September 9 I headed off to check the Lost Swamp and Big Ponds a little after 5pm, and only when I was well on my way did I realize I might have seen more if I had eaten dinner early and gotten out to the ponds late. Watching the Boundary Pond beavers has gotten me into the habit of seeing beavers early in the evening, if not in the late afternoon. But over the many years I’ve watched beavers in the state park ponds, beavers usually come out late. I walked up on the rock overlooking the Second Swamp Pond dam. There was still water in the pond but the beautiful yellow bur marigold was encroaching on the pond, a sure sign of low water,
Around here flourishing bur marigold is often one of the first signs of a meadow forming where a pond had been. The Upper Second Swamp pond which was only formed in all its glory about five years ago seems to have shrunk away with less ado
The Second Swamp Pond has been around, off and on, for the last 30 years or so. When I walked up to the Lost Swamp Pond, I saw blue water, thanks to a brisk northeast wind, a blue sky, and an almost full pond. Only one osprey about today. I checked the otter latrine by the dam and saw the crayfish shell bits where a large otter scat had been.
We have not had much rain for 10 days so this scat was rinsed of black fecal matter and bleached a while ago. I did see some scats still blackened
But nothing fresh. I sat on the slope nearby to see if anything was stirring. One duck floated into view and then disappeared. Walking around the pond, I saw bullhead bones under an osprey perch in a dead tree.
This is not far from what was once the north slope otter latrine. Ten years ago if I had seen these bones I would have credited the otters for leaving such left overs. There were fewer osprey around then. The western end of the pond was whitened a bit with goose down, blown by the east wind
While I couldn’t be sure if the black scats at the latrine near the dam were recent, I knew I had never seen the scats now on the top of the granite boulder above the mossy cove latrine on the southwest shore of the pond. There were three squirts of scat,
All laced with crayfish parts
And down where moss had flourished -- I first called it the mossy cove latrine 10 years ago when otters started using it -- there was a nice scent mound with a little black scat below it, and I thought with the shadow of a tree cutting a straight line below the tufted grass, the mound might be more apparent, well,
Probably not. I simply do not know why otters keep visiting this spot which is not a likely pathway to the pond, nor that prominent a spot -- there are many other rocks as high -- and the nearby bank lodge, built after otters first started using the latrine, is not that comfortable a den. For example, I’ve never seen otters napping on it as I’ve seen them nap on all the other lodges. But even now with most of the moss long scratched away, it still looks like a comfortable spot.
I walked very close to the bank lodge, but a beaver did not stir as sometimes happens. There were fresh clipping along the front of the lodge, that looked like alders
And there is a tuft of something on top of the lodge in the middle of the pond
So I suspect a beaver or two are still using both lodges. The water is deeper in this end of the pond. Looking up to the southeast reach of the pond, I saw a deer grazing. Although the photo hardly shows it, a molting heron was rooted to the apron of the big lodge over there
Probably didn’t want to be seen by all the eyes down in South Bay while it lost its feathers. I waited another twenty minutes but neither a beaver nor a muskrat appeared. I headed to the Big Pond which seemed relatively full, though it had more vegetation breaking the surface of the pond than the Lost Swamp Pond. I kept studying the new lodge as I crossed the dam, and eventually spied a black dot in the vegetation some 50 yards out from the lodge. It was a beaver feasting on the vegetation
Then closer to the dam, I saw muskrat eating not far from three wood ducks. I found it easier to walk along the dam, and deer had made a trail below it through the cattails and cut grass. I prefer walking close to the water because this has been best year for frogs in some time.
However, I should wade into the grasses below the dam. I think beavers are still getting down there, judging from the width of the trails into the vegetation, especially just below the dam.
The beavers I think are still cutting the grasses behind the dam almost down to water level. This has been a good year for steeplebushes and in the marsh behind the dam, I saw one so heavy that it was leaning down.
