July 1 I headed around 4pm to see what was new at Meander Pond. As I walked up the East Trail, I heard a great commotion in the wood on the South Bay side. I heard bird alarm calls that I wasn't
familiar with as well as the chick bing of the alarmed scarlet tanager. So I looked for the offending hawk or crow, and instead saw what looked big enough to be a horned owl down on the ground. It looked over at me but didn't panic, nor did it flinch at the diving bombing attacks of birds aimed at its head. It did walk slowly up the ridge, and the attacking birds seemed bolder, some perching on a branch just above the owl. I began to feel sorry for the wily predator and worried that it was injured, fancying that I was seeing hold its wing in a strange way. But when I took
a step closer, it flew off looking unharmed. The birds above immediately calmed down, though I heard some commotion coming from where the owl flew. I walked over to where it had been when I first saw and there I found a water snake so wrinkled that I
assume it was a victim of the owl, and that I saved it from being taken away.
But when I nudged it with my foot, it squirmed though too traumatize to slither away. It did unkrimp itself.
Could it have been so wrinkled up because the owl had been clutching it? However, it is not uncommon to see water snakes up in the dead brown leaves of the woods near the bay. I continued along the trail, then cut up to the rock above the east end of Thicket Pond. Looking at the pond from that vantage it didn't appear that a beaver could still be there, but as I walked around the pond, I saw channels coming out from the now well shaded center of the pond, that could very well have been kept open by a beaver.
and some channels have vegetation cut and uprooted, not that that is a sure sign of beaver munching.
There are also trails in the grass heading down toward Meander Pond, which look more like deer trails with higher grass stalks askew rather than beaver trails with grasses crushed down, but that is a hard call at this time growing time of year. I saw some rippling in the pond, but many different birds were
zooming into the buttonbushes, including a king bird and an oriole. All looking for insects, I assume which might prompt a dive or two into the pond water. I walked over to the trunks off the north shore of the pond and slightly up the ridge where I
watched the beavers a month ago. No real chance to see anything from there now.
Going down to Meander Pond I saw some St. Johnswort, which looks a bit feeble
and some Indian pipes which look rather vigorous, a pinkish orange.
I sat as close as I could to the new Meander Pond lodge and didn't see nor hear anything.
Then I walked up to the ironwoods the beavers cut on the rock ridge north of the pond. I found a nice rock to sit on affording a good view of the pond, where I saw at least one stripped log in one of the channels
and the cut ironwoods. The beavers cut quite a bit out of the crown and left quite a bit, those leaves now all brown.
I could see where they had cut the end of the trunk and other feats of gnawing among the branches of the crown.
I sat for a half hour rather hoping a beaver did not appear. I want these beavers to lapse into a more normal pattern. After all my optimistic poem, after their Shangri-la Pond dam failed the second time, claimed that they would take the catastrophe in stride. I heard some splashes from the pond but all could be credited to frogs who were doing less croaking and more eating now. I decided not to go down and walk around the pond. I saw a fresh path in the dirt between the rocks going higher up the ridge. It crossed my mind that the Blanding's
turtle looking to lay eggs did it, but when I got up there and looked down, I saw that a beaver had tasted the large oak beside the path.
I continued up the ridge, deciding a best check on the revegetation of Shangri-la Pond. I want to see if the muskrats and snapping turtles remained in the pond. The granite of this high ridge and the scoops of dirt between the rocks cradle some berries and flowers. The blue berries, I think, are a little early this year
and I don't recall if I ever figured out the name of the delicate blue flowers,
delicate as a stalk of tall grass, that I first saw here last year
The grasses in general are quite striking but my camera can't manage a good photo of grasses especially on a bright sunny day. I saw the bones of a bullhead head in the middle of a large flat granite boulder, quite a rise in life for that bottom feeder
Then I walked over the new green of Shangri-la, first looking down on the west end
which has never been completely flooded so the ferns and bushes look familiar but the view down toward the dam is all green new
There is not much water ponded anywhere though where I last saw a beaver eating here is the only spot where a beaver, muskrat or turtle might find comfort, but not much, precious little water there.
