August 8 the vegetation on the rock plateaus of the island show the worst effects of the drought, and as I crossed the still green meadow through which Antler Trail goes and moved up to the next dry plateau, I was startled when a deer ran from the dry areas across the meadow and into the woods.
When I got to the woods on the ridge on the way to the Big Pond, I took a photo of all the leaves that had fallen from the trees, tall red oaks and smaller maples and ironwoods.
Walking on dry leaves made it seem like fall. The trail through the woods leads to a gully through which water in the vernal creek flows. It being mid-summer and drought conditions prevailing, I was surprised to see water in the creek.
There was not much of a flow but maybe what there was contributed to the depression behind the now porous dam below the Big Pond still being mostly mud surrounded by lush green grass.
I guess what I thought of as a vernal creek has a spring feeding it somewhere in the valley. I used to be very familiar with that valley years ago but don’t walk down it much any more except in the snowy months. For several years in the 1990s beavers used the little pond they fashioned below the Big Pond, as well as a series of little ponds below all the way to South Bay. To get to those beavers I frequently varied my routes weaving through the wooded ridge above the golf course and all the intricacies of the terrain from there to the line of beaver ponds. I frequently watched the beavers until it was dark and there was no easy trail back to what passes for civilization on the island in the off season so I pretty well mastered the terrain even in the dark, skills I have almost completely lost. People age. So do beaver ponds. What I had called the Double Lodge Pond, because as small as it was the beavers fashioned two low bank lodges almost next to each other, is now a lush meadow, and not uninteresting. The lower part has green grass, though not as tall as it usually gets.
As I walked through the meadow up the dam, the vegetation thinned out and there was no hint of moisture much less a stream.
However, when I got up to the Big Pond dam, I was greeted by a thick green patch of pilewort. This is not a beautiful plant but I grew to love it because it is not stinging nettles, nor cutting grass, nor piercing thistles.
When I got over the dam so that I could see the Big Pond, I was surprised to see ducks still making use of, and even one duckling still unable to fly up from the mucky surface of the very shallow pond.
Less surprising was the heron that flew off, but I didn’t get a good photo of it. Since it looked like I could cross over to the north side of the pond up in the middle of the pond, I walked up the south shore. I turned back and took a photo of the dam from the spit of now dry land that juts out into the pond. The taller vegetation on the dam attests to its fertility.
There was a wide swath of dry mud on the south shore without much growing on it. I have seen this pond about this low in the spring after water has drained out through low holes in the dam. Of course then I can see the shallow bottom everywhere and the beavers soon patched the holes and the pond filled up with the spring rains. Now there is a layer of vegetation, mostly pond weed, on the surface of the water and I can’t see the shallow bottom.
I have a photo that Leslie took back in 1987 showing me with the baby Ottoleo in a baby carrier on my belly and my 7 year old niece Elizabeth. We got out onto the lodge by walking from the dam. This was probably late August when the water was low, and back when I didn’t pay any attention to beavers and I have no idea if beavers were in the pond then or if they had been trapped out the previous winter. There was a lot more trapping then.
Twenty five years later there is no remnant of that lodge but I could see where high land came out from the dam and reached the old creek bed that runs through the pond. I am not sure if that clump of tall green grass is where the old lodge is or that larger rounded area now slightly raised up from the water.
The current bone I am gnawing about how beavers change drainage patterns in a valley suggests that their canals can make the land more dry after they leave. I base that theory on just 4 years of observations of the narrow wooded valley on our land. That valley is at the top of the watershed of one of forks of Mullet Creek that flows into the St. Lawrence River several miles away. The Big Pond was created from a small creek not much more than a mile long that flows into South Bay. The Big Pond is about half way along that creek. Over the years there have been dams up stream, several small ones and one big one. However, a good load of silt has come down stream since those dams got in disrepair. In some years the beavers in the Big Pond moved up stream yet they still kept the Big Pond dam in repair. So I think in its lifetime of probably at least 30 years this pond has collected a good bit of silt that has, over the years, smoothed over the dredging the beavers here in the pond's early days had to do to survive and proper. I get the sinking feeling that one of the reasons the beavers had to leave this pond was that the pond bottom became all soft silt and channels no longer served -- but I have to think a lot harder on that. However, I know where the beavers had channels going over to the fringe of woods along the north and south shores of the pond. And today where one of those channels was the bottom has less vegetation. The channel is marked by the clumps of grass on little elevations along it.