I didn’t see any sure signs that otters visited their latrine at the south end of the dam. On my way home along the wooded ridge, I saw a rather extensive dust bath spa for grouse
Looked like it had about five stalls.
September 10 I took a break from painting our house on the island and paddled over to South Bay. My digital camera has been misbehaving a bit (it‘s had over 6 years of constant use), so since I will probably have to get a new one soon I took it with me in the kayak, risking getting it wet. I found that one gets a very good angle for photos from a kayak. I snapped away at the water celery and water smartweed
And even thought the dying water lily pads worthy of a photo
And the lilies themselves were stunning
Though it was just too bright a day to get a good photo of a group of them. Not much has been happening at the willow lodge latrine, but I took a photo to show how secluded the area behind the lodge is, suggesting why beavers and otters use it.
Meanwhile the geese entertained me. Despite its being hunting season for them they act as though it is safe in South Bay. Even though the goslings are almost full grown, you can identify family groups that often are much like that once ideal human family size -- two adults and three kids. There was a large gaggle of geese at the end of the south cove and when the geese flew out from there in small groups, I confess I no longer recognized the Arnebecks circa 1960.
As I paddled out of the cove and rounded a shallow bay there was a long line of geese preening themselves. I am always entranced when I paddle by and they ignore me. I feel like I am privy to a living Dutch Renaissance painting. Birds seem to have innate sense of how to pose.
Then around the point I took a photo of the yellow orange lichen on the granite outcrop with the yellow goldenrod above.
While I always have an eye looking below the water surface for bryozoa, going down the north cove I really bent to the task because that is where I saw them before. Then when I put the left end of my paddle into the water, I heard a creak. Kayak paddles don’t creak, but it happened again, and I realized the noise was coming from the land like something was adding sound effects to my efforts. Then I heard a creak without my paddling and realized it was a croak and soon saw the heron up in a pine tree on the point.
I saw some huge bryozoa and they were all mostly jelly, the colonial organisms usually checkering the outside were gone.
I recollect this usually happening later in the fall, but I’ll have to check my old notes. Some painted turtles were on the usual sun drenched logs, and I saw a small painted turtle quite comfortable on a lily pad,
Until I got too close. Lily pads can be a world in themselves. The aphids and bees seem to done but I saw some strange looking jelly on some pads and two were smeared with mud.
Not sure how that got there. Most summers the end of the coves get choked with algae, but not today. However, there’s been a strong east wind today and as I paddled out of the cove I saw blobs of algae spread out on the surface of the water.
However, when the days were hotter I had seen the under water algae beginning to drape the underwater vegetation. Not much of that toward the end of the cove but there were areas of that out in deeper water.
Saw a few osprey, but not nearly as many as a month ago.
I got back to the land in the late afternoon and after watering the garden got out to check on the Boundary Pond beavers at 7pm. Didn’t take the camera, it was getting that dark in the woods. Despite the continuing drought the Last Pool still has enough water for a kit to continue gnawing on the poplar trunk. It saw me but didn’t panic. I didn’t see any beavers in the channels down to Boundary Pond. Then I saw another kit in the frogbit to the west of the channel from the upper to lower pools of the pond. Then I saw an adult around the lodge, like it was waiting for me to show up. I sat in my chair and it continued to ponder me and then slowly swam up the channel, eventually heading up the channel to the Last Pool. Then I looked down just to my left and I saw another kit, the smallest, the runt, if there are indeed three kits, nibbling around the frogbit. I say “around” because if it was eating the leaves, given how fast it was nibbling, I should have seen a lot less frogbit, and I didn’t. So it may be eating the duckweed left high and dry in the frogbit leaves. I’ll have to take another close look at the frogbit. So I thought I had proved that there were three kits, one at the Last Pool, one in the frogbit near the channel and one just below me. But crane my neck, and even stand up, and I couldn’t see the kit in the frogbit by the channel. While I was watching the adult had it come closer to me. I didn’t hear any humming or gnawing in the lodge which raised the question: would the runt who seemed so incapable just a few days ago be left so alone, and with an adult knowing I was around? On the other hand no beavers brought down food to the lodge suggesting that the runt was recognized as capable. It no longer had to be fed. If it was the runt…. Meanwhile an adult came back down to the upper pool of Boundary Pond and began gnawing on a log toward the east shore. I also thought I heard gnawing up on the west shore, which would account for two adults. Then I finally saw the kit in the frogbit near the channel. It moved so I could see it. The runt below me finished its dining and swam directly back into the lodge -- no humming when it got into the lodge. I was losing light so I headed up the pond to try another census. The trouble is, as the water level in the channels get lower more mounds of mud and waterlogged logs are exposed and both, in the dark, can look like beavers. I caused a splash, which could have been from the wood ducks who come to the pond. Anyway, I think I saw two adults, and then when I got to the Last Pool, the kit was still there. Once again it swam a little closer to me and turned to face me as I walked away. What about the third adult, the yearling? Since I could only see the west side of the pond, there was plenty of room for it. I noticed some more tree cutting on the east shore and above the pond, but as it gets dark, old cuts can suddenly glow and look like they are fresh.
September 11 As I headed down Grouse Alley I flushed a woodcock. And then when I got near Boundary Pond, I flushed about 8 wood ducks. Truly I was in the woods. I approached my chair on the ridge above the lodge at 6:07. A kit was out munching maple leaves or twigs. It looked like there was a start of a cache of food for the winter
Which kits usually raid all through the fall. The object is to fatten up. The kit soon went into the lodge and I heard hums, and I think at least two different beavers humming. I also heard gnawing from the east shore of the pond. At 6:09 a kit came out of the lodge and swam quickly up the channel with its head high and veered over to the east shore from where I soon heard hums. Then a 6:11 an adult came out of the lodge, gnawed a bit. A kit came out and followed the adult up the channel but not far. It turned and wrangled with a maple twig and dove with it back into the lodge. Meanwhile the kit that got up the channel was now side by side with the adult beaver there, gnawing something on the east shore.
The other adult beaver that had come out was gnawing a stick in the lower part of the channel, a bit over to the east shore. At 6:18, I saw an adult bring a log down the channel. A kit was back in the maple twigs near the lodge and to my surprise ignored the adult with the log. The kit kept bobbing, mastered another twig and took it into the lodge. The adult briefly tried to get the log into the lodge, but couldn’t seem to manage it. At 6:23 a kit was out again. There was really never a dull moment. Ravens were flying by, and I heard something behind me and turned around and saw a deer looking at me. It was loath to go and snorted its displeasure off and on. I soon figured that at least two kits were going in and out of the lodge. One finally went a bit up pond into the frogbit.
Another came out at 6:31, got up to some frogbit and then was back into the lodge at 6:35. I kept hearing humming and gnawing in the lodge, and it has been some time since I’ve heard so much racket coming from the lodge. At 6:51 an adult came out of the lodge and gnawed the log left out there. Then at 6:53 another adult came out, as well as a kit. There were three beavers right below me, two adults and a kit. One of the adults and a kit went back into the lodge. Then a kit came out, tangled with twigs. The adult that was out started up the channel. Then another adult came out and a kit, both looked up at me. Suddenly there were three beavers swimming below me again, an adult and two kits. Quite a swirl! This is the first time this late summer that I’ve seen such congregations of beavers. Even though I had another half hour of daylight, I decided to strike out and see if I could prove six beavers. I knew there were at least two kits and an adult in the lodge. I just saw another adult move over into a bay off the channel up to the upper pool of Boundary Pond, and I had seen a kit along the east shore of the upper pool. So walking up pond, I should at least see five beavers, at least prove three kits, and I thought an adult went up toward the Last Pool and I hadn’t seen one come back down. I decided to walk along the shore, which might have been a mistake. The adult beaver dove just after I got a glimpse of it, and I think it swam under water toward the pond. I didn’t see a kit in the upper pool. Then as I moved up the channel, I saw the head of a beaver at the beginning of the channel just on the edge of the pool -- looked small. I had to approach it to make sure it was a beaver and then as I did it simply dove without letting me get a measure of its length. Good chance that was the third kit, actually the first born and largest. But could the adult down channel have just swum up to see what I was doing? As I walked up the pond shore I paused to take photo of the freshly cut trees, most on the east shore,
but one maple on the west shore.
