July 19 we had light rain through the night, then heavy rain in the morning. When we left our land to go to the island, we saw three herons in the little pond across the road. As the sun was getting out from behind the clouds, I headed off up Antler Trail to check on the beaver ponds. Up on the ridge a pileated woodpecker greeted me with characteristically loud calls but hanging around small cherries and serviceberry bushes seemed uncharacteristic.
But this plateau is not as dry as it sometimes gets in July. The lushness probably attracts bugs. Why should a woodpecker always have to hammer into wood to get a meal?
I veered off from Antler Trail proper and headed for the Big Pond. I flushed a buck on the way and, as bucks usually do, after it ran off a dozen yards it turned to get a look at me, so I got a photo of its antlers and big ears.
Thanks to the recent rains the woods are popping with mushrooms. I expected to find black trumpets at an area under a big oak where I’d often seen them before. I found some there,
and along the trail I always take on my way to the Big Pond. I also looked for the non-chlorophyll plant that I saