August 15 yesterday I saw a chipmunk running through the grass and moss in front of our house on the land with what I first thought was a huge nut, and then I saw that it was a huge green caterpillar.
Took a while for the chipmunk to eat it. May have been a luna moth caterpillar. Summer is a time to see little perfections that one never knew existed, like this caterpillar, only an inch long, that crawled by me as I was pumping water this morning
It was sunny and 90 yesterday and today. I was due to check Meander Pond and only time I could do it was between 1 and 3 pm. So I had some sweating today. But I managed to stay mostly in the shade. Going up to Antler Trail I saw a frog that had shifted from the green skin for wet days to the brown skin for drought.
I approached Meander Pond from the maple work south of the southeast canal of the pond. The last time I was here the beavers had just cut two maples beyond the other trees they had cut. I was surprised to see that they had done nothing to the two maples. Many of the leaves in the crowns had been eaten but I am pretty sure deer did that.
None of the branches had been cut off in beaver fashion. However the beavers had cut down at least two more trees including an oak. They cut a log out of the trunk, though they only took it a few yards from the trunk.
I sat in the shade but there was no wind to cool me down. I took a photo of the woods,
showing a tree cut down and one cut but leaning. After 15 years of watching beavers, I still can’t predict which trees will be cut next or if they will be cut at all. Beavers have been here in other years, and these trees survived. This family is famous, in my book, for its dredging. There had been little of that since they moved into the pond in late June, but, perhaps, we had enough rain then to preclude deepening canals. I checked the southeast canal and it was not at all muddy.
I waded through the tall grass to the slight knoll that the pond meanders around. I passed two canals choked with frog bit and other vegetation. But then I saw what I expected to see, a canal muddy from dredging.
It was clear that the beavers were coming over to get alder,
But there were also grasses and ferns to eat.
And going over the knoll is a shortcut from the lodge to the southern reaches of the pond. As I continued around the pond that is the only fresh mud I saw, but the pond outside the burrow was free of vegetation
It was too hot a day to walk down their trails below the dam to see what cattails and alders they may have cut down there. Over on the north shore, I found a trail below the rocks through the lush ferns which I bet the beavers made.
They cut the last maple in a group of six growing out of an old stump. From below it didn’t look like they had gone up on the ledge of the ridge to work on the crowns of the tree leaning on the ridge. I didn’t go up to check.
I did check the lodge, which looked solid.
The beavers weren’t mad enough to come out in the noonday sun.
Back on our land, I went down to Boundary Pool a little before 6pm to see if I would get as good a show as I did a few days ago at that hour. As I came down to my chair half way down the ridge above the lodge, I saw the ripples of a beaver on the west shore of the pond, just below me. An adult beaver swam away as I sat down. Just as it dove into the lodge, a kit hurried down the main channel and quickly dove into the lodge.
There were loud hums in the lodge. Perhaps announcing my presence because another adult beaver came right out, swam below me,
and lifted its nose out of the water.
It decided not to object to my being there, and the other beavers accepted me too. The beavers put on a good show. A kit swam up to and behind, and tried to climb onto the back of an adult beaver as it swam right below me. Then the adult dove and when the kit dove too, the adult seemed to purposely try to keep it under water. I saw the back of the adult bobbing up and down. It crossed my mind that it was trying to drown the kit, but after the adult swam away toward the middle of the pond, the kit surfaced by the shore, and didn’t swim right over to the adult. However, a few minutes later I saw an adult and a kit swimming together up the channel. Meanwhile another adult was browsing the almost dry grass along the west flat of the pond, just up from me.
It seemed to prefer the true grass, light and green, though it didn’t really gob it up. If I saw a duck doing this I would say it was eating insects in the grasses. Speaking of ducks, once again, I flushed two wood ducks when I came down to Boundary Pond. The beaver also browsed and I saw it nose over the frog bit but I don’t think it ate any. Meanwhile, as I tried to keep track of the beavers, an immature green heron landed in a tree trunk in front of me and over the pond.
The heron spruced and preened and did look down a good bit, but showed no real inclination to get down and stab something in the pond -- I suppose it could get some frogs. I was busy watching a beaver when it flew off. Walking above the west shore of the pond and pool, I noticed that the beavers cut and took away most of the crown of the elm they just cut.