I headed down to the north canal and where the beavers last cut trees is now all has drab gray brown of ancient beaver work.
The channel heading down to the dam must have just lost its water since nothing green has sprouted up out of the bottom much as green is crowding down on the channel.
I checked the little pond above and sent many green frogs hopping into the remaining water. No beavers had been there. So then I did what I really wanted to do, waded into the green, down to the dam.
There is a bit of variety here but I was attracted by the sweep of it and didn't stoop to identify. Of course, there is no hint of a repair at the dam
and the pool of water behind it seemed only to be the home of bugs and frogs
though the serious venue for frogs is a deeper, more stagnant, frothier, bubbling hot algae pool
It is behind the small rescue dam that the beavers made, so I can say that before they left the beavers helped out the frogs.
but there is as much muck as water
and much more meadow than muck or water.
The green hasn't enveloped the lodge yet, and I could see how the beavers fashioned their front entrance under a large trunk
I knew I could get my head down into the side entrance so I eased over there
where my ducking was interrupted by a turtle shell. When I saw it was the blanding's turtle I saw here a few weeks ago and not one of the three snapping turtles, I was more at ease.
Then I saw that it was dead. Indeed, the shell was almost empty, just a string of maggots devouring a stretch of neck skin, so much for that bright yellow. Judging by the shape of the shell, concave, it was a male, and judging by the size, as old as they get.
Another story to imagine: the female Blanding's I saw at Meander Pond, laying eggs relatively late in the season, followed the beavers to water. The old man chose to end it all in the beaver lodge. Then I headed up the now almost completely dry channel to the west and tried to imagine the belly bumping
experiences the beavers had when they swam over their collection of logs.
There were a few very soft spots, but I made it all the way up the west end of the pond without having to step on rocks. Going back down the East Trail, I flushed a small deer. It didn't go far. I thought it too small to be decoying me from a fawn. Then it looked back
at a larger deer still down in the meadow of the old New Pond.
July 3 I got to our land around 7:30pm and headed out promptly to check on the Boundary Pond beavers. I tried to creep down to the chair along the east shore of the pond and to my surprise no beavers were in the Last Pool or the
channel through Boundary Pond going down to the lodge so I sat and began to wonder if the beavers were on a late schedule since for 15 minutes I debated whether the rippling I could just see around the lodge was from the wind or a beaver. When a beaver finally came out I realized that it was from the wind. I think there was humming in the lodge but I confess to some difficulty discerning that from the buzzing of the swarm of mosquitoes around me, a real ball of buzzing. I think these are newly hatched mosquitoes, and there is much standing water for them to hatch from, and they have not got the hang of biting yet. Finally a beaver came swimming up the channel in front of me and since it slowed in front of me, I figured that it had seen me.. It swam on but came right back without carrying anything, slapped its tail and swam down to the lodge. I couldn't see if it went in. But another beaver swam right back up the channel, paused where I was, but swam on anyway. I saw that they had stripped more off the smaller hemlock near my chair and then I think I saw a beaver down at the dam either cutting a sapling or bringing one over the dam, which would be a new wrinkle. I heard a hermit thrush in the distance, and then fancied that I heard just the first note of the call behind me, one clear note, but nothing followed. I also heard weird calls from the opposite shore of the pond, low, which I think were from bullfrogs not quite in tune. I also heard the whip-poor-will start up deep in the woods. All to say, a pleasant din in the woods, but I was confused by the beavers, just looked like too lazy old beavers not too sure what to do, no hint of all that kits were in the lodge.
