September 1 after looking for grapes, not many ripe, and sawing ash logs, I got to check the ponds. I went via the Teepee Pond. While the vegetation seems to be surviving whatever has been eating it, the water of the First Pond is a rich brown suggesting something is quite active in it.
Leslie thinks muskrats trim the pond vegetation, I think the Blanding’s turtles and painted turtles do it. I fancied I could see a trail made by large turtles coming from the Teepee Pond into the First Pond.
I don’t think muskrats would make such a squat regular trail. The Teepee Pond is muddy, but not as muddy as the First Pond.
Muskrats also usually trim vegetation along on the shore, and nothing has put the least crimp on the plants growing there. Indeed there is a little meadow in the strip of land between the two ponds where, ten years ago, we first pitched out tent and camped.
No flower really dominates though the goldenrod and boneset elbow out the Joe Pye weed here, and tower over the jewelweed. There was a plant nipped along the turtle trail between the ponds, but I think the prints suggest a deer did it.
While I sleuth about the pond, a kingfisher objected and noisily perched on a dead tree over the Teepee Pond.
Then flew off. There were no signs of muskrats in the mud around the valley pool, only raccoon prints. Not much water there. The meadow of the inner valley was at its peak and rather than bother all the busy flies and bees I went up on my shady trail on the ridge to the west. When I got down to the Last Pool I took a photo of where I saw the beaver eating underneath the poplar trunk
And then I looked down and noticed that the beavers, in making their trail up into the woods had worn the moss off two of the rotten logs that helped form the little vernal pools that were here long before the beavers came.
I suspect that these logs were left behind when someone cut pines for boards here years ago, but perhaps they fell naturally. I also took a photo of the channel where the beaver was dredging last night.
It looked plenty deep but I forgot to thrust a stick down into it. Then I got down to the spread of frogbit. First it certainly looked like something had cut a trail into it.
And a close up revealed no duck weed and many frogbit leaves nipped off.
Farther down I saw a trail which gave the impression of something eating its way through with the vines themselves chewed up a bit.
I came back out before dinner to check on the beavers, and I heard something gnawing the poplar trunk in the Last Pool. I didn’t get close enough to see it. I didn’t want to disturb it. As I walked down the ridge toward my chair above the lodge, I saw an adult beaver browsing through and then beyond the frogbit on the west side of the upper end of Boundary Pond. I thought it might cut a sapling like one did last night, but it kept its mind on the greens. Continuing down the pond I saw a kit also into the greens though less venturesome than the adult.
I’m sure the kits keep track of the adults. An adult swam down the channel and a kit hurried to swim next to it, then they separated again. Actually sitting above the lodge is probably not the best place to observe the goings on, but there are patches of frogbit near the lodge and it would be nice to get a close-up of the beavers eating it, and the beavers often look up at me. Then I saw something different, an adult came out of the lodge, floated a bit, perhaps to get a whiff of me and then climbed up on the dam. A tree blocked my view and as best as I could see it was browsing the vegetation on the dam which is to say that I didn’t hear it gnawing the bark of any of the logs on the dam. A kit came out and swam up to the adult a few times but didn’t climb up on the dam. Looking down in that direction I noticed that the beavers had all but cut an ironwood down,
and I forgot to mention that I didn’t have to worry about the elm they are cutting falling onto my chair. After a few more gnaws, it fell into some trees away from my chair.
A little later the kit that was out nosed along the west shore, like it was looking for a branch left behind by an adult. I don’t think the kits can cut saplings yet. Going home for my dinner I walked along the ridge and saw the two kits in the frogbit. So if I saw the third kit around the poplar crown in the Last Pool I would prove there were three. Instead I saw an adult beaver up on the trunk gnawing down into the bark. I got some video, but when I got the camera out it had climbed down on a nearby island of mud and swam out of the pool.
I went around and sat on the trunk, just above the cut, perhaps another beaver would venture up for a bite. No. But a red squirrel studied me. I saw that I was sitting next to the remains of a pine cone.
September 2 a cold night gave way to a comfortable sunny morning and then the warmth and haze was back. After doing garden and firewood chores I walked down to the Third Pond afraid that three days of dry weather would dry out the pond. Almost. There was a small pool left,
well visited by raccoons, dogs, birds, and even a muskrat.
A crayfish was just out of its hole next to the pool, perhaps ready to go feast on the dying tadpoles in the pool
But I scared it back into its hole
I couldn’t get close to the pool due to the mud
I resolved to come back in the late afternoon when all would be drier thanks to the bright sun. Then I sat in the shade and contemplated the doom of a swirl of whirligig beetles and enough tadpoles to make pulsing splashes through the pool. A frog jumped into the midst of it but didn’t seem to do anything, then it jumped out. The whirligig beetles made the littler drying puddles along the edge seem like a complex maze, then one would come along and find a way back to the main pool in an instant. Bright green grass is flourishing in the rest of the pond.