And I got my camera down low to take a photo of their trunk gnawing on what remains of the poplar crown at the end of Last Pool.
After dinner I went down to check on the Deep Pond beavers. I snapped off small oak, maple and ash branches. I had to wait 15 minutes before a beaver glugged out of the lodge. Then after circling toward the high opposite shore, it Swam over to me. To my surprise it ate the ash and oak leaves and twigs without hesitation.
So it seems that while beavers like certain trees, they relish the twigs of any tree. It’s a pity that trees have not figured out a way to offer their twigs so that beavers wouldn’t have to cut trees down to get to them. The other little beaver didn’t appear. A heron flew in and perched high on a tree. I told the beaver I was leaving, stood up from my chair and walked away. The beaver didn’t even flinch.
August 19 we were away for a few days, south into heat and humidity, but it was the same here while we were gone. Much of the lush vegetation is getting a bit wilted. After pumping water for the gardens, I got a chance to walk around the Last Pool Boundary Pond. It is amazing how lucky the beavers were that the poplar crown fell right into the deep part of the pool. They are certainly taking advantage, stripping much of the bark off the trunks and they got up on the trunk and cut down one branch that had been sticking up. That branch fell into the trunk but they probably will be able to pull it down nearer the water.
Meanwhile they continue to cut saplings sprouting out of the moss islands in the pool. They are ignoring a clump of red maples and taking some choke cherries instead.
They also continue to cut prickly ash and other small trees above the pool. There maybe a new gnaw on one of the big poplars still standing, but no serious effort yet to cut any down. I walked down the east shore of the pool and saw how much it had retreated.
Of course that doesn’t necessarily limit the range of the beavers, as a trail of fresh beaver prints in the muck demonstrated.
Since the beavers created what I call the mid-dam, an accumulation of sticks that doesn’t really hold back any water, I speculated that this was a summer cache, and that when the ponds began drying out, they could start taking this accumulation of sticks down pond for stripping there. It seemed that there were fewer sticks in the dam. I’ll have to compare the photo below with some old photos, when I get the time.
The beavers have dredged the Last Pool into a long muddy channel, banked by levies.
Quite impressive and beautiful. The beavers may have cut a few saplings along the east shore of the Last Pool, but I don’t think they have cut anything along the east shore of Boundary Pool pond, nor revisited their old work. This is the shady side of the pond, and all the eatable grass and other vegetation is on the west shore. So other than the water in the pond getting lower, the east shore and dam look about the same save that you can see more of the dam and lodge. I climbed the west slope and took an updated portrait of the pond that shows the lower water.
The beavers had cut more of the elm they are in the process of cutting down. Since it might fall on the chair I sit in on the ridge, I gave it a few pushes and found it still stable.
I sat for about 10 minutes and all was quiet, as usual, in the late morning. I walked up the west shore and take a photo of the grassy area I saw the beaver browse the other night, real ephemeral stuff compared to the carpet of drying frog bit around it.
I didn’t see any trees cut along the ridge. They are also dredging the canal between Boundary Pond and the Last Pool dam. Last year this stretch dried out early in the summer.
The channel through the Last Pool mid-dam is getting rather low and I think its narrowness arises because the ground is much harder here and has more solid roots, though I haven’t really investigated that.
The pool itself is shrinking, but down to the essentials with that poplar crown gracing it.
I sat down at the Deep Pond dam and took a photo of my offering to the beaver -- ash, elm and oak branches, all small.
Then I sat in the shade and enjoyed the lessening humidity. A refreshing wind made the tops of the tall Joe Pye weed along the inlet creek bob like the weeds were on tiptoe to get a look at me.
A hummingbird roared into the patch of jewel weed next to me, and didn’t flee as I tried to sneak my camera out, not that I could get a good photo.
The hummingbird got very close and I almost captured it. I did capture the beauty of a jewelweed blossom.
The lower jewel weed plants had fruit, which I have never noticed before.
And narrowing my focus, I saw a well designed bug on one leaf -- nice detailing.
I sat until 5pm, but the beaver didn’t swim out like he did, on the dot, one evening. Walking back up the road, I noticed a wasp’s nest hanging from the end of a branch of a venerable maple. The nest seemed unrolled, but it was still in operation.
