight on the pond looks plenty big enough for otters,
But when I look over along the south shore at rocks where otters have often latrined, I see plenty of meadow between those rocks and the present shore of the pond.
On my way to the dam on the north shore of the pond, I checked for scats below the rock at the mossy cove latrine. I only saw one, also on a rock, and it could almost be a raccoon poop.
But the size, shape, and stain around it, plus the whiffs of smell I was getting, made the case for otter scat. If I could only have seen more of a trail, and more scrapping in the moss and dirt.
In other summers I’ve seen scats that quite teased me and that, because of their being light and having many parts of bugs, I thought they might be skunk scats. But these scats were bigger and spread out, and give the impression of having been wet. Although I am loath to start off the “September 2011 part four” part of my journal with photos of otter scats. I’m compelled to lard it on. I saw otter scats on these same rock last year on my birthday. To wit:
As you can see, those scats were associated with loose litter scraped together. I saw otters here last year on September 24. Today, I expected to see more scats next to the dam, where otters also frequently latrine. Sure enough in the grass just back from the rock forming the pond shore,
I found more black scats laced with bits of white
When they dry out some more, I’ll sift through them as best I can. I think they might show the remains of crayfish which usually give an otter’s scat more shape.
I didn’t go over to the rock next to the lodge by the dam, but I didn’t see any evidence that otters had been on the lodge. The pileworts on it were still straight-up.
So that was my birthday present, but I missed the cormorant. There were a few painted turtles up on logs and using the camcorder as a camera I got a hazy profile of one group.
I also took a look down at the Second Swamp Pond and saw no otters in the bit of pond remaining down there. My walk home was uneventful, until I crossed the little creek that runs into the little pond below the Big Pond. My first photo of the snapping turtle in the creek was a blur, and by the time the camera focused on the scene, the turn had completely submerged in the mud.
I heard a sucking noise as the mud ooze over its shell. Impressive escape.
September 23 the beaver heaved a bit more mud up on the Deep Pond dam.
And I think the water is rising in the pond. I headed back down to the Boundary Pond for what I figured would be my last attempt, for this year, of cleaning up after the beavers, so to speak. I cut down a maple that they girdled and which had died. I began cutting its crown and found that the tree has enough life it in to make it difficult to cut until a freeze. However, as I sawed away, I saw the beautiful leaves of a delicate purple plant.
There were a number of examples of the plant, all green. My favorite was one sticking straight out to the side, along with some ferns, from a face of a sandstone.
Before I left the valley I took another look at the Last Pool and saw that there was still a pool of water in front of the lodge. Vegetation now obscures the lodge and only the sticks in the beavers’ cache pile have not been greened with all the sunlight flooding that moist area.
The winterberry now with stems popping with red seems to be the most prolific of the larger plants.
It may even grow over the big dead poplar trunks
Looking at photos I took of this area last September, I can see winterberries but they were not bursting out all over. Looking closing at the mossy mounds they are flourishing this year, I get the impression that it is not so much regrowth from where the beavers cut but more growth from fertile ground that is no longer flooded. That said, this is good news because Leslie was most bitter about beavers cutting the winterberry bushes.
There is less water here. The main pool is mostly mud and vegetation.
There is less water in the channel and little vegetation along it, thanks to some tall trees left to make shade.
After I told her that working along these depleted ponds was depressing me, Leslie took a look and was no longer depressed by what she saw, as she was when the beavers were flourishing. For my birthday, she made some drawings of the valley to reconcile me to the new dispensation there.
When she first saw it last year, she hated the channel the beavers made, but no longer. A bit of earth we never really looked much at before the beavers came now excites our imagination; not engineering, but a wild thrust, mightier than a mole’s. It’s own kind of earth quake.
September 25 we spent the night at the land which meant it was easy to see the spider webs in the foggy morning. This one on a honeysuckle bush next to the Teepee Pond was most dramatic.
I was up at the Teepee Pond, which I haven’t visited since black raspberry picking last month, because Leslie said it was very muddy. I suspect it is mostly because of painted turtles digging up their last meals before winter, but perhaps the muskrats are still there. I should be cutting firewood up here soon and will get a better sense of what's going on. In the fog, I couldn’t see the mud, much less take a photo of it. The foggy morning seemed to bring more mushrooms up. Perhaps not as many as the pulse of mushrooms when the drought finally broke in early August, but perhaps a better show, at least at the end of Grouse Alley.