Strangely, the willow trees along the edge of the pond all have brown leaves.
Then I walked down to the Deep Pond primarily to check our apple trees. Not good. All but one had a blight and that one was being engulfed by the honeysuckle bushes I cut last year. I found a few small apples to nibble on the apple tree next to the pond. Nothing new in the pond, but the meadow above it is interesting. The elecampane, usually so thick there, is dying off and the Joe Pye weed rules.
In the late afternoon I went back to the Third Pond with a small net and an aquarium. The water in the pool was just about gone. The ground around it firm enough to get the net into it. As I waved the net over the pool the tadpoles wiggled en masse, still fearful of a passing hazard even though they were gill to gill, a mass of death. Once in the aquarium the ones I save, say 30, wiggled up to the surface of the water in the aquarium and then down, then up, then down, that compulsive dance of death the diminishing pond forced them to do. I was amazed at how small some of the tadpoles were. I only saw one dead one. The few whirligig beetles I got looked dead. I forget to take my camera to the pool, good thing, not a pretty sight. Before dinner I went down to the Last Pool and Boundary Pond. Nothing in the Last Pool this evening and I didn’t see signs of beaver until I walked down to my chair on the ridge above the lodge. As I did, a sharp shinned hawk flew up from the ground to a tree and then away, before I could get a camera out. There were at least two beavers out, but I thought they were familiar enough with me that I could walk down and take a seat. Maybe. One adult swam below me, giving me the eye, and I thought the noises I was making as I got my cameras ready was bugging it because it slapped its tail. But the beaver didn’t go into the lodge, it swam up the channel. And then I saw that it might not have been slapping at me. Four deer were walking up the east shore of the pond, two does and two fawns. One doe led and the other stayed 10 yards behind. My big study of the moment is how the beavers eat the frogbit. I hadn’t calculated that deer ate it, too. But there they were noses into the pond gobbing up the frogbit, vines and all.
I kept looking for the beavers to try to ward off the deer, but the beaver that was out swam down the channel underwater. Later I saw that two beavers were on the west shore, eating the frogbit there. And tonight I got a close-up of something eating the stuff. Two muskrats gobbed into the patch of frogbit right below me.
However it was easy to see that the muskrats were also enjoying the duck weed. A little later an adult beaver ate some frogbit closer to me than the other night and I could see it eat leaves and vines. The deer didn’t stay long. The guard deer finally saw me, stamped its feet slowly and then at an odd creak of my chair snorted and all the deer ran off into the woods. The deer reacted to every little noise I made, unlike the beavers who ignore most of it. One adult beaver went over to the area where the deer had been foraging, but not for frogbit, it gnawed on a stick. Predictably one of the kits heavy into the frog bit swam over and the adult ignored it, even after a hum. Later a kit, perhaps the same one, veered over to the adult as it was swimming up the channel, hummed once and then went back up the channel. The adult didn’t react. They seldom react to kits at this time of year. Once again I had a chance to prove three kits if I could see one up in the Last Pool as two munched below, As I approached the pool I startled an adult beaver who jumped off the trunk into the water, and a heron, perhaps after some of the many frogs in and around the pool. The beaver gave me a short look and then swam down the channel. Tonight I also saw one of the adults making a point to raise mud where ever it swam, a trick I’ve seem the Meander Pond beavers, famous dredgers, use. And a beaver cut the ironwood below where I sit, and it looked as if it just jumped onto the ground --
held up by neighboring trees.
September 3 I took the tadpoles I rescued up to the Teepee Pond and let them out in the shallow west end of the pond. Their first reaction was to keep wiggling up to the surface and then one by one they realized that they could survive by swimming level, and one by one they dispersed. There was only one dead tadpole in the lot, I noticed it last night and by morning it looked quite pale with death, like it was dissolving. I saw one tadpole rooted on the bottom and thought it dead but when I bumped a stick nearby it fled smartly. My camcorder has been having trouble lately and the head cleaning tape isn’t solving the static. It has gotten five years of steady use or is it six years, so perhaps it might be time to retire it. So I set off for Boundary Pool with my camera, a pen and a notebook -- of paper. I’ve tried taking note in situ before and found the particulars noted did not compensate for the nuances a video reveals, but I had never tried combining the notes with photos. So: there was nothing doing at the Last Pool or down the channel to Boundary Pond. When I got to my chair at 5:46 there were two beavers out, an adult browsing the vegetation on the dry west shore, and a kit in the middle of the frogbit munching away. The adult got back into the pond using a channel through the frogbit and floated in front of the lodge, looked up at me,
and then dove into the lodge. The kit stayed out munching away.