Back on the island I kayaked over to South Bay. Ottoleo saw some bryozoa in the north cove a few days ago. I saw one small ball latched high onto some milfoil in the south cove, saw a similar arrangement in the north cove and then paddling back up 20 yards beyond the old dock, I saw huge bryozoa on the bottom, about the size of two footballs, and a few little ones less than the size of a tennis ball. There is not as much algae puckering on the surface of the water as usual, just one small patch blown hard on the north shore. I saw a large turtle emerge encrusted with algae. Otherwise the coves are relatively clear, and the water lilies accessible by kayak and quite beautiful. I saw one blossom eaten. That was the only fresh sign of beaver activity, though I saw a few cut branches floating along the north shore. I have never made a study of how long the leaves of a cut sapling or branch stay green when floating in the water. No signs of otters, no map turtles. I saw a few osprey and a heron or two.
August 21 yesterday we had a downpour on the island in the middle of the day and I was busy at night so other than noting that the beaver did nibble the branches I left at the Deep Pond dam, I didn’t unlock any secrets of nature. Last night we had two brief but heavy showers and it threatened to rain most of the day. The rain seemed to stoke the appetites of the birds. I walked down the road at the land in the morning scattering robins and a thrasher. I ate a quick lunch back on the island, and hurried off to check the Lost Swamp Pond, curious to see if otters are still visiting. Going over Antler Trail I saw one deer. At the little causeway of the South Bay trail I saw that something made a substantial trail over it probably going from the cove of the bay up the almost dry creek. My guess is that a snapping turtle crossed over. From that trail I angled over the ridge to Otter Hole meadow. In the wooded ridge I saw several lobster mushrooms pushing up dead leaves and blooming high over some making an formidable microcosm on the forest floor.
However, I paid the price for keeping my head down to see mushrooms. A large owl flew off before I could get a good look at it. I went up on the rock south of the Second Swamp Pond dam and saw that the pond was still viable, which is to say, seeing a beaver, muskrat or otter in it would not surprise me.
I checked the fish bones under the osprey perch in a dead tree along the edge of the meadow south of the pond. Someone along the river said they saw a chipmunk in the clutches of an osprey, and both Leslie and I have seen clumps in claws that didn’t look like fish. So I was curious to see if there would be more bones other than the usual bullhead remains. I didn’t see any chipmunk carcass but I did see the jaws of a fish more fearsome than a bullhead, not sure what kind.
I angled up to the woods north of the Lost Swamp Pond and tried to sneak up on the ospreys that have been there during all my recent trips. An osprey on the south shore saw me first and announced my presence, and when I peaked down at the Upper Second Swamp Pond, an osprey flew off a perch there before I saw it. Not that the birds were necessarily trying to avoid me. I soon saw three perched on the large dead tree behind the Lost Swamp Pond dam, not that they stayed put long enough to get a good photo. The Upper Second Swamp Pond’s water was nippling with the caresses of small fish, but no signs that beavers are back. Coming up on the otter latrine beside the Lost Swamp Pond dam I could see that it had been raked over
And I saw that otters had done the raking. I see otter scats so rarely now, and they used to be a staple of my late summer and fall hikes, indulge me as I muse on the several scats in the latrine. The blob on the rock was two tone, black and brown, and shaped more than the typical otter scat
But lined with fish parts and juxtaposed so closely to classic strips of black otter scats, I had no doubt that an otter pooped on the rock. The other scats were mostly on moss and grass
Including one strip that was rather twisted more than the typical scat.
There was a large scat that appeared a bit older than the others, that probably had a good bit of the soft black fecal glue otters use to hold their scats together washed away, revealing all the tiny fish bones
As gratifying as seeing all that scat was the fresh smell of it all. The otters had to have been there in the last 24 hours and of course I sat to study the water and the lodges to see if they might still be around. No, though I saw a family of geese up pond.
I headed over to the mossy cove latrine to see if the otters scatted there, and it gives a better view of the whole pond. Walking along the north shore, I saw that muskrats were scatting on prominent points in the water.
I didn’t see any new scats in the mossy cove latrine. I remembered to take a closer look at the scats that appeared to have feathers in them. The rain and usual drying and crumbling of the scats revealed the feathers, though I would have liked more fish parts around them.
You’ll have to take my word for it, one otter ate a small bird. Meanwhile I saw something swim out underwater from the nearby bank lodge. I eased over to it and saw that some pond grasses and other plants had been put on top of it by the beaver, though I could still see holes in the back of the lodge.