I continued my tour around the Last Pool. There is still water in the channel running by the old cache piles and there is water in the wallow above the pond. I followed a frog into it and then focused my camera on what I thought were two frog eyes bugging out of the water, on the right hand side of the photo below.
Of course, the frog is on the left hand side which I realized when I took another step and it dove deeper. The bug-eyed leaves stayed where they were. I walked on the soggy east side of the lodge skirting the now green pool in front of the lodge.
Back on a moss mound I saw a fresh raccoon poop. I am not the only one patrolling this new ground.
I made my slow way over the soggy ground, but to no purpose. It is hard to be analytical on squishy ground. In the afternoon I went down to the Third Pond and Deep Pond. The last time I was here I didn’t see any signs of the muskrats. Today the grassy southeast corner where I first saw them was bathed in bright sunlight. After 5 minutes of watching, a muskrat came out from the willow, even climbed up one willow high enough to get its tail out of the water, then went back down, into the water and swam over toward the middle of the pond where it nibbled the grass. Down at the Deep Pond, the high slope of the pond looked more used and one large cut grass stalk floated in front of it.
But there were no branches dragged over to better protect a burrow much less supply food in the winter. I went over to the bank lodge, and if there were any changes at all, they were very modest.
Perhaps this well fed beaver has not noticed the leaves are slowly changing,
or there is a good enough supply of lily rhizomes under water so it doesn’t have to drag bark into the pond and sink it for the winter.
September 26 I headed out to the Lost Swamp Pond hoping to find more signs of otters there. On my way, I once again flushed a heron off the shallows of the Big Pond. I also saw some berry laced raccoon poop where I wish a beaver was paying attention, on top of one of the holes through the dam.
I had my camcorder out when I came down to the Lost Swamp Pond but the ducks made too quick a get away. As usual I checked the rock above the mossy cove latrine. I saw one wet poop which I can’t even be sure was otter scat.
Not only can other mammals come up here, but bird poop can rain down from perches in the tall pine above. I sat and studied the pond, always a pleasure even when not much is happening in it. On my way over to the dam, I looked down at the Upper Second Swamp Pond, which now has that beautiful pinkish color caused by algae sinking down into mud.
There were no new scats up at the latrine beside the Lost Swamp Pond dam. The vegetation on the dam and on the nearby lodge continue to look undisturbed.
The dam still leaks but the narrow hole is jammed up enough with debris to keep the pond from getting too much lower.
Walking down the north shore of the pond, I saw a typical black raccoon poop and took a photo just to show how much it didn’t look like what I think are the otter scats around here.
Once again I looked down at the Second Swamp Pond but there were no otters down there. In the afternoon, I kayaked over to South Bay. The last time I did, a week or so ago, I was struck by how lifeless it seemed for the late summer. Today was just the opposite. As I came into the bay there were three large groups of geese, say 50 geese in each flock, along the south shore of the peninsula. Only one group was still feeding, down by the willow where I was headed. They swam off in good order. The two other groups had dined and indeed I paddled over many yards muddy water where the geese had pulled up river grasses and wild cucumber. A small group of the geese seemed to be clucking in contentment --what a happy sound. When I paddled back up toward them, they all flew off. I think it was more a case of it being time to move on to another feeding ground than fear of me. There were also dozen mallards, and they too flew off. There was nothing of interest at the willow. Meanwhile, on the south shore of the bay. I saw a wading heron with its neck curved as I’ve never seen before. There was another heron on shore in front of it and I bet the curved neck was a courtship display. However, nothing came of it. The heron by the shore flew off and the heron with the curved neck bent its head down to the water and stalked fish. And there were plenty of fish. Everywhere I looked in the water I saw little schools and bigger fingerlings by two and threes. I had never seen the bay this lively with fish at this time of year. The only reason I can think of for this is that the water level dropped rapidly and the dense curtains of green algae never took hold. So rather than warm but clogged water at the end of the bay, the fish are finding warm relatively clear water, though with plenty of discreet vegetation for cover. I did notice one small cloud of algae, only because a painted turtle under water was clawing apart and eating loose strands. I’ve never seen that before. I even saw a beaver sign, a large cut cattail rhizome floating in the water. No signs of otters unfortunately, but as I paddled up the north shore, I was sure I heard muskrat whistling. When looked over in that direction I saw a muskrat dive in the water and kept hearing some muskrat whistling coming from the vegetation on shore. There were no osprey, but just as I veered to paddle home, I heard a kingfisher cackling. Finally, there was some globs of jelly up on some lily pads, an enduring mystery to me that I always enjoy seeing.