I think I may have photos taken in an early spring when much of the water drained out of the pond that shows these channel actually gouged into the terrain. Here is a photo I took on March 28, 2003, of the area in the photo above but looking at it from the shore.
The pond then was low on water and covered with ice but the beavers had it wired with channels, so to speak. However it seems now with the beavers gone, the silt rules and smooths out the bottom, though it may still dictate patterns of vegetation. There is still some depth of water in the middle of the pond. A number of old stumps are still half submerged. I have no recollection of the trees that were there.
There is virtually no water in what was the middle of the pond. The pond was narrower here but when it was deep this area was wide and deep enough with water to keep a family of otters busily foraging for fish for a half hour.
With my inexpert eyes I examined all the stumps I could. One struck me as being most like a juniper which, if true, would be interesting because it would suggest that this area was relatively dry before the beavers came.
From seeing the pond a few springs when most of the water drained out, I know that there are three pools of water, another off to the north and a small pool just below the dam above this one. The smaller of the two major pools, pictured below, was probably the one most congenial to beavers. It was closer to springs that used to feed this pond from each shore and it was closer to trees. While it is obviously not as deep as the larger pool below which still has water in it, it gives me the impression of having been dredged more recently by the beavers. When they gave up on this pond, I think this was the spot they last used. The two nearby lodges are both swallowed by the grasses.
I had to hop sagely over the muddy remains of the creek to avoid sinking in the mud. I noticed that the vegetation on the north side of the pond seemed different, a little less dense, but didn’t try to figure that out today.
I did take a photo of the waving vervains which I noticed before. They’ve aged a bit.
As usual of late, the Lost Swamp Pond was more lively than the Big Pond. I walked out along the old dam in the middle of the pond and tried to capture the doings of a kingbird. It was too quick for me. Looking up pond, the creek going down the middle is about dry. There is still a big pool of water in the upper end of the pond but since it is always shallow up there, judging by how easily the deer wade through it, it must be very shallow now.
During the drought of 1999 I couldn’t walk all the way out on the old dam but I did take a photo of the dam and what remained of the pond above it.
Given the conditions I saw during the drought of 1999, I had my doubts that beavers would ever thrive again in the pond, but they did, for another 11 years, which attests to viability of large ponds for beavers even when they are not surrounded by the beavers’ favorite trees. But comparing the two photos shows something more to the point of what I am trying to understand now. In 13 years enough silt settled in the pond to make it almost flat. Also remarkable is the one tree still standing in the old creek behind the dam. From a distance it looks like beavers are finally trying to cut it down, but the lighter color of the base of the tree is from the peculiarities of its decay, not from gnawing.
The general silting in the pond has now evened out the ridge that marked the old dam.
There is more water in the lower part of the dam.
But, the sides of the lower pond are quite dry.
For sure, the photo above shows flat terrain but I think it shows a little more relief than the upper pond. I guess the old dam kept much of the silt in the upper pond, which may be another benefit the beavers gain by flooding valleys in stages. The water in the lower pond behind the main dam will stay deeper longer. But I was soon distracted from such analysis by calls of green herons. I saw one, then another, and another. I think there were six feeding in the lower pond. I managed to get a photo of one.
Because the pond had shrunk I was able to get closer to the lodge in the middle of the pond where I think a beaver had placed cut honeysuckle branches over the past two months. Now the only thing I can conclude is that a beaver probably doesn’t den there now since the entrances to the lodge are exposed.
Since I am comparing this pond now with how it looked during the drought of 1999, here is how that lodge looked then.
I needed a break from the sun so I sat up on a shaded rock which I have long used to have some cover while I tried to watch beavers and otters. While sitting I saw some huge ripples in the water behind the dam and correctly surmised that a diving kingfisher made the ripples.
It kept diving into the deepest pool of water behind the dam where the remaining fish must have been congregating.
There were also several ducks swimming behind the dam. The more I studied the lower pond, the more I was impressed with the expanse of water surviving the drought. The pond extended well up the north east corner of the pond
and to the west shore of the pond.
As I headed around the west end of the pond, I checked the mossy cove otter latrine. I last saw scats there on June 16 of this year. I wasn’t surprised to see new scats there today. Otters love to forage in ponds as a drought shrinks them, for the same reason herons and kingfisher, easier to catch fish. The scats were not perfect examples of otter scats. They were tubular and almost twisted, more like a fisher scat. But there was more scat there than a fisher would leave, and fish scales in the scat. Summer scats of mustelids are complicated because they eat insects at this time of year, especially this year when swamps and ponds have become meadows.