As I contemplated that something else swam out of the lodge and left a trail of tiny bubbles. I used to think that muskrats made the small bubbles, but the Boundary Pond beavers at our land have shown me that the tiny bubbles come from the beaver clawing the bottom of the pond. In this case the smaller muskrat can swim out of the lodge into the shallow pond without touching bottom, but the beaver has to hug the bottom to stay below.
I waited for the tiny bubbles to resolve themselves into a big beaver, but the bubble trail continued all the way to the lodge in the middle of the pond. No animal stuck its head up. The lodge in the southeast reach of the pond seemed the best place for napping otters, assuming that during this heat wave they would appreciate the shade afforded by very tall grasses.
I watchied the lodge for a half hour and nothing stirred on it. Birds continued to entertain me. Flickers were calling from across the pond, growing apart is a part of growing up. But the king birds looked like they were fighting, not giving instructions on catching flying insects. The phoebes had the pond peaceably divided up. The osprey continued to watch me. Just when I got up to leave, I saw the beaver, head up on the other side of the lodge in the middle of the pond. It was so still I flattered myself by thinking it was looking at me. Usually its appearance would prompt me to stay, but it started drizzling, the wind picked up and darker clouds were moving in, so I went down to the Big Pond. The dam was as daunting as usual. The relatively dry weather we’ve had the last week did not harden the dam nor lower the water. I flushed several wood ducks, all but two could get air born. Would have made a good video but I was trying to keep from getting entangled in the tall cutting grass reaching around the cattails along the dam. I finally pulled myself together enough to get a photo of a cattail cut by a beaver or muskrat.
And at the edge of the spillover section of the dam, I could see where a beaver had worn down a small platform
Though I didn’t see evidence of anything eating anything there. There was a wide trail going over the dam and down into the cattails below, almost certainly made and used by beavers.
I hoped that fresh scats in the otter latrine at the south end of the dam would suggest that otters were using the trail too. I smelled otter scats when I got there, but I saw scats so brown that I will have to go again to see them when they are drier and washed out a bit more.
The scats are more the color of skunk poop, but probably much too wet. Is it possible that an otter ate a muskrat or something changing the color of the scat?
Certainly the placement of the scats, one by the water and the others a few yards along a trail in the grasses, and the scaping in the latrine, seemed like what an otter would do.
There was no holes dug, like skunks do. Crossing the little creek feeding the little pond below the Big Pond I saw some blooming turtlehead with a delicate violet blush
There were also good berries on the bank of the creek. Back at our land, I prepared for an evening of beaver watching by taking some elm, oak and ash boughs down to the Deep Pond dam. As I briefly sat, the hummingbird briefly buzzed over the jewel weeds and got a look at me. Then I went to the Last Pool and saw what I first thought was one of the beaver kits, but it was not nibbling on any poplar logs or trunk, it was eating the greens on the edge of the pond. Plus its mouth was going a mile a minute. Then it turned and I saw that it was a muskrat. I got closer but it disappeared. The beavers are in the process of cutting another elm near the Last Pool -- there second in a week or so.
I got down to my chair without seeing any beaver in the pond but when I sat I heard a splash down in the channel between the upper and lower parts of Boundary Pond which could have been made by a kit or a muskrat. Then I saw a beaver eating into the frog bit along the side of the channel, plus I thought I saw another beaver along a channel into the frog bit. I moved my chair back to get a better view of the upper end of the pond.
