July 20 we got back from a weekend trip and I managed to head down toward Boundary Pond before 8 pm. I got to my chair that I left close to the west shore of the Last Pool with a good view of the crown of the downed poplar. I soon saw a beaver appear from behind the crown and swim away down the channel. I waited a bit in case there was another beaver. No. So I walked closer to crown and saw that while most of it was still there, several small branches had been cut.
Tomorrow I'll walk out on the trunk and take a better look. I took my chair and went down the ridge back to where I had been sitting half way down the ridge with a good view of the lodge. As I came down the ridge I saw a beaver out
in the pond and I thought it was looking up at me. I froze as best I could when there are mosquitoes to be waved away. The beaver started diving as if to do some dredging so I continued down the ridge, set up the chair and sat in it and the beaver didn't notice. It swam over to deposit muck on the dam. I got the sense that there was another beaver out in the pond along the shady east shore. All was quiet in the lodge, until one of the adult beavers went in and I heard humming. Then I saw a raccoon walking on the dam and then along the shore below me probing the shallow water with its paws. I saw a beaver out in the pond, still as a log and facing the dam. It didn't seem to be reacting to the raccoon, which continued up the shore. Then it stopped abruptly, turned around and went back to the dam. It walked along the dam, scaring frogs off it, but it kept away from the water evidently not interested in the frogs. The raccoon disappeared into the darkness under the hemlocks along the east shore. Then I heard the sharp slap of a beaver's tail come from the east shore. It's possible the raccoon and beaver were reacting to me, but I think the raccoon retreated from the stare of one beaver and earned the tail slap of another when it didn't leave the pond quickly enough. For the next half hour adult beavers and the yearling kept going in and out of the lodge but I couldn't make sense of what they were doing. One kept dredging and adding to the dam, another drifted up pond and then back, without bringing any branches in tow. The yearling, I think, came out of the lodge with a half stripped twig that he continued to gnaw for a few minutes then dove and went up pond, I think. I kept hearing humming from the lodge and enough sloshing to make me think that an adult was dunking the kits into the water inside the lodge. But no kits popped out into the pond. The other entertainment was a flock of cedar waxwings fluttering over the pond nabbing insects. I left my chair earlier than usual because I wanted to get down to the Deep Pond to take an offering and see if the two, almost tame, beavers are there. I cut a good aspen branch and threw it into the pond at the dam. A heron flew away. No beavers materialized out of the mist. I sat for a bit. The birds were singing
sweetly. The catbirds and thrushes sounded quite good together. Then a whip-poor-will started up. As I was leaving a heron flew into the pond.
July 21 We watered the gardens
first thing but I took a brief break to look at the Deep Pond dam and I saw that
my offering of the night before had completely disappeared. So at least one
beaver is still there. Then after we finished watering I went down to the Last
Pool to "climb" the downed poplar. I saw more work on the poplar but as much on
the saplings next to it.
All to say, not as much gnawing and branch cutting as I expected there'd be. But I did see the stumps of a few sizeable branches.
But I kept wondering why the beaver went to what appeared to be
the extra trouble of cutting close to the trunk which, I think, meant dragging
the cut branch over parts of the crown between the cut and the channel.
Looking at the crown from "below" as I stood on the trunk, it
didn't seem like the beavers were much interested in subduing the crown. I
walked around the pool and didn't see any more gnawing on the other three large
poplars. I still think a beaver prowls around the pool nipping saplings, at
least I keep seeing what I think are freshly cut ones, but I don't make a close
study of this as I should.
I noticed that a three inch thick elm that they had girdled a bit was now cut down and all the branches nipped off.
A week ago there was water in the Last Pool not far from this
work, but now only the middle channel of brown water remains.
I checked to see how deep the channel is and found that it is
about 15 inches deep, deep enough for a beaver to swim under water. Indeed I
probed under a mossy root that I used to call the spillover of the mid dam and
found that the beavers had dug out their channel under the root.