But there was an example of raccoon poop nearby, much different,
Plus there was scratching just under the rock, very characteristic of an otter.
The last time I was here, about a week ago, I didn’t check this latrine. So I think the scats could have been about two weeks old. Given how dry the valley around these ponds are, that an otter came here is remarkable. But many have been raised here over the years and since the river is just a mile or two away depending on which direction you go, this pond is still in the range of an otter. Before seeing the scats, I had planned to go from the west end of the pond directly down to the Second Swamp Pond. But having seen scats I went up to the dam to check other latrines. While the water behind the dam was still deep, the vegetation on the rocks beside the dam, where otters often latrine, was quite dry and most of the grass was dead.
I saw some cut grass blades floating in the water and the open water between the milfoil plants was muddy. I assume muskrats are still here.
Looking from the dam to the lodge in the middle of the pond, what looks like a trail to the lodge through the pond vegetation is easy to see.
Then from the small ridge north of the west side of the pond I could see all the trails the ducks made through the pond vegetation.
Then I went over and down the ridge north of the Lost Swamp Pond and walked on the dry mud of the Second Swamp Pond. There was no water in the pond. I know that beavers were here at least 10 years before they fashioned the Lost Swamp Pond, but this pond bottom shows a good bit of relief with wide, less vegetated areas where the beavers had their channels.
I couldn’t follow the turtle tracks in the dry mud because the going there was still a bit soggy.
But while this pond is older than the Lost Swamp Pond, there was a 10, maybe 15, year period when beavers weren’t here as they developed Otter Hole Pond, Beaver Point Pond and the New Pond downstream. My first tentative name for this pond was Dead Pond because no animals seemed to be using it and after the leak in the dam got big enough to drain the pond, I saw snail shells everywhere on the dry pond bottom. I didn’t see any snail shells today but I was surprised to find a crisscrossing of old logs on the pond bottom along the north shore where there was a lodge last abandoned over 15 years ago.
The central parts of the pond have tall green grass which I waded through where I discovered depressions.
Not sure if this is the lost channel of a meandering creek or an old pool. There are tree stumps coming out of the ground at the lowest point. When I first saw this area in 1976 or so it was covered with water backed up by a large dam. I waded through the tall grass over to the depression, now covered with shorter grasses, and went over to the lodge that beavers used the last 10 years they were here.
Along the channel going from that lodge to the dam, I saw what looked like a burrow into the low bank.
Many an evening I would watch the beavers from the knoll above the lodge and watch otters in the day from there, and I never got any sense that there was a burrow here. I’ll have to look at some of the old video I took of the muskrats here. I could walk down the channel to the dam.
While this pond is situated in the middle of the course a small creek once took to South Bay, there is not much silt collected here because the Lost Swamp Pond has collected what silt was brought down the valley by the creek during the spring thaw. There was baked mud where there once was a deep pool of water behind the dam.
I went up on the big rock south of the dam and took a photo of the huge dry pond.
Something moved along the far edge of the upper pond, a browsing deer.
Over the years I probably saw more fawns around this pond than anywhere else. I wonder if the deer miss the expanse of water, probably not.
August 11 I sat in my chair along the west shore of the Deep Pond and once again pondered the question: are any beavers still in the pond? The aspen branch I offered them had sunk unmolested in the pond. I was about to walk away unfulfilled when I noticed that the beautiful yellow flowers of the sneeze weed were in bloom along with sprays of the tiny white flowers of Queen Anne‘s lace. I’ll have to find another name for “sneeze weed.”
I also checked the upper ponds and found the First Pond had almost resolved itself into two pools, both were very muddy. I assume raccoons have been there.
On my way to the rock along the shore where I sit to look at the lower part of the Teepee Pond, I saw some nightshade blooms at the right height for taking a close-up photo. The color is not quite right but the photo captures the eccentric shape.
The muddy pools of the lower, and more shallow part of the pond, were also muddy.
It looked something had waded through the pickerel weed plants now on drying land.
Were raccoons eating the pickerel weed seeds as well as wading into the pond after tadpoles and crayfish?
In the photo above the seeds seem to have been eaten clean off. But I also saw the stems on the ground and the seeds knocked off, like a bird might have been pecking at them.
As I enjoyed the warm morning, a song sparrow sprucing its feathers entertained me. It also seemed to be limbering up its voice. Then stabbed a few honeysuckle berries and flew off.
My chore for the moment is sawing up the big ash tree I cut down in the winter and when I got there I saw a walking stick about two feet down from where I had to make my next cut. I sawed for several minutes and it didn’t move.