When one of the beavers finally swam down, it swam mostly under water and having moved my chair, I no longer had a good view of the lodge. I got a glimpse of the beaver and it appeared to be a kit. Its entering the lodge inspired some humming from within, but not much. The next animal to swim down the pond and into the lodge was a muskrat. Eventually an adult beaver swam down the channel and into the lodge, and then another muskrat. I saw muskrats in the pond during the spring and then they appeared to move out. Did they move back now that the kits are more capable, or because, as I suspect, one or two of the juveniles that had been in the lodge moved out? Unfortunately there was no more swimming up and down the channel that I could clearly see, and there was a bit of activity around the lodge which was not so easy to see. I didn’t move my chair because I didn’t want to interrupt one kit’s antics. It spun around and up and under the end of a log that had been pretty well stripped except for the end. It was trying to get a hang on either gnawing the bark off a log floating in the water or trying to get a jaw drip on the log so it could carry it to the dam. Hard to tell which and it simply didn’t have the weight to give it much leverage against such awkward buoyancy. I saw another kit circle the pond and it had it nose far out of the water and seemed skinny, probably the runt. An adult came out and did some dredging, always a necessary chore in a drying pond. Then a kit came out to observe. The adult nosed it a little then bent back to its task. The kit dove too but dredging the mucky humus and roots that make up this pond bottom must be hard for a kit. Finally just when I was packing up to go home to dinner, a beaver swam up the channel and then I saw an adult and a kit swim up the channel. The kit made a point of staying a half of its little body length in front of the adult and then when they got to the wider part of the upper pond the kit swam off down a channel into the vegetation and the adult nosed over to eat something on the shore of the main channel. The adult beavers seem much more relaxed with the kits tonight. Going along the ridge I saw an adult almost up to the Last Pool. Then I went down to the Last Pool, not seeing any ripples in it, to get a photo to show how low it has gotten.
Then as I walked away, I saw a beaver swim out from behind the poplar trunk and down the channel. I think it was adult but the oldest kit might be getting big. We went down to the Deep Pond after dinner, no beavers nor sign of them, an offering I left earlier was untouched. Going up the road the whip-poor-wills echoed each other surrounding the fields with sound. Early I heard what sounded like a barred owl teaching its fledgling the proper hooting call.
August 22 the boughs I left at the Deep Pond dam were untouched, so on a less humid day than today, I’ll have to walk around the pond to see if there are any signs of recent beaver activity. But the pond has always attracted transient beavers and a bobcat has the pond in its range and may well have killed a beaver last fall. I got out to the Boundary Pool before dinner. No muskrats today but the beavers were active. Once again I didn’t see a beaver in the canals or pools of water when I walked down to my chair on the ridge, but once seated an adult beaver swam down the main channel, and before going into the lodge took a look at me.
Then I saw another beaver, probably a kit, out along the edge of the main channel chewing the vegetation, probably frog bit. There was no whining or humming in the lodge. Then there was a heave of water and an adult beaver swam out, not the same, I think, as the one that looked at me earlier. This one seemed bigger and it swam over toward me, nose up, and even crouched below me and raised its nose up higher before swimming up the channel.
Of course, the beavers have been cutting elms on the ridge near where I am sitting. Indeed I saw another small one just cut a few yards to my left.
So maybe the beavers were looking up at me wishing me away because they wanted to get up on the ridge to cut elm. A few minutes after the adult beaver went up the channel, a kit swam down it, and dove into the lodge. It crossed my mind that the adult ordered the kit to go back into the lodge. If it did, the orders didn’t stick because a kit was soon out of the lodge, and swimming back up the channel. Soon enough another kit came out, and I think this was the smallest, the runt. It sped around the lodge, up the channel and back down, seemingly intent on proving how far and fast it could go without any clear intentions of doing anything else. Then I think the middle kit came out. It swam over and looked up at me
And then swam under the frog bit over to the channel and then back into the frog bit to browse for food. I say it is the middle of three kits, because while it was in the frog bit, that small kit appeared between the lodge and dam, and I think the biggest kit was still up pond. I got a good video of the kit in the frog bit. The plant makes a tangled carpet on the surface of the pond which the kit seemed to enjoy bulling its way through and trying to swim under it. Then it seemed able to walk a bit on it, buoyed up by the plant. It was definitely browsing because I saw it eat grass, and reach up on the stumps of cut trees to try to get a leaf sporting out of the stump. I can’t definitely say it ate the frog bit, for example, I didn’t see it eat the little white flower of the plant, but strings of thick leaves were going down its mouth and the frog bit all over fits that description. It did cut one twig and eat it. So while it was in the frog bit and the other kit near the dam, I headed up beside the pond along the ridge hoping to see a third kit. The frog bit beaver stayed put
But the one by dam began swimming up the channel and soon got ahead of me. However, I thought I caught a glimpse of a kit heading down the pond, but only a glimpse. As I approached the poplar crown in the Last Pool, I heard gnawing and I eased closer to the pool and just when I got a good angle so the camcorder could capture the beaver standing up and gnawing on the thick poplar trunk,
a deer snorted on the other side of the pool, alarming the beaver, which promptly sank down into the water and swam down the channel.
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