July 4 I sat at the Deep Pond in the hot afternoon -- a burst of sun during the chain of showers we have been having for two days. There were two kingfishers around, one quite chatty, up in a trees that made beeline dives into the
water flowing in from the inlet creek -- a place I often see small fry. The other kingfisher stayed rooted to a branch, perhaps in part, because when it flew up to it, a black tern flew right over it. The tern made a few circles low over the pond, and even though a fish jumped below it as it flew over, the tern circled higher and higher and flew away. As I was leaving the pond, it or another tern flew around the pond, and once again circled up and away. No action from the muskrats or the beavers.
I checked on the Boundary Pond beavers at 5:30pm and this time decided to walk down the west shore and then go up on the ridge above the lodge, all in hopes of escaping the coy glances and occasional tail slaps of beavers swimming by me, and to try to
get an idea of what is really going on in the lodge. When I got to the Last Pool, I saw that it was muddier up to the end, credit the couple inches of rain we had, indeed I was out a half hour after a shower, and I saw a freshly cut, segmented and stripped tree, elm I think.
Then I saw a beaver dive into the yellow brown water below the mid-dam, as I call it, it swam underwater all the way to the Last Pool dam and I couldn't quite see that.
The beaver didn't slap its tail but why wouldn't it spread the news that I was about? As I moved up the ridge to get a bead on the lodge, I saw another cut elm with its crown hanging over the channel of the upper part of Boundary
Pond.
And I also saw a beaver swimming up pond, so there was no alarm. Up on the ridge, I almost stepped on a baby bird and then saw a male scarlet tanager up in a nearby oak tree. He didn't seem alarmed so I don't think it was his baby. When I got even with the lodge, I saw a beaver swimming from the dam toward me, and I thought it looked at me,
then swam away, but not into the lodge. It swam upstream. Then I kept seeing more beavers, at least four in the pond, and I kept hearing humming, some obviously from a kit or two in the lodge. And so, I thought I was able to discern a story line. The third beaver was looking up at me and then as another
beaver came out, that third beaver swam up pond. The new beaver looked up at me and then swam back into the lodge. Then another beaver, a smaller beaver, came out of the lodge and swam directly up pond. I think that despite my presence the mother beaver was shooing all the other adults, juveniles, and a yearling out of the lodge. She came out to check on me before she kicked the yearling out. With the four beavers out and mother in the lodge, I waited to hear hums and finally did, perhaps the kits were happily suckling. Last night I thought I saw a sapling cut near the dam but I didn't see any sign of that. But I did see that some beavers have been swimming up to the dam, there's a trail through the duckweed.
I could also see that at least two of the beavers were gnawing on trees along the well shaded east shore of the pond. However, when I walked back for dinner, going along the ridge, I didn't see any of the beavers. Going up the west shore of the channel, I saw some more small trees had been cut in the woods.
I get the impression the beavers are fanning out and finding food anywhere and everywhere.
July 5 Between 10 and noon I cut dead trees for firewood in the woods, first walking around Boundary Pond to pick up my chair low on the east shore and put it on the ridge above the west shore. Of course, I looked for fresh work and I saw that for the first time in weeks the end of the Last Pool was muddy.
And the beavers have come up at that point to once again gnaw on the big poplar trunks, but not in a way that might cause the trees to timber down.
The beavers I saw along the east shore last evening were probably gnawing the hemlocks. The smaller one has been cut, and one log almost cut off it. The first hemlock they cut has fresh gnaws on it and they are starting to girdle and cut a larger hemlock near by.
And closer to the lodge, they cut down a large elm
and the leafy crown fell quite close to the lodge. Will I soon see kits out there nibbling the leaves?
I did hear a little humming in the lodge, but I had work to do. While peeling the bark off a dead ash I disturbed sleep of some millipedes.
Warmer and sunny today, good for the tomatoes.
July 6 I got to my chair above the Boundary Pond dam at 7:30 and the beavers seemed quite active. and I got the impression that I was immediately noticed. But once again the beaver that saw me did not slap its tail or go to the lodge. And so I think I saw the beavers simply doing what had to be done. Two beavers seemed to concentrate on cutting and stripping trees along the hemlock shaded east shore. At least I could hear them doing that and see the ripples they made radiate toward me. One beaver I think went
up pond perhaps to the Last Pool. Of course, all the time I was hearing humming from the lodge. Then I saw a trail of small bubbles coming out from the lodge and thought that might be a kit launching itself out into the pond, easy to imagine one spewing
air in its excitement. However, I finally saw the beaver making the bubbles, an adult, whose job seemed to be to dredge the pond bottom, sometimes taking muck to the dam and sometimes not. I kept hearing splashing into the water seeming to come from the lodge and strained to see a kit pop up, but I didn't. However, then I saw one right below me but it saw me first and made a snap dive and disappeared. Kits dive like muskrats, which makes sense, They are about the size of muskrats and when they dive make the same motions, not having developed the knack of slapping its
tail. The other day I had speculated that the beavers cut a large elm on the east shore to provide leafy branches for the kits. I saw that the ganwing I was hearing over there was, in part, to cut down a large elm branch. I thought I saw a beaver pawing through the branches but it was getting dark. I just managed to see a beaver bringing a small part of the leafy branch over to the lodge, and then diving with it into the lodge. Then I heard a good bit of humming, whining and gnawing and saw a kit out in the pond again, promptly diving in for the feast. Strange to say, though I spend much time listening to human music and at times play the piano, trumpet, guitar, harmonica and recorder, I give rather spare discriptions of the noises the beavers make in their lodge. Volume and rhythm seem more important that pitch but I
wouldn't be surprised if that mainly reflects the relatively poor hearing of the human. However, I heard a low pitched hum tonight, one might even call it a rasp or even a growl. I can't say why, but hearing that I was sure that there were three kits. Two more helpless inside, the one that had figured out how to get out into
the pond. The growl was from the mother. I waited hoping for another branch to be taken into the lodge, or for the precociouos kit to come out again. My experiences with kits seems to be different than everybody elses. I generally don't see them being protected or instructed or cuddled or coddled. I see them acting independently and never too adept or adroit except in one respect. They see me and usually react with a sharp splash. I packed up my camera at 9, waited a bit longer and then went home, glad to have seen a kit.
July 7 Back home, where I didn't take my camera, we saw a female map turtle. The size astounded me, about 10 inches and the high keel and serated shell were quite striking. Ottoleo said he thought he saw it laying eggs on a little beach one of our neighbor's had made.
We saw it walking up a path beside our house almost to the busy road in front of us. After admiring it, during which it kept an eye on us, Ottoleo took it over to the creek across the road. Back on the land, when I went down in the afternoon to sit at the Deep Pond, I didn't expect to see a beaver, but there one was swimming away from the dam. I went over to my chair and it in the typical circular fashion of a beaver swam closer to me. It came close to me
and then swam back to the dam, then swam back to me. I couldn't help but think it was telling me to bring down more aspen branches. Leslie had brought some down the last few days, but not yesterday or today. I find myself thinking less of feeding beavers, especially as this damp spring becomes a damp
summer. This is a record year for plant growth. So, I got up and walked around the pond to see what else the beaver has been eating. I checked the trails up to the fern patch on the west side of the knoll
and first noticed the fruit of the jack in the pulpit.
The beaver evidently doesn't care for that. There seemed to be more trimming of the ferns, but I can't be sure the beaver is doing that.
By the way, the mud mark by the shore that the beavers made is now neglected, though a beautiful swamp milkweed seems to guard it.
I got up and over the knoll and down to the other side, stepping onto the lodge as I did. Another beaver did not come out. The lodge seemed untended, no new mud or sticks up on it, not many nibbled sticks around it. I went back into the woods through the low fat leaves of the once flowering plants, and then down to the fern patches that the beavers had cut a canal too. I couldn't say there had been much more fern cutting there
and their trial from the canal was almost obliterated by Joe Pye weeds almost as tall as me.
However, when I looked down the inlet creek, I saw the beaver looking at me and then turning and swimming back into the pond. When I got back to the pond, not seeing any beaver work up in the woods southeast of the pond, I saw the beaver up on the dam, wading into the tall vegetation there.
I wasn't sure what the beaver was trying to get but I think it did cut at least one stalk. When it got back into the water, I thought it was dragging that along as it swam to the lodge. But it didn't take it into the lodge. It swam up the inlet creek. I had never felt more like I was having a conversation with a beaver. I said to it: no, forget about aspen, you have so much to eat, I'll show you. It said to me: OK, you are right, there is vegetation everywhere, see right here on the dam where the aspen should be, there is something I might eat, and I'll
try, but see it isn't that good, but look, I'll swim back to the ferns, obviously I have been eating them, but.... So before I went off to see the Boundary Pond beavers after dinner, I took down five small aspen saplings. I threw them down on one of the
stripped aspen logs behind the dam. I looked up and saw the beaver swim out from the inlet creek coming right to the dam. I stepped back and soon heard it gnawing away. I didn't get a photo because it started raining. And rained pretty hard as I went to
the chair overlooking the Boundary Pond lodge. I thought the rain would disguise my presence and perhaps it did. No beaver was out to greet me. The rain made it hard to hear the humming in the lodge, and hard to see ripples of beavers that might be over on the east shore. But the greens were brighter in the rain, the shadows as the sky cleared were tinged golden. I had to juice up the photo below with editing but it almost does look to me just as it looked to me then.
To make a long story short. I saw one beaver, the dredging dam packing beaver. When it was behind the lodge so I couldn't see it, it made a wild tail slap. Last year the adults in this family reacted like that in response to the pestering of a kit. But I didn't see a kit, instead the dredging beaver emerged right below me, looked up, then made a curling dive, and leaving a trail of bubbles raised the muddy bottom. Along with the usual chorus of birds, I heard some turkeys, giving not their gobbling call, but the more insistent cackling that almost sounds
like they are saying "turkey turkey turkey turkey."
July 8 I had no morning errands away from the land. I even chopped wood before breakfast. I went up to the Teepee Pond to split wood there, and saw the green heron in the First Pond. Both ponds are muddy, the vegetation in the pond trimmed back.
I blame turtles, but I didn't see any of them today. I saw a bit of cut grass in the pond, but none on the shores. I can't say there are muskrats here. We continue to have showers and the little pond above the First Pond still has its full complement of water.
Kingfisher came by for a cackling visit. After lunch I walked around Boundary Pond. I think the beavers are more interested in the saplings around the large poplars, than the poplars themselves, not much more gnawing on the them.
I saw more small trees cut or in the process of being cut along the east shore of the Last Pool,
and farther back in the woods I can get insights into the beavers' taste. Two ironwoods are untouched as well as a hemlock, but the smaller birch is being gnawed.
There are a few stripped sticks in the pool, and what looks like an effort to build up the dam there, or mid dam, as I call it.
And I think there are more logs at the spillover between the Last Pool and Boundary Pond but I will have to compare the photo below with old photos.
I hoped to see where the beavers cut the branch out of the elm crown the other night but didn't see it though I know one was cut, I saw it fall into the water.
However, the hemlocks they are working on make a stunning array.
The one they had cut a while ago and that was hanging up in another tree fell down over the elm trunk.
The beavers are also gnawing into the another hemlock nearby,
and cut another segment off the small hemlocks trunk.
However they don't finish the job, the logs are still there, and they seem more intent on cutting the hemlock down to size so they can stripped more bark off it. I think the dam continues to be built up, with more logs
and muck.
But I was wrong when I said that the dam held back water better, it is rather wet below the dam, not only because of the frequent showers. There was humming from the lodge but when I got up to the chair above the lodge to see if anything would come of it, the humming stopped. The lodge looks more built up too though I haven't seen any sign of a beaver going up on it. And I think they continue to dredge the channel back to the Last Pool.