It was clear that the beavers had shifted from frogbit and duck weed to wood. Oh yes, I took a close up of a drying carpet of frogbit and there was duck weed all around it.
That’s what the kit was eating last night. The channel through the Last Pool is getting low. I could see light under the root they had dug a tunnel under. And now the poplar crown shaded mud, not muddy water. I didn’t see the sixth beaver. They are cutting trees above the Last Pool, they certainly haven’t given up on that. I saw where a tree had been segmented and the logs taken away. I found the stump, then over to the east saw a red maple cut down and yet to be trimmed.
It crossed my mind that the reason two kits were more or less confined to the lodge was because of this threat of falling trees.
September 13 we spent the night on the island last night, so I missed my hour in the evening with the Boundary Pond beavers. We got to the land this morning, after a very light shower. I walked around the Last Pool and Boundary Pond to see what trees the beavers were cutting. I got the impression when I watched the beavers two nights ago that they wanted bark now, frogbit and duckweed were not enough. Though the Last Pool has shrunk to two channels both are being used. The scrapes of branches dragged into the channel were easy to see.
The poplar trunk is well gnawed and even with low water still accessible.
I didn’t see any fresh gnawing on the other three large poplars that the beavers have been cutting for about a year. There is another poplar, larger than all the others, and a few yard farther off the Last Pool. A beaver finally gnawed some bark off it.
The beavers are still taking saplings near the poplars.
I wonder if there was more water in the Last Pool if the beavers would get to work on one of the poplars. I speculated the other night that the kits were being kept close to the lodge because the adults were cutting trees and they wanted the kits clear when they fell. No reason to fear the saplings’ falling. As I walked down the east shore of the Last Pool and Boundary Pool, I did see some trees down or in the process of being cut that might support my thesis. But then an elm about five inches in diameter but along the Last Pool raises another question.
Why did the beavers wait until the pool was almost dry to cut it? I didn’t see any menacing timbers along the east shore of Boundary Pool, but how can the beavers predict that?
As I’ve said before, I cut trees with a hand saw and am never confidant where trees will fall. I give myself a 90 degree margin of error. Suggesting that the adult are protecting the beavers might be too complicated an explanation since there is a simpler one: the adults don’t want to be bothered as they girdle and gnaw
They want that food for themselves, let the kits get the twigs. Perhaps it’s not simply that adults are selfish, but they know that kits are not as efficient as they are in girdling and cutting. Kits have to get the hang of it. So there is a sensible division of labor, that I’ve often noticed in the fall. Adults do the heavy lumbering, cutting and hauling, and kits fatten up on what gets dragged to the lodge or left in the channels. Another element of the adults shopping now: they are tasting some mighty large trees.
Does every tree have its time or do beavers sometimes bite around and recoil at mistakes? I haven’t paid much attention to the dam recently. I saw a beaver browsing on top of it the other night. Today I saw why. There is a good variety of vegetations sprouting out of the dam.
The tree cut along the west shore that had been hanging in other trees finally came down.
I saw that it was an ironwood. The crown now scrapes the rocks of the cliff, not that inconvenient, but the leaves are all brown and don’t look appetizing at all.