I heard but did not see a kingfisher. A muskrat swam down the middle of the channel and into the lodge. Not a bad first few minutes. At 5:49 the kit left the frogbit and swam around the lodge, perhaps that was a slightly delayed response to the adult leaving. Then a kit came right back out and back up to the patch of frogbit it had been in, and at 5:52 an adult was back out, looked like the same one that just went in, and it slowly swam up the channel through the upper part of the pond and the last I saw it was swimming up the channel to the Last Pool. I think that when the adult sees me in my chair, it knows it can go up to the Last Pool without me bothering it. The kit didn’t seem to notice the adult, and it moved up onto the drying mud, roughly where the adult had been browsing the frogbit. I heard the kingfisher again but didn’t see it. Don’t know if kingfishers ever eat frogs of which there are many in this pond. At 5:57 a second kit swam down the channel and into the lodge. At 6:10, the kit in the frogbit swam through a channel in the frogbit, back into the clear pond water and then into the lodge, using the east entrance, most of the time the beavers use the north entrance facing up pond. So I could account for three beavers, two kits and one adult. Then I got a demonstration of how many frogs there are around the pond. A grey squirrel hopped along a few yards of the shore below me and several frogs thought it prudent to jump out of the way. Then at 6:11 another muskrat appeared and dove into the east entrance to the lodge, the same that a beaver kit used a few minutes before. Then something swam out of the lodge underwater and an adult beaver didn’t surface until it was well up the channel just into the upper pool of the pond. So I had accounted for a second adult beaver. At 6:13 I heard two deer snorts and then one doe appeared and began gobbing up the frogbit along the west side of the upper pool of the pond. It certainly looked big next to the pond where the much smaller beavers loom so large for me.
I heard my first hum in the beaver lodge at 6:16, at a time when there was one kit outside of it, and two adults. I knew one kit was inside. Was it humming to itself or was there a third kit or adult in there. Back in late July I saw two kits and then three adults in the Last Pool channel, and since then I’ve deduced that there is a third adult and had a feeling that there was a third kit. Then to add to the confusion I saw an adult beaver over in the shady east end of the upper pool of the pond. It swam down the channel and into the lodge and I must say it looked like the first beaver I saw, so I best assume that it had simply come back down from the Last Pool. Now, was it responding to the hum of the kit inside the lodge? It got there at 6:19 and there were no hums when it entered. At 6:20 two fawns joined the doe browsing the frogbit.
No reaction from the beavers to the presence of the deer. I heard some hums from the lodge, from one beaver, probably a kit, at 6:23. Through out my observations there were gunshots to the south of us, aimed at geese now in season, neither the beavers, deer, nor I reacted at all. Then I was startled to see an adult beaver in the frogbit just below me off to my left. This was at 6:26, almost 15 minutes after the second adult left the lodge, suggesting how quietly and unobtrusively beavers move through the water and the frogbit. As tangled as it looks, beavers manage it well. Then something swam out of the lodge and I soon saw it was a kit which swam up the channel. I heard gnawing in the lodge where I knew there was at least one adult beaver. The kit moved swam through the frog bit right to the adult. Here is where I wished I had my camcorder working. The kit tried to get its nose up to the nose of the adult
and the adult moved off a couple of yards.
At 6:30 I saw some ripples around the lodge and I think it was a muskrat who soon went back into the lodge. Meanwhile the deer had left without making a noise. At 6:35 the kit in the frog bit left and went over to the east shore. At 6:36 an adult swam up the channel and a minute later the kit was back in the frog bit. This time it hummed as it approached the adult in the frogbit and they were briefly nose to nose and then the adult moved away
and in a minute dove into the channel through the frog bit, brought up a waterlogged stick and swam back into the lodge, at 6:39, not sure if it took the stick. Then the second kit came down the channel and into the frog bit just off the channel. The kit nearer to me sneezed and then actually jumped into the water of the channel through the frog bit and then swam up another channel and started munching the frog bit. No idea what made it sneeze and leap -- a bee? Frog? At 6:43 an adult swam up the channel. I recalled that other times I took notes like this, I was always frustrated in making a simple count of the number of beavers. Now I knew there were two adults and two kits out. I heard a raven call. Ravens are mind readers but I won’t accuse it of sense my confusion because they usually laugh loud and long when they do that. I left my chair at 6:47 and before I could look for beavers, I saw that a beaver had almost cut down a small ironwood a few yards up the ridge behind my chair.
Then as I headed up the pond, I had some luck I saw an adult swim over into the shady east shore of the upper part of the pond. Then I had some bad luck. I lost track of the kit that was eating frogbit along the channel.
So as I headed to the Last Pool I wasn’t sure what I’d see, nor what it might mean. I thought there was one adult in the lodge, one out, and two kits out. So if I saw another adult up at the Last Pool, I would prove there were three in the family. As I got close I heard gnawing from the poplar trunk hanging over the pool, something I thought adults were only big enough to do, and the beaver I saw looked big, but then it didn’t plunge into the bright muddy water but eased down using a mossy island as a stepping stone. It didn’t swim away directly as the adults do when I disturb them here.
It even dredged a bit, as it moved up a channel closer to me.
Then it went back down a few feet and brought up a stick, a little stick, and nibbled it.
I could see its full body floating in the water. It was a kit, a big kit. I think the kits have grown well this summer. Then it hunched up, and I didn’t need a camcorder as I snapped away with my camera. Finally it noticed me and turned and looked, unafraid.
I walked away. Sure that there are two adults and two kits in this family. As I walked up the meadow, my usual path back home, I saw a white caterpillar with a yellow bottom.
And then I saw white caterpillars all over.
September 4 A few days ago the blue jays formed a noisy flock around our oak. They were at it again today. Goldfinches seem most at home, feeding in the meadows. We heard verio song the other day and then saw noisy groups of what looked like verios. No sweetness in the yawpy call for food. I think the fledges are still begging to be fed the bugs their parents catch. Another sunny hot day, and dry. All the elecampane flowers are brown. I thought one of the little elm boughs I left at the Deep Pond dam for the beaver several days ago had been taken and maybe stripped, so I put an aspen branch down at the dam to see if the beaver was indeed back. I got out to the Boundary Pond a little late. On the way four wood ducks flew off the upper pool of the pond leaving a beaver kit in the channel just below stripping the bark off a little stick. As I walked down to my chair, I saw a fawn on the ridge that hopped away as I approached. Suddenly frogbit is not so popular. The chilly nights might be aging it or putting the minds of deer and beavers on more solid fare. I was down in my seat at 6:15, again without camcorder, though tonight I would miss it. At 6:20 I saw a kit beside the lodge and then it swam around the lodge and swam up the channel. It soon veered off to the west down a channel through the frog bit. Another kit was at the end of the channel, probably the first one I saw had relocated. The two kits had a shoving match,
quite active as beaver shoving matches go with each seeming to put its all into it so that both rose up and then flopped down. Since there was no hissing or angry humming or any humming for that matter, I assume it was all good natured. Then there was a chase
back to and a few yards down the channel, then they both, side by side, went into the frogbit and began munching, slowly drifting apart.
One began to eat a clump of high green grass, and then more like a muskrat than a beaver, at 6:29, brought a clump of grass into the lodge.
I lost track of the other kit but I think it was the one I saw swim around the lodge and then up the channel. One kit, at least, does this frequently. Could it be an early expression of its masculinity, since male beavers have a reputation for inspecting the pond. At 6:31 an adult beaver came down the channel from the Last Pool tugging a large branch. At 6:36 it dove with the branch into the lodge, I could see that it was from an elm tree, which seems to be their favorite tree at the moment. There was a hum from the lodge before the elm arrived, then a minute of silence and then a good bit of humming and gnaws. Meanwhile I noticed a kit back in the frogbit, and heard deer snorts from behind me up on the ridge. I began hearing two different hums in the lodge, one quite high and plaintive. Was that from the third kit? At 6:43 a beaver came out of the west entrance to the lodge with some of the elm branch. I assumed it was the same beaver that had brought the elm into the lodge. Then I saw a kit swimming around and then up to the other beaver, kind of pawing over the elm leaves and then settling down and starting to eat them.
I don’t recollect seeing anything like this before. Indeed I first assumed the adult was trying to get away from the pestering kits inside the lodge. Then it struck me that the beaver that brought the elm seemed none too big and I wondered if this was the first born kit trying to get the third born kit eating out in the pond? I began developing a touching but unverifiable story. Time was running out on the runt of the litter and the most capable kit brought grass stalks in for it and then inspired it to come out in the pond, perhaps conspired with the adult inside the lodge who might have given the runt a push out, and begin eating like a beaver must to survive. And perhaps this was a precocious expression of the maternal instincts of the kit. That said, I’ve always seen kits doting on their parents, and being pushy with other kits, as I saw a few minutes ago. But all those cautions hold as well for yearlings who often vie with kits for their parents’ affection. Well, perhaps I was thinking and feeling too much as I looked down at two small beavers simply eating. Meanwhile another adult beaver swam into the lodge at 6:47, I’m not sure from where it came -- this was my night to try to understand kits. The runt left the elm and dove back into the lodge at 6:56; the other kit dove and disappeared a minute later, and then a minute after that a kit was out and soon heading up the channel. Soon I saw the two kits, or so they looked, heading up the channel. The larger continued up toward the Last Pool and the smaller veered over into the frogbit. Then at 7:01 that smaller one swam back into the up the channel. Meanwhile there was humming and gnawing in the lodge, perhaps confirming that a third kit is in there, though now the hums were not so plaintive. Then at 7:08 something popped out in the water north of the lodge, swam toward me with a bucking motion and then dove back into the lodge. Since the muskrats that have been around had always seemed cooler than that, I thought that might have been the runt kit feeling its oats, so to speak. Then more confusion at 7:12 a muskrat popped out in the water east of the lodge and then swam quickly up the channel. And then I saw another branch being brought down the channel from the Last Pond. An adult beaver tugged it, was this the third adult or had one of the two in the lodge gotten out without my noticing? Then I saw another branch being tugged down and as it passed the upper pool a muskrat went berzirk as muskrats do making a furious splashing with its tail -- full moon tonight, by the way. By all my calculations the beaver bringing down the second branch has to be the biggest kit and in the gloaming it looked that way to me. I couldn’t stay any longer to see if the runt was prodded out again to eat leaves, soon too dark to see that anyway. I walked home to dinner by walking down along the west shore of the pond, the better to see the muskrat and one kit I thought should be down there. I didn’t see the former, but muskrats are hard to spot unless they make a ruckus. I did see a kit, definitely a kit, as it plopped off the levy lining the channel up to the Last Pond and then swam down the channel.
As I walked up the west shore, I didn’t see any fresh work, but I thought I saw some things just gnawed and cut on the east shore. I’ll have to check that tomorrow. On a evening like this, it would be good to have a video record to go over, but then, if my eyes had been stuck in a camcorder, I might not have seen all that I did. Once in the meadow, the leaves of some trees seemed chalky -- more of those white caterpillars.
September 5 we had a brief shower in the very early morning and then it was cloudy until noon. I headed down to the Last Pool and Boundary Pond at around 2:30. I wanted to see the elm the beavers might have cut last night. Of course I came to the Last Pool first and was impressed by how much the beavers had gnawed off the trunk
and I saw where a kit could climb up on a mound of dirt and easily get its teeth on the trunk.
Toward the end of the pool the muddy water was only a few inches deep. I thought of being enterprising and walking out on the trunk and measuring the depth of the water, but I already know that it is at a depth convenient for a kit, and the crucial depth will be in the winter, when the water freezes. Will the beavers have enough water under the ice to swim up and wiggle out from under and go cut down saplings and trees? I checked the other half gnawed poplars and there seemed to be no effort to get back to work on them and cut them down. They started gnawing the poplars about a year ago. The one they first gnawed the most is not the one they finally cut down. I walked down the shady east shore looking for a cut elm and I didn’t see any. I saw a small birch off the upper pool of Boundary Pond that might have been girdled recently, the gnawing was very low suggesting a kit might have done it.
And next to the three hemlocks they began cutting in the spring, and two were cut down, they girdled a smaller hemlock nearby. Again it seemed like low work that a kit might do.
I didn’t see any other wood work. Meanwhile I heard some gnawing from the lodge. I sat a bit to see if a beaver might come out, but not for long. I decided I’d be more comfortable up in my chair. As I walked over the channel up to the Last Pool, I stuck a stick in. About ten feet from the breached Last Pool dam the water was at least a foot deep,
and at the breach, the water was at least 15 inches deep.
Not bad for the first week of September during a dry spell. I’m pretty sure this part of the channel was dry by this time last year. Once I sat in my chair the gnawing stopped, but then a small muskrat popped out of the lodge and entertained me. It ate the duck weed between the frogbit, right below me.
Then I heard some hums from the lodge and then there was a glug like something came out of the lodge. I saw bubbles but no beaver. Then there was another glug, and something swam underwater up the channel. When it surfaced I saw a beaver
and soon another beaver right behind. They swam quickly up the channel to the Last Pool. A few weeks ago while sitting in the shade along the east shore of the upper pool of Boundary Pond, I interrupted two beavers as they swam up the channel. I thought then, based on their size, that it was a yearling and a kit. From a great distance it looked like the same pair. I waited about 10 minutes to see if anything else would come out of the lodge, and a muskrat did, and swam quickly up the channel and then off to the greens on the west shore. I walked up the west shore to see if the beavers would lead me to what they’ve been cutting. When I got to the curve in the channel where it comes in the upper pool of Boundary Pond, I saw a beaver pulling a sapling down the channel. I retreated hoping to get a photo clear of trees, and the beaver didn’t appear farther down the channel. I think it heard me and ducked. At least I saw a beaver looking up at me. Looked small, so maybe the yearling was just bringing a sapling down to the upper pool for them both to eat. I took a photo of the bend in the channel which seems to be a favorite place for kits.