Walking back along the west shore I noticed a couple places where samll trees had been cut back in the woods, but nothing ambitious.
We took aspen and some vines down to the deep pond dam after dinner but no beaver swam out of the white misty low fog to eat it.
July 9 in the night we heard some good yowling and yodeling from the coyotes. They seemed to be on the move. Ottoleo slept in the cabin, closer to the inner valley that leads to Boundary Pond and said they didn't seem to have gone down there. In the morning I checked to see how much of our offering the beaver at the Deep Pond ate. All but the vine had been taken. I studied the dense vegetation on the dam
and noticed that the vervain was blooming and a violet flower but the scene stealers are the swamp milkweed blooms.
and I saw a small butterfly tucked under a leaf.
And some flowering grasses there were large enough to make a good photo.
Back on the island the sun and fresh wind prompted me to tour South Bay in the kayak, rather take a short hike to check on the beavers. I didn't see any cormorants as I went around the headland, only geese, gulls, caspian terns.There was a sharp wind coming out of the bay so as I paddled into it, I
had the pleasure of seeing an osprey high above fluttering up as it tried to get the bead on a fish. I went far down the south cove of the bay before I saw a heron. As I admired its grey blue sheen of feathers, I heard a splash. The osprey came up with a
rather large bullhead, flew low as the fish dangled in its clutches and the bird even spewed out some poop lightening the load. Then it got enough altitude to fly over the trees of the peninsula and take its prize to the north shore of South Bay.
When I got too close to the heron it flew off croaking, also angling to the north shore. I saw a large uprooted rhizome in the water just of the willow cove, under the tree, but no sticks stripped by the beavers. This willow is in the best shaped of any along the shore. Perhaps the beavers were more prudent in their gnawing because the tree shades an old beaver lodge. I didn't any signs that otters had been around, still blue flag iris where poop should be. I saw the first lily in South Bay, no others seemed even up out of the water. There is smattering of
spatterdock. I went down to the end of the north cove and saw how well the carp had cleared the vegetation in the water. But there were still plants remained even in the portions of the cove that bore the brunt of the carps' browsing. I kept an eye out for bryozoa, too early. Then as I paddled by the old dock where I saw one painted turtle, I saw a large map turtle up on the log farther up the shore. I kept an eye on it, until I noticed that a beaver had cut some of the alder along the shore near the old dock, just like last year. The high water in the bay allows this.
Then I looked back and saw that the map turtle was gone, too bad, I wanted a closer look through the binoculars. I was impressed with its thick back legs, and how light the scaly keeled shell looks when seen from water level. It seems less attached than the shells of snappers, Blandings and painted turtles. If I had been more careful in my paddling, I could have studied two more map turtles because I saw two more about 20 yards apart on logs jutting out from the shore. They sensed me about the same time I saw them. A year or two ago I saw map turtles here, all relatively small. It was as if they had all grown up. Also curious that I've now seen four large map turtles, females all, I suppose. Do they characteristically lay eggs later than other
turtles? I saw a blackbird chase a crow across the bay and four other crows followed which didn't give the blackbird pause. The small blue damsel flies were everywhere. Still some yellow flag iris in bloom and I saw a small red rosy flower night along the show growing above some pink mallow. Back at the land I cleaned up the branches from some trees I trimmed and cut in the morning. I was about to cut a honeysuckle branch when I saw a large gray tree frog on it.
Just at dark I took two of the ironwood branches down to the Deep Pond beaver. When I got there I could see it up on the near shore eating grasses. After I tossed in the branches it swam over, I discreetly went up to my chair and it
swam up to pay its respects then swam down to the dam. I soon heard some gnawing. The noisy swarming mosquitoes made my visit short. As I walked past the dam, I saw the beaver cupping ironwood leaves to its mouth. It moved away when I got too close.
I'll see in the morning how much it enjoyed this new offering,
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