September 28 I took Leslie out to where the black trumpet mushrooms were flourishing along the East Trail, but only the rotting stubs remain. Then I went down to see what the beavers have been up to around the East Trail Pond. They are still cutting down and segmenting trees along the south shore a bit up from the dam, which is where they had been most active last fall.
The crown of the small maple they cut down and been mostly cut and hauled off.
I think the reason they are more active here is because they have perfected the channel to this shore from their lodge in the middle of the pond. It even looks like they are dredging it.
Over the years that I’ve watched this family, they’ve been masters at dredging. They appear to have renewed their gnawing on two relatively large maples that, I recall, they first started gnawing in the spring, but I should check on that.
Farther up the shore they cut down a maple next to the maple they cut down last week.
This maple has a larger twin trunk which they haven’t started to cut yet.
Beavers were living in this pond from 1994 to 2005, and likely several years before that. However they mainly operated in the area below this pond. That area is now mostly meadow, I was surprised when they left because I thought there was more to eat, and now I am surprised that these maples survived so long with beavers around. However, those earlier beavers were not as masterful in their dredging as this family, and the water in this upper section the pond got too shallow for the beavers. Back to now, the first maple the beaver cut here has been trimmed and topped, but there is plenty of bark left on the trunk.
They almost completely stripped the bark off another maple after it fell.
There is one huge branch still attached to the trunk that they’ve gnawed but not cut. Perhaps they realize that the branch is mostly dead, or so it seemed to me.
I kept looking up the slope to see if I could see any major new gnawing up there and saw that at least one tree, another maple, was being girdled.
There was another large maple down on the shore of the pond, all but cut down. None of the gnaws seemed fresh so I think this is a tree the beavers are waiting for the wind to blow down and my guess is that the crown of that tree is being braced up by the tree next to it. I’ll try to keep an eye on this.
The beavers still aren’t going up their old trail at the west end of the lodge, at least it seemed to me as I crossed it as I headed over to the north shore. The last time I walked along this shore I got up on the ridge as soon as I could because it was 6pm and a beaver might be out. So this is the first time I’ve noticed that a beaver is once again gnawing the basswood they girdled a few months ago.
The frogs along this shore are not as jumpy as they were in the summer. I saw one riding a tree trunk using a dead leaf as a saddle.
I didn’t see any new work up on the ridge save for a white oak with two trunks. The beavers cut one trunk that didn’t fall, but seemed to jump down square on the ground.
Of course the trunk leaped into the crown of a neighboring tree, but their embrace was not so entangled that I couldn’t push the oak down. Beavers do check on their works in progress but this if rather high up on the ridge. We’ll see. Obviously the beavers have made their way over here but looking down at the lodge in the middle of the pond, I couldn’t see signs that the channels heading north were well used.
That said looking to the southwest corner of the pond there were no obviously well traveled trails over to that recent work.
I headed to Audubon Pond via Thicket and Meander Ponds, where the beavers in the East Trail used to reside. Plus I thought I saw some possible signs of otters being there early this summer and last. But while Thicket Pond still had water, the trail I thought otters might have being using was closed over by the tall grasses.
Then I walked around Meander Pond and I would say it had as much water now as it did in the early fall two years ago when the beavers were here. But of course grasses in the water and along the channels were unchecked and the pond didn’t even look like a pond, just a small ditch of water was all that could be seen from where ever I stood.
My project of the moment is doing before and after photos and then I know I have to go beyond that and recall what had been growing when the beavers used the pond and what remains now. Along the shores of Meander Pond alders and buttonbushes seem to be vying for predominance with the alder ahead at the moment. Beavers had cut the alders around here and they never cut buttonbushes. I’ll keep an eye on this too, though the beavers never seemed to thrive off the alders. Here and at the Second Swamp Pond it seemed to be the last possible source of food they cut. When the beavers moved back here after the second dam failure at Shangri-la Pond, I saw them foraging on the rocky north shore, cutting ironwoods and eating a lot of the viney vegetation and some ferns. There is more of a semblance of pond below that slope and I did see some ripples there which were so furtive that I think a turtle getting some sun made them.
I went along the north shore of the meadow that once was the Short-cut Trail Pond so I came down to Audubon Pond on the trail that led directly to the bench near the lodge off the north shore of the pond. On my way I saw by the remains of cut stalks outside their burrow proving that some muskrats are still here.
The old beaver lodge looked untended and undisturbed. The only thing of interest at the peninsula where the bench is, where beavers have often nibbled and otters latrined, was a frog sunning itself sphinx-like on a pink granite rock.
Looking across the pond I saw what looked like a possible new bank lodge behind the embankment. As I walked around the pond toward the embankment I didn’t see any new beaver work in the woods, along the shore, or around the bank lodge on the west shore. So my hopes that beavers were still here were pinned on that possible bank lodge, and as I got closer it looked more and more like an active lodge.
Standing on the embankment and looking down on it, I could see that the beaver had collected cut logs there and there was a freshly stripped log floating in the water nearby.
Last year the beavers built dams and cut trees on the other side of the embankment and wore down trails walking up and over the embankment. If they burrowed from this bank lodge through the embankment so they could more easily tunnel back and forth, that would be an achievement worthy of the history books. I didn’t see any evidence of that. The water in the little ponds below the embankment was quite muddy, but I know muskrats forage down there too.
I assume the beavers are coming down here still, but I’ll have to come back in a few days and see what they might be gnawing here. The dam they made last year is not holding back much water.
But there doesn’t appear to be much water flowing down the Audubon Pond drain. Just like the last time I was here, a green heron was using the beaver-baffling cage over the drain as a perch.
There were no scats old or new in the otter latrine overlooking the entrance to South Bay, and none at the Docking Rock latrine. Two days ago when I kayaked in the bay, I was amazed at the all the little fish I saw, but evidently not enough to lure otters back into the bay.
September 29 Leslie noticed a lot of mud behind the Deep Pond dam so I went down to take a look and see if the beaver was pushing mud up on the dam or was just up to its usual foraging.
The water level in the pond has risen but that could be from the mud the beaver pushed up several days ago. I didn’t notice any major new heave of mud up on the part of the dam I check almost every day.
I made my way through the thick vegetation to the larger patches the beaver made in the dam. I haven’t checked that area for a few weeks. I didn’t notice any obviously fresh heaves, but the water has been rising.
I saw that a grass stalk had been pulled out. I suppose it’s best to conclude that the beaver has been pushing up mud and foraging, not mutually exclusive activities. My hope is that I will see major dam work and that will be because that a mate has moved into the pond with this beaver. I am an incurable romantic. Going back along the dam, I noticed a trail going through the vegetation over the dam,
But if I was playing Sherlock Holmes, I would say that the animal making the trail left the pond. We spent the night at the land and since it promised to be a more or less rainy night, I went to the local library where I can scan old photos. As I’ve mentioned, since I have only one beaver family to follow, and they are not coming out at the East Trail Pond during hours convenient for my seeing them, I am trying to better understand what I’ve seen the beavers do in the last 17 years. Last week’s Journal had several pairs of before and after photos using some photos I scanned tonight. Anyway I scanned a few photos that throw curves at my quasi-scientific analysis. For example I found this curious black and white photo from 1994 evidently of the Second Swamp Pond just at the end of its glory years before the beavers made Otter Hole Pond below and, I think, breached the Second Swamp Pond dam.