No wonder I haven't seen beavers humping over the mid-dam when I
scared them out of the Last Pool. Needless to say the beavers have done a good
bit of dredging to create the channel, and now I can see where they've left
stripped poplar sticks on the dredged mud.
Of course this is why the channel is always so muddy. The beavers must be constantly clawing mud up as they swim up and down it. Looking up at the crown from down channel, I finally saw evidence of some sustained gnawing on a large branch conveniently at the outer edge of the crown.
Not all the beavers worm their way close to the trunk. We went back to our house on the island for lunch and our renter Jean reminded me that we hadn't identified the strange red plant that I saw a few days ago out in the woods. She thought it might be alpine smartweed which seemed unlikely. Then I pawed through a plant guide and began wondering if it was a type of orchid that fizzled out as the woods got drier. So I took a quick hike toward the Big Pond to find the plant again to see if it had changed any. I bumped into a baby flicker and a fawn on the way. The fawn was quite fast and alert, well beyond the stand-and-look-at-the-strange-human stage that fawns go through. I saw a patch of blooming golden rod on a dry rocky slope.
I couldn't find the plant as I walked toward the Big Pond. So I
decided to go check the otter latrine I found at the south end of the Big Pond dam. My friend Matt had just called me reporting that he saw two otter pups and perhaps three more otters around Quarry Point on Picton Island. He saw them night and morning and even walked over there den, if the mother otter snorting below was to be believed. My guess is that this family will gravitate toward the marshes in Grindstone as the pups grow, not to the marshes of South Bay and swamps of Wellesley Island. But why not check all latrines? I didn't see any fresh scats, but perhaps there was a new scent mound of grass.
Anyway, I turned and headed back home, and once on my usual path, going the usual way, I found the strange plant again. Nothing had changed saved that it looked much used.
It was obviously no orchid. I took one of the pods home and Leslie thought it looked familiar, the seed of a not an unusual weed of a plant, but wasn't sure what color flowers or the name. This time I managed to get a photo of the stalk as it comes out of the ground which suggests what a quick growing weed-like plant it is.
Here was a case where a plant became exotic after it lost its
flowers and leaves. We went back to our house on the land for dinner, and I got out to check on the Boundary Pond beavers between 7 and 8 pm, earlier than I have been seeing them. As I walked along the Last Pool, I sensed that a beaver was fleeing me. I got the camcorder out but just missed seeing it swim under the root of the mid-dam. I went down to my chair above the lodge and once again a beaver swam close to get a look and sniff of me, and didn't seem to care.
As usual the pond was quite beautiful, once again cedar waxwings
about and the usual hums from the kits in the lodge, and the mosquitoes all around me.
I saw one adult beaver head up the channel toward the Last Pool and another adult dredged around the lodge, even bringing up a large log. Since I kept hearing splashing inside the lodge, I kept expecting a kit to come out demonstrating that it had mastered the art of diving in and out of the lodge, so when I'd see bubbles outside the lodge after a splash inside the lodge, I'd gin up the camcorder, but the same old persistently dredging adult would always pop up eventually. Finally I think I saw the precocious kit get out of the lodge, but just like last year's kits, it didn't surface but swam underwater as far as it could, which, unfortunately, meant I couldn't see it. That, by the way, is the proper way for beavers to leave the lodge, and in the large ponds where I see beavers, they always swim several yards before surfacing. Only the adults in this small secluded pond are lazy about that. Then just before I was about to leave, I saw an adult dragging a large poplar branch down the channel. I think it got the end into the entrance of the lodge, then cut the branch, rather neatly getting it into the lodge, much to the delight of the kits inside. I think the precocious kit got back inside the lodge without my noticing because it came out again, this time surfacing soon enough for me to see it. It came out at the same time an adult did. The adult surfaced below me giving me a look, while the kit swam off in the other direction. I don't think I am missing too much by making my presence known. I think the remaining kits, probably two of them, would make their debuts in the dark anyway. When there are more kits in the pond, I might see some more hijinks. I also got down to the Deep Pond, left an aspen branch and no beaver appeared. It was a cloudy evening with rain threatening and that seemed to subdue the birds. On the road I saw a porcupine and a baby porcupine. In the dark, the adult was quite brown and grey and the baby a black
ball.
The adult seemed injured, had a very bad limp in one of its back legs. The baby had the proper impulse to separate from the adult when I came, but it didn't go far, and soon went back to the poor limping animal, as if it wanted to comfort its parent. As I write, it's raining hard.
July 22 I decided to spend the
night on the island to check Meander Pond in the evening for kits, and in the
morning to see the baby otters off Picton Island. I didn't let the warm sunny afternoon go to waste. I kayaked around South Bay. A noisy family was also making the rounds, so I didn't see the usual complement of herons, just one in the south cove. As I was checking willow lodge/latrine, a muskrat swam out of the marsh, swam by me, and went back into the marsh on the west side of the lodge. I didn't see any otter signs, but I did see how a beaver climbed up on a low willow branch, just out of the water, and got up to cut two large branches well out of the water. I'll have to get photos of that. There were no otter signs at the latrines on the shore of the north cove. I did see a cut water lily flower up on a rock that muskrats use more than beavers. There were a dozen water lilies blooming in the water, and more spatterdocks. I saw some stems of the latter clipped probably by a beaver. But I didn't see any more beaver work along the shore. I bowed my head to look for early bryozoa but was soon distracted by the turtles up on logs and cattail clumps. I think they were all painted turtles, but I stared several back into the water studying them for signs that they were map turtles. I flushed two adult ducks. The geese with their many goslings are all out in the deep water. After dinner I headed off to Meander Pond. There was a light east wind so I crossed the valley at the east
end of Thicket Pond and then eased my way along the north shore of that pond and then down to the downed tree trunk offering a view of Meander Pond lodge. I saw a freshly stripped log next to it, but didn't hear any kits humming inside. I waited for 20 minutes to see if there would be any activity around the lodge. I didn't notice anything, but I didn't have a very good view of the lodge and the channel around it.
The lusty vegetation all around made it seem like there wasn't a
pond there at all. A caterpilar dangled on silk in front of me.
However, I soon knew beavers were around. I heard a tail slap from the west end of the pond. As I eased down the north shore, I angled up the rocky ridge where I saw that a beaver cut a maple growing right next to a high rock face of the ridge.
The tree fell into the ridge and rolled along it, still about as
straight up as before. The beavers were cutting it again. Meanwhile nothing was
stirring in the pond, and with the vegetation narrowing the channels it was more
inscrutable than ever.
Then I caught a glimpse of a small beaver but it didn't stay out in the channel for long so I couldn't tell if it was a kit. I walked on the rocks of the ridge, getting a bit higher, and then I saw an adult beaver gnawing on a log. Or rather, I saw the tip of its head and the wave of ripples it was making.
Then as I stepped along I made a noise and the beaver moved closer to shore seeming to hide under a log. In this gangly pond a hiding place is no more than two feet away. But I may have been wrong about its hiding because the beaver soon swam out, dove, and reemerged in a large channel right in front of me. It swam away from me until it reached up to gnaw on a bush. The a kit swam up to it, nosing right into its parent, making several hums. The adult continued gnawing, then continued up the channel until it dove and disappeared. The kit dove and disappeared too.
What an end to a story! I could picture how they moved from Thicket Pond into Shangri-la Pond in the spring of 2007. Then they left two kits behind for a few days, or so it seemed to me. I could picture the dead matriarch of the family in the snow flattened by the fallen tree truck in late December 2007. I could picture her there for several days until the coyotes took her body away. And then I recalled all last year when there were no kits but one of the juveniles seemed to be growing into being the mate for the widowed patriarch. Then this year their dam at Shangri-la Pond failed twice within a month, the last time so spectacularly that it drove the beavers from the pond even though, as I could only suspect at the time, they had kits in the lodge. And tonight I saw one kit nuzzling its father, judging by its size, and then disappearing with him into the forgiving vegetation. I waited for another half hour studing the channel heading down to the lodge,
but nothing stirred but chipmunks in the rocks and turkeys nesting in the crowns of trees high on the ridge. I chronicled the progress they
made trimming branches off the ironwoods they cut.