I continued up to the poplar crown at the end of the Last Pool. No beavers there but I could see how low the water was getting, what had been a pool was now a V of dredged channels.
Then I walked down to the Deep Pond hoping that a beaver had signified its return by eating the aspen bough I left last night. No. No signs of beavers. I sat in the chair and enjoyed the damsel flies and a spider that seemed to be hiding under the blooming grass, which did attract at least one tiny flying bug that the spider strained to reach. Looked to me like a web would be a better idea and perhaps the spider thought so too as it left the pinnacle and crawled down the stalk of the grass. I got back to my chair above Boundary Pond at 5:45. I first thought nothing was stirring and then I did a double take and saw a beaver right beside the lodge, and it swam over to sniff me. It didn’t take alarm and even nosed over to the west shore right below me, then it swam behind the dam, then up the east shore and by 5:49 it was swimming up the channel. It was an adult beaver, and when it was half way up the channel, a kit coming down the channel swam right by it, with no evidence of communication between them. Maybe the kit glanced over but it was swimming faster that the adult, as they always do. The kit continued down to the dam and went around the lodge clockwise. Usually the kits seem to go in a counter clockwise direction -- not that I can fathom what difference that would make. It swam below me and then a bit up the channel and then over into the frogbit, first along the channel and then moved into the middle of the patch. At 6:03 I heard a gray tree frog. The kit kept at the frogbit. Then at 6:13 an adult beaver came down the channel pulling a maple sapling and took it into the lodge.
The hums and gnaws started in the lodge about 30 seconds after the sapling was delivered. Then at 6:17 an adult beaver came out of the lodge and up the channel. Two minutes later a muskrat came down the channel and into the lodge. And then a beaver kit came down the channel carrying a little sprig of something and then into the lodge. At 6:29 something came out of the lodge and swam to the east end of the dam which is well shaded and blocked from my view by trees down in the pond. Some beavers come out and swim over to look at me; others come out and swim directly away from me, as if they know that by taking that route it is harder for me to see them. Or am I getting paranoid? But this time I didn't see anything swim up along the east shore, which is hard for me to see. Then I heard a splash from up the channel. I thought that was a muskrat, but when it swam into view I saw it was a beaver kit, and instead of diving into the lodge, it looked up at me and then swam up the channel. It crossed my mind that the kit might have swum underwater up the channel from the dam, surfaced, smelled me, and came back to see me. That would prove a third kit. But as I walked along the ridge going back for dinner, I saw an adult ease into the channel coming from the east shore. I had seen an adult take that route before. So I knew two kits and two adults were out, would I see more? I did see a kit that went over the levy where the channel bends into the upper pool of Boundary Pond. Then just before I got to the upper pool of the Last Pool, where the poplar crown is, an adult clip clopped from about 5 yards in on the east shore, dove into the channel and swam down it. Then I saw a kit leaving the crown heading down channel too. I can always account for two kits and two adults, but I still stubbornly believe that there is a third kit and a yearling in the family.
September 6 I got a chance to kayak over to South Bay in the early afternoon, with and then into a northeast wind which is strange to get on a sunny day in the late summer. That wind may have kept the usual complement of gulls, cormorants and herons elsewhere. I saw a few and one osprey. There was enough wind to riley the water in the bay, but the water level has dropped at least a foot in the last two weeks. So I thought I was getting a good sense of the bottom of the bay. Early in the summer I saw a bryozoa near the willow latrine, but not today, rather shallow there and I saw no new beaver work. I was struck that there were about a dozen blooming water lilies in front of the willow. I expected to see bryozoa in the north cove but as I paddled down the cove didn’t see any. We’ve had a series of sunny days and really for the first time this summer the algae has rather bloomed, green draping many of the underwater plants forming gentle heaves of green in the process. Still a good deal of the cove was clear of vegetation and some grasses seemed to shake off the algae. I saw quite a few fish fry, more than usual at the end of the summer, but no bryozoa. So I slowed down, weaved a bit in my paddling and finally found some sorry specimens, usually just balls of jelly without the colonial suckers. I reasoned that in deeper water I might see some healthier specimens. I saw one, and one rotten almost floating ball of jelly. I assume the series of sunny days changed the conditions that had caused the bryozoas to grow.