However, in reality I think the pond is reversed. That high knoll is to the left as you look up from the dam. So I have to be careful of old photos. Another problem is that in those early years I had so many beaver developments to follow that I couldn’t keep up with them. What I called the Third Ponds were the most difficult to get too and I stumbled onto some startling beaver development with many large trees cut and two large lodges built almost side by side,
But I knew very little about the beavers who did that and subsequent developments in that valley were rather humdrum. I keep imagining that a family of super beavers moved in and then moved out, or do I have evidence that the typical beaver family can go off on a tangent of prodigious lumbering and building? On a more philosophical level, I’m faced with photos that show me in such a different relationship to the land that I fear I really must be a biased observer despite my attempt at dispassionate observation. Here is a very old photo from the 1980s that I took of Leslie as she crossed the Big Pond dam.
I think it shows how lightly I regarded the dam. Indeed from 1976 to 1992 we walked along all the dams that were there, when we visited every year in June and September, without ever paying much attention to the beavers, not even trying to see them. I wish I could analyze the photo and say that it suggests that beavers were not in the pond that year, but it is only in the last 17 years that I have taken photos of the dam itself and not just landscapes with Leslie in them. Of course, then Ottoleo came along, and Leslie took two photos of me walking with him on top of the Big Pond dam when he was 4 or 5 years old, 1991 or 1992,
And given the dried mud in the dam and muddy water behind the dam, I can conclude now that the beavers were there, but since I was still largely oblivious to the beavers and how they managed things, the photo again suggests how narrow my focus was then. And having your child in a photo forces associations on you that elucidate your relations with your child, not with nature. Plus the photos are of such poor quality I can’t be sure what kind of vegetation lined the shore which would help elucidate how the beavers changed the area. However, I have found a cache of very good photos that I took one summer when all the ponds almost completely dried out because of a long summer drought. The beavers made the Lost Swamp Pond around 1989 further flooding an area that I recall as being a rather richly vegetated wetland with many low shrubs in standing water about a foot or so deep. We called the shrubs “buck brush,“ and then when we became more interested in what we were seeing we looked up “buck brush” and found that there was nothing generally known by that name anywhere east of California and Oregon. When the pond was dry this winter and then again in the early summer, I noted the stubby remnants of those shrubs. So I am rather interested in the photos during that drought which shows those shrubs trimmed and dead but with still a rather large presence.
So did the beavers continue to eat them, or did they simply rot away, or were they buried in mud? Will the water go down again next summer so that I can dig around and see the remnants still in the ground? I went home to sleep in the house on the land. It was a little too cold to leave the window open and listen to the crickets.
September 30 I was hoping to finish hauling, sawing and splitting the last of the ironwood for this year’s burning, but though I bravely tried to split in the rain, it started coming down too hard. We’re in for a change in the weather too, more rain and colder. We’ll be spending fewer nights on our land, much to our regret. It gets dark too soon now and we can’t afford to keep two houses warm during the winter. Virtually all the firewood I’ve accumulated is for our island home that has electricity. On our morning walk down the road we noticed something the beaver probably cut floating in the water below the high slope of the east shore of the pond. During a break in the rain I went down to see what it is.
I keep expecting the beaver to begin collecting maple saplings, a good number of which are in the nearby woods. But this turned out to be a honeysuckle branch, something beavers rarely eat, bark or leaves.
I see some berries under water but not above so maybe the beaver is eating the berries. It didn’t venture far to collect it. I saw where it cut the branch off a bush halfway up the short slope from the pond.
I walked around the pond to take a long look at the slope, always looking for evidence that the beaver is denning there in a burrow.
Certainly the beaver is still foraging there. It was too wet to go over to the lodge. I walked back up the road to finally get a photo of the muddy water in the Teepee Pond.
I think the turtles are raising the mud because it is so general. Muskrats would be browsing closer to the shore. At least whenever I see them here that is where they browse. It is relatively deep in the middle, deep enough for me to swim. I stepped back and took a photo of the First Pond which is not muddy.
Then a big black bird flew up from a perch on a dead tree near the pond. I saw a red head so it must be a vulture though a bit a small.
Ravens are coming around now, but a raven would have given me a piece of its mind. I also took a photo of the patch of prickly ash that the beavers cleared before they left in 2005. In 6 years the stumps the beavers left have grown up about 4 feet.
It’ll be another few years before I’ll watch out again for thorns in my face when I walk through there. So it was a good summer at our land, despite not having a beaver family to watch.
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