They even went higher up the ridge to cut two smaller ones.
Down on pond level, they managed to get an ironwood that had been hung down on the ground and had it half trimmed.
And the maple they cut that fell conveniently into the pond had
been completely stripped of branches, its trunk cut in half and most of the bark
on the trunk gnawed off.
Behind the dam there were cut cattail stalks and at least two well worn trails down into the cattails below as well as a few alders. They have almost cut through the second trunk of a bunch basswood.
And as I walked around the south end of the pond, just up from the most south reaching channel,
I saw that two maples had been girdled and were well on their way to being cut down.
At home I didn't have long to savor this happy ending and new
beginning. I had to be up at 5 next morning to see otter pups.
July 23 It was a relatively dark dawn with an east wind making more choppy waves than one usually finds on the river at dawn. The common terns were already up. I saw four flying back to their nests on the navigation cell along the river channel. Better eyes were with me, though when Ottoleo saw something move on the shore below the otter latrine above the entrance to South Bay, it proved to be nothing. I approached the Picton quarry from the east, and killed the engine well off shore so the wind could blow us toward where Matt saw the otters the other day. We heard an inordinate amount of chirping but soon saw that most of it came from an osprey fluttering high above the island. As it got lighter, its chirping was echoed by at least four osprey perching on or flying just above the trees on the point. This was inconvenient since the osprey chirp sounds rather like an otter's chirp. The waves didn't help either. It was too rocky to use the binoculars. It took 20 minutes for the osprey to disperse, but still no otters appeared. Then we went a bit down to the west and motored back close to shore. Still no otters. We went around the point and scanned the bay over there. There seemed to be herons everywhere, stalking fish in the water or roosting on trees. There were
also ducks. Ottoleo kept seeing things -- all jumping fish. He had his rod so I
let him choose a spot off the point. He fished, without getting a bite, and I kept studying the Picton shore, with only a fish stalking heron to watch. Then I suggested we go a bit more to the west, and drift down the channel between Picton and Grindstone. Then as he continued to fish, Ottoleo saw an otter pulling in a big fish, about as big as the otter, up on a rock along the shaded part of the shore. I could see the white of the fish being jerked up and just caught a glimpse of the otter. Ottoleo see the otter disappear behind the rock where a gap in the roots of the tree there seemed to afford an entrance to a den.
So we drifted toward that possible den. Then we heard chirping, otter chirping. We first thought it was coming from shore, and then I saw the otter swimming along the shore, head up chirping, then diving, then head up chirping again, obviously hoping we'd follow her away from the den. Then it disappeared into the rocks, and soon we heard chirping on shore, even echoing, like the otter had found a cavernous rock den up there. Then Ottoleo saw an otter periscoping under a rock right in front of us.
He saw two otters, he said, and the video tape that I managed to take proved he was right. Both disappeared quickly. So we found the three adult
otters that Matt thought he saw. We motored closer to the shore taking an angle
between where we thought the otters disappeared. We kept hearing sporadic chirping. Then Ottoleo saw an otter pup, up on the rock next to the shady den. The pup was chirping for all it was worth. I got the camcorder on it in time to capture it tumbling into the water and then it swam up to where the adults were. We didn't pursue it, but continued down to the den
where we saw the head of that large fish underwater. Ottoleo
thinks it was a pickeral. We saw other fish remains up on the rock.
We kept a distance in case the other pup was in the den. Then when motored home, pretty dam happy. Neither of us had seen otters in many months, and the last time we saw otters together was probably 10 or 12 years ago. We wished good luck to the otters, and I hope they make it over to Wellesley Island before winter. I won't bother them anymore until the pups are bigger and then if they are still around try to figure out the relationship. Are the three adult otters all females, as my current theories would dictate, or has that gang of three or four males I've "identified" actually a mitched bunch? It would seem that if there were three adult females, as well as a group of males around, I would have seen a lot more otter signs around South Bay, and even happened upon the otters.
After a brief nap at our land, I went down to the Big Pond around 6pm to see if I could see the beavers there. Twice I’ve left aspen branches there at 9pm and seen no beavers, but in the morning the branches were gone. I cut four small saplings growing out of the extensive roots in our aspen grove by our garden. There were no beavers in the pond when I got there so I threw the saplings into the water and sat on my chair. In a few minutes I saw a beaver swimming out of the inlet creek carrying a leafy plant, perhaps a large fern, in its mouth, carrying to toward the dam. And then about 10 yards behind the other beaver swam out of the inlet creek. So there are still two beavers. Both beavers parked their plant on the shore just east of the bank lodge. They were about 5 yards a part and without taking any notice of me began eating.
Then the second beaver stopped and swam straight for the dam. When it saw me it slapped its tail, but it didn’t turn away. It made a tight swimming weave
getting closer and closer
The other beaver back by the lodge didn’t seem to notice. The beaver edging toward me finally stopped, looking up at me for a minute, and then inched close enough to grab a sapling. It pulled it out, then grabbed the trunk end with its mouth and carried it back to where the other beaver was. Was it going to share it? Not exactly. When the other beaver tried to nose into the leaves, the hauling before let out some sharp whines and pulled the sapling away. Eventually it put the aspen next to the fern and began to gnaw on the aspen. The other beaver returned to its fern and seemed contented. Then it climbed up on the bank to do some grooming,
perhaps a ruse because it soon lunged into the water making a play for the aspen. I’ll have to study it, but I think it gained control of it, fended the other beaver off but then seemed to relinquish it. At least it returned to its fern and the beaver who had fetched the sapling regained control and took it over to the knoll. But I maybe wrong. When beavers lunge in contention, they dive and it’s hard to identify each as they surface. Anyway, a beaver swam back my way. No tail splash as it approached the dam, and less pussyfooting. It grabbed a sapling and pulled it a few yards down the dam and began eating the leaves.
Meanwhile the other beaver was quite happily gnawing on the other sapling. I somewhat regret bringing the aspen. With their twin ferns, fetched and carried almost in unison, the beavers looked quite the team. My aspen saplings seemed to be
apples of discord, so to speak. Walking back for my dinner, I saw five rabbits in the road, parallel to our garden. Two adults and three bunnies.
Many rabbits this year. Birds are getting quieter at night, though the whip-poor-wills were soon in full voice with what sounded like a fledgling trying to learn its song.
July 24 rain in the night and then most of the morning. I built bookcases for our cabin. In the sunny, and hot and humid afternoon, I walked around Boundary Pond beginning by walking out on the crown of the poplar. The beavers aren’t stripping the bark of the big trunk, and now don’t seem to be gnawing the bark on small branches. They are cutting branches to haul away, and I am amazed at how they twist their way in and up to a branch rather than just pick off all the
leafy twigs along the edge of the crown,
I haven’t quite figured out the protocols of their shopping, but, of course, different beavers might have different tastes.
They did cut off one large branch along the edge of the crown, that they have been working on for a while.
I also took a photo of the leaves of the tree to determine if it is an aspen or a poplar. My kneejerk reaction is to call the large types of this tree poplars and the smaller aspens.
They have cleared enough of the crown to afford a good view of the Last Pool channel.
As I continued around the Last Pool, I noticed that beavers keep cutting the small prickly ash, and also the hornbeam
So they certainly aren’t so enthralled with the poplar/aspen that they neglect what they have been eating for so long. I walked down the east shore of Boundary Pool and saw how shallow it is getting. But I don’t think the shallowness is why
they left the elm log all virtually segmented but still in place.
That’s just the way they often operate. Maybe they don’t need small logs now. Perhaps that makes gnawing on the hemlocks less attractive, but probably they have tired of that tree which is really not a favorite.
Just across from the lodge I noticed the start of what looked like a burrow.
I put the stick in and there was only a few inches of depth, A few weeks ago I was bragging on the dam suggesting that the back piling of muck was holding more water back. Doesn’t look like that now. The muck was put there as the best place
to put dredge material since the beavers go up pond all the time for food, never down stream.
So what does it mean these striking conglomerations of stripped sticks?
I heard a little humming from the lodge and sat briefly. Nothing came of the humming. I walked up the west shore and noticed a good bit of frog bit and two small green frogs comfortably on board its leaves.
I didn’t much lumbering along the shore. Instead I was drawn to the dredging. The yellow water of the dredged channel goes straight from the lodge all the way to the poplar crown in the Last Pool.
I did see one feint of a dredge, as if a beaver wished to have a bit wider pool, like it was before.
Along the edge of the channel near the tunnel under the root. I saw nibbled sticks, so a beaver sits in the comfort of the channel and eats. We have been getting rain but not enough to flood the pond and compensate for the beavers’ deepening their channel. The rain has been good for mushrooms and one set attracted me because it looked like sheets of paper on the dark dank forest floor.
I didn’t get out to see the beavers until 8 pm. I was surprised to see none near the downed poplar nor in the channel down to Boundary Pond. Then I saw an adult looming large in a patch of duckweed and frog bit not far from the lodge. It was
munching in through the greens.
I even saw frogs jump away from its voracity. Soon enough it got wind of me, and retreated. But it made no commotion seemed to ease over into the shade of the east shore of the pond. So I got to my chair above the lodge and waited, hearing both whining and gnawing inside the lodge. Soon enough a kit popped out, lingered a bit beside the lodge, not paying its usual attention to me, and then it swam up the channel. I couldn’t see it well, but I heard some playful splashing. Then I heard some serious splashing on the other side of the lodge, all under the cut elm trunks. My guess is that an adult was putting a kit through its paces, and when I finally saw a beaver it looked like an adult that went back into the lodge. I waited in vain for a beaver to bring branches down to the lodge, but there was gnawing inside, so perhaps I was too late to see the kits served breakfast. I kept hearing little sloshes from inside the lodge, hoping it was another kit getting ready to make a debut. Then I heard a huge splash, and a huge beaver came out, surfaced below me, and slowly swam up pond. Mother? Finally without much ado, I think I saw a second kit. It surfaced with nose wildly sniffing the air and that directed it right toward me. I think the precocious kit has done sniffing me, and his kit seemed a bit jittery, not that it was timid. It swam a bit down wind from me, and got an angle for eyeing me. Then it swam right below me, looking up, and then dove, circled back under water and swam up the channel. There was no other beaver about giving it instructions. Every summer I am impressed on how alone the kits are in July. It was almost too dark to see but I thought if I heard more whining in the lodge that might suggest that there is a third kit. So I waited, fending off mosquitoes that always seem to get re-enforcements when it gets dark -- or put it another way, when the green frogs begin their serious vespers, the mosquitoes come en masse. I did hear one splash inside the lodge, but no whines. I walked up the ridge, but came down to my trail along the Last Pool. I waited to see if there would be ripples around the poplar. I saw some, not big, perhaps from frogs, but they persisted in a way that frog ripples don’t persist. A beaver appeared from under the crown looking at me.
In the dark, looking straight on, I couldn’t be sure if I was seeing the head of the huge adult or the whole body of a kit. Then it turned to swim down pond and I saw that it was a kit, a long way from the lodge, again without any apparent adult
supervision.
No comments:
Post a Comment