Back on our land, before dinner, I headed out to check the Boundary Pond beavers. On my way I some fawns and a doe browsing the frogbit and other vegetation on the east shore of the upper part of Boundary Pool
I got to my chair at 5:52 without seeing any beavers. Then at 5:54 something left the lodge and swam toward the dam. I also heard gnawing inside it. Then a kit swam over to give me a sniff.
It swam to the west side of the lodge and dove, but not into it. It swam under water beside the lodge and then surfaced along the north side of the lodge. I noticed a beaver kit making this curious manouevre last night too. Then the kit swam up the channel, through the upper pool and into the channel to the Last Pool. At 6:02 I saw a beaver splash out of the frogbit along the west shore of the upper Boundary pond pool, and swim into the channel. When I got a better look at it I could see it was a kit, and then I saw a large doe on the east shore of the upper pool. My guess is that the kit reacted to the doe’s approach. The kit swam down the channel, but not into the lodge, it came over to look at me,
then it swam right back up the channel, as if to suggest that if I wasn’t frightened than that kit wouldn’t be either. However, it did dive, I think, as it neared the doe. Then an adult came out of the lodge and also swam up the channel and either lurked in the vegetation near the deer or dove and swam up the channel so neither I nor the doe could see it. At 6:10 I saw the kit dive near the doe, looking like it was bringing something down the channel, which turned out to be a rather long log, which it easily got into the log,
which makes me think that it wasn’t a kit after all! There were hums and gnaws in the lodge, and why not? At 6:13 a kit came out of the lodge, up the channel and then into the frogbit along the channel.
Fawns joined the doe in their browsing farther up the pond, and ones coat was turning brown.
Then at 6:16 a kit that looked like the runt dove into the lodge. I think it likes to come out, sniff the air, and dive right back into safety. More hums inside. Then to my delight a large owl landed on a branch about at my eyelevel, right over the lodge. A kit happened to be below (that diving runt?) and it splash dived in an instant. The owl looked white with new feathers, had a round face, but I assume it was the barred owl that lives around here, not a more exotic owl. I dare not open my camera, sure that the noise would scare it away. Meanwhile the kit in the frogbit didn’t seem to notice the owl, until the owl flew up the pond. The kit jumped to the channel and dove for safety. Must say, the owl didn’t seem the least interested in the kits. And the kit that dove in the channel swam up the channel not down to the safety of the lodge. Then I looked down and saw a kit right below me to my right, then an adult appeared and they swam together below me, the adult leading the way but not really trying to get away from the kit. They swam up the channel together, adult leading the way, then getting way a head. Meanwhile I heard hums in the lodge, and I thought I heard a high kit hum and cocked my ear for proof that there was a third kit, but I didn’t hear it. At 6:28 a very little muskrat appeared in the frogbit below me. At 6:30 an adult beaver came down the channel and the muskrat dove in fright. After that adult went into the lodge I heard insistent low hums and gnaws. So who was it humming to? At 6:40 a kit came down the channel, around the lodge on the east side, and when it dove into the south entrance I heard loud hums immediately. When the beavers come in the north entrance, there are no hums for almost a minute, so I think the living chamber in the lodge is in the south end toward the dam. A kit was back out at 6:43; still gnawing inside the lodge. At 6:44 an adult was out then dove back in then out again, went up the east shore. There were still gnaws in the lodge. So there must be a third kit or adult, or both. I saw a kit in the frog bit, the adult went up the channel. Then at 6:50, a kit swam down the channel, past the lodge, to the dam, and then back up the channel. The kits swim faster than the adults, suggesting that this darting about is purposeful, and yet, as far as I can see the kit does nothing, gains nothing. Perhaps it just has the urge to swim and in this pond narrowing into one channel that means swimming up and back. This was a good night for kits making splashing dives in fright, at 6:57 I think geese flying high and noisily over the pond caused the panic. Then at 7:01 I saw a kit in front of the lodge and it dove into the lodge carrying a leaf. That was probably the kit in the frogbit. Then I saw an adult beaver swim up the channel. At 7:07 a muskrat swam out of the lodge. I decided to walk up the pond, since I thought there were no adult beavers in the lodge, so I if walked up and saw three...As I walked up along the shore, I turned and took a photo of the lodge, anticipating rightly that it would be a better photo than all those I’ve taken with the sun shining on the lodge.
Then I looked for beaver and once again did not see all that I thought might be in the upper reaches of the pond, or did I? I saw an adult swim into the upper pool of the Boundary Pond, turn and look back at me. A kit dove quickly and went down the channel under water, and then as I continued up looking back all the time I saw a beaver looking at me at the end of the channel. So two beavers were looking at me. If the kit that I saw flee in a panic continued all the way down to the lodge then an adult was looking at me. Finally, I saw one more adult swim down the channel between the Last Pool and Boundary Pond.