I had never seen a walking stick with such a purple hue. The ones I see are usually brown.
Then I saw that the twigs of the nearby ironwoods had the same purplish hue.
When I started sawing a few inches from the walking stick, it adjusted its position moving a few more inches away.
Then I cut on the other side of it, and it didn’t budge. After I cut the log it was on, I gently eased the log down to the ground. The walking stick didn’t budge the rest of the morning. Then when I went down to our water pump, Leslie showed me a walking stick on one of our plastic buckets.
Its color was more like the usual walking stick I see, and with green legs.
I finally decided to take my camcorder when I kayaked over to South Bay. I headed to the north cove first thinking, mistakenly as it turned out, that it would be less exposed than the south cove to the west wind. But the breeze had the advantage of keeping me moving through the lilies. The only work I had to do was use the paddle as a brake, which is not that easy.
I can take still photos with the camcorder but one of the first lilies I floated past had action worthy of some video, though the entwined yellow jackets tumbled into the yellow part of the blossom and soon I couldn’t see them.
I’ve taken many photos of water lilies over the years, taken when I floated around the bay in the motor boat in those summers when the water level was higher. Today I wanted to get photos and video of the aphids on the lily flowers and lily pads. But unlike last week, I didn’t see any flowers teeming with black aphids.
I also didn’t see many aphids on the pads but since the number of aphids on the pads seemed to pick up the farther I went into the cove. I decided to be patient. Then I saw something on a lily pad I have never seen before.
It looked like a spread of many little seeds encased in a hard jelly.
The most likely way for them to be spread like that on a pad in an area well insulated from waves was that they were in the poop of a large bird that flew over the bay: say a heron ate a fish that had indigestible roe in its belly. But I should think fish egg season is over. We did have strong winds the last couple days but as something like this was tossed from pad to pad, wouldn’t it disperse more widely? I should have taken one home. The last time I was here I saw the orange bug with black spots, a bit bigger than a ladybug, on almost every lily pad. Today I saw very few. Last time I noticed them eating aphids but also going around quickly with one bug on back of another.
It looked like the bug on the bottom was giving the other the run around.
I finally started drifting by lily pads with a good number aphids. Last week I saw black and beige aphids but today they were all black.
The last time I was here, I was struck by how each pad seemed to be an aphid world of its own. Now the pads are older, faded, less coherent, if that makes sense, and the aphid worlds are colliding. The shapes of the pads are interesting in themselves but now tops and bottoms are speckled with aphids and who knows what sense they are making of the changes.
I began seeing dying lily pads with curled up edges that looked like enclosed worlds, but usually water had moved onto the pad where one section of the edge had lost its rigidity. There were far fewer aphids on the pads than I had seen last week.
On some lily pads decay and death etched a beautiful picture.
Because of their size and flattened shape, lily pads do collect objects that are dropped or that wash up on them. From afar one object looked rather exotic until I picked it up and saw that it was an acorn.
Since the water was getting too shallow, I turned the kayak around and slowly paddled out of the cove.
Last week I did not see any turtles as I paddled up the north shore of the bay. Today, even though the sun was not very bright, I saw several painted turtles up on logs. They seemed much less skittish than they were in the spring, though my paddling by did send almost all of them back into the warm water.
I took pains to look for map turtles. I missed seeing them this year in mid-July when I’ve often seen them. I returned to my observations of lily pads. For years I have noticed but never really studied black blobs, often completely fluid, that collected in the low points of lily pads. Some look like poop,
and others like mud.
Perhaps next year, I’ll start smelling and touching this stuff…. Insects should be easier to identify though some looked rather exotic. I think the stripped yellow and black bug below was eating an aphid.
I am sure the ladybug-like insect in the photo below was eating aphids because I got a video of it doing just that.
Small as they are, eating aphids seemed to be slow work. There is also a small damsel fly in the photo above. I saw several and I think they were using the lily pads as a base from which to fly after the hovering insects that are their usual fare. The young kingfishers that I saw here a week ago were still flying around the bay, and one osprey was honing its skills. One took a fast flight over the bay. During last week’s paddle I didn’t notice many water cucumbers. Today I did and took a photo of some.
Though I was sated with lily pads, I paddled over to the south cove, but there the pads present an almost solid phallynk and are not as accessible. I also went over to where the arrowhead flowers are blooming.
The bold projection of the leaves contrasts nicely with the thin stem of delicate white blooms.
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