I’ve seen many ironwoods cut and then ignored. I didn’t see any trees just down along the west shore. Going back toward the house I walked into the meadow above the pond and checked the red maple I saw cut down the other night. The beavers cut and cleared everything
I could see maple twigs littering the way back to the Last Pool.
As I walked through the meadow I heard a loon repeatedly calling and then saw it, flying rather high in the sky.
I got out to see the beavers before dinner, and like the last evening I came, they were very active. When I got to the chair I saw ripples and bubbles in the water north of the lodge, I could hear humming in the lodge. A kit surfaced on the north side of the lodge, swam in circles and dived toward the dam. Then I saw an adult in the channel and soon it was heading up pond. The a kit dove into the lodge, and I finally got a chance to look at my watch -- 6:38. Then an adult came out from the lodge and floated like a log below me.
Meanwhile the adult that went up the channel was in the east shore of the upper pond. So I could account for two adults. Then a kit dove into the lodge, not sure where it came from, and another adult came out of the lodge turned toward me. There were two adults below me and one up pond. So I saw the three adult. The second one I saw swam up the channel; the third waded into the frogbit. All this happened in three minutes. It was 6:41. The adults left a kit, gnawing a stick lying in the water near the lodge.
So like that, I was a beaver psychologist again. Last time I sat here I speculated that an adult was purposely keeping kits in or near the lodge. Now the three adults were leaving the kits behind, but not for long. The adult in the frogbit went into the channel and swam up pond. The kit gnawing by the lodge broke away and quickly followed it. Well, not that quickly. It circled below me and then followed the adult. Then another kit popped out of the lodge and quickly swam up the channel. It was 6:48. I had been there 10 minutes and I could account for 5 beavers. There were no more hums coming for the lodge. My hunch was that the third kit was already out and up pond. I should have moved up pond myself especially after a beaver carrying a branch down the channel, way up pond, didn’t come to the lodge but left it in the upper pool of Boundary Pond. I could hear the gnawing from there, and some from the east shore. I bet that when the third adult swam up the channel that freed the kits from having to stay close to the lodge. Then I saw another branch being tugged down the channel and it too didn’t get below the upper pool of the pond. Why weren’t the beavers taking the branches to the lodge? Then at 7:03 I noticed an adult reaching up and eating something on the west shore. Just as it tugged a long but thin sapling down, a kit nearby splashed into the water as if it was in a panic. More evidence that this family is touchy about falling trees? The adult took the sapling into the channel and then in a few minutes the kit went back where it was browsing the frogbit. Having counted three adults I wanted to count the three kits. I could, if I trusted my ears. I heard humming coming from the upper pool as if a kit was negotiating with an adult for its share of a sapling. I saw a kit in the frogbit a bit up pond and then a kit swam down to the lodge, but didn‘t dive into it. It turned, waded through the frogbit and then began browsing the bright green grass in one of the higher patches of exposed mud. A 7:07 I started walking up the pond, hoping to do so without being noticed by the beavers. But a stray noise I made getting up attracted the attention of the kit in the grass. I trusted a kit to ignore me. No. It swam right up and looked up at me. As I went along the ridge, I looked for the kit that had been in the frogbit along the upper part of the pond -- couldn’t see it. I finally saw three beavers in a bend in the channel between the upper pool of Boundary Pond and what was once Log Dam Pool, which now is a not so wide pool of water on the way to the channel up to the Last Pool. Trusting that a hum came from a kit, I decided I was watching two adults and a kit. Then one adult seemed to nose the kit away, back down pond. Later I heard one of the splashes I think adults make to scare a kit away -- not a tail slap but a body dive, kind of a little belly flop. I got the impression that one adult at least, was drawing a line as to how far up pond a kit could go. The only way I can account for the change in the relationship between the adults and kits is that the shallower pond with narrower channels has forced the adults to rein in the kits that a week ago could swim up to the Last Pool and be all alone. Well, I didn’t get a clean count of the beavers, but I think I learned something about them.
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