I might conceive of this long canal through three diminishing pools of water as a simple system, but it certainly affords five or six beavers plenty of places to hide or lurk.
September 7 we walked down the road on a hot sunny morning looking for grapes, and found half a bucket full. We also saw the ripened jack-in-the-pulpit seeds
It was nice having this plant just off the Deep Pond. Let’s hope these luscious seeds leads to more plants next year. We also saw some caterpillars new to us feasting on the leaves of a hickory by the road.
Today, with renters leaving our house on the island, we’ll spend more time there, giving me a chance to check up on the beavers there, and the elusive otter or otters. But first I took a bit of a farewell tour (for 3 days) of the Last Pool and Boundary Pond. For sure, the water is getting low there. The main channel of the Last Pool is no longer a beautiful stroke of muddy water. An old trunk lying across its bottom can be seen.
But it is clear the beavers are coming up there. There is a trail of prints going off the higher narrow part of the channel. Perhaps this is where they are getting the saplings they are bringing down to the lodge
Though when I looked around, I only saw one fresh cut on a sapling trunk. The other night I saw an adult beaver trotting along that trail back into the pond. Of course, maybe the narrow upper channel is getting too narrow for adult beavers.
Which seems ridiculous to say, beavers can walk over the land, but isn’t there a pile of sticks on the mid-dam? The adults swim so leisurely down these channels that I begin to doubt that they make any effort to get around obstacles! I walked down the east shore of Boundary Pond and didn’t see any new gnawing on the birch and hemlock that they’ve started to gnaw. I did see another small hemlock that had a bit of exposed root gnawed,
But certainly not much. Before leaving I took a photo of the poplar trunk.
Popular as poplar or aspen is with beavers, I don’t recollect a poplar debarked so thoroughly and the beavers are still working on it.
Back on the island, mission number one was to see how the Meander Pond beavers are faring. I headed off a little after 5pm, increasing my odds of actually seeing the beavers in the pond. I rode a bike over to the entrance to the park, and then hiked on the South Bay trail. Near the little causeway I saw small orange and black caterpillars feeding so ravenously that the mass of them seemed to pulse.
I went up the East Trail and then cut over through the woods to the south side of Meander Pond. I stumbled upon a cache of acorns dug out of the ground and eaten, don‘t know when or by whom.
The work the beavers had done south of Meander pond looked about the same as it did when I was last here over a week ago. There was no evidence at all that a beaver had nipped anything off the several trees that the beavers had cut down. I didn’t want to go straight away to the channel where I knew they had been dredging. I didn‘t want to scare the beavers if they happened to be out. I headed over to the dam. None of the channels I passed seemed to have been used. The water behind the dam was not muddy, but not covered with vegetation.
I didn’t see any evidence that beavers had gone over the dam to get alders and cattails as they had been doing. The wallow below the dam was almost dry and no beaver tracks through it.
I sat up on a rock on the north slope, where I had had such a good view of the beavers browsing plants on the slope and cutting ironwoods, as well as swimming in the channels of the pond, which, by the way, still looked viable.
I sat for about 10 minutes and then decided that it made no sense to wait for beavers to appear when I didn’t have any evidence that they were still active in the pond. I’ve known beavers to leave ponds in early September. They need more than water to survive, and there were not that many trees about, save down in the woods to the south which I just saw they had not visited for over a week. I went up the north shore to where I could get a good view of the lodge. The water around it was green with scum or duckweed, no freshly stripped logs floating there. The channels radiating from it seemed choked with plants, if not almost dry. But the main channel, though greened, still seemed to have a border, not necessarily from dredging, but from more solid impediments being pushed aside as beavers swam up and down the channel.
I continued around the pond and didn’t see any evidence that any beavers had gone up to Thicket Pond. Despite the shade from the buttonbushes, the channels there, that I could see, looked dry.
To get to the channel where I last saw muddy water and dredging, I had to go by the trees cut on the south side of the pond. Coming at it from a different angle, I saw what looked like rather recent gnawing on another maple.
It’s possible that last week I missed seeing it given my usual path around the pond. Then when I got to the central channel which runs circuitously from the lodge to a knoll that forces the pond to meander, I saw that the beavers are still active. The channel is muddy
And there is a clearing on the knoll at the end of the channel,
and the remaining clump of alders had been cut.
I saw trails over the knoll that made short cuts to other parts of the gangling pond, especially the tree work in the south woods. So these beavers are still geniuses. Hopefully I can get out and see them soon, shouldn’t be hard if our little drought continues. All the ponds are running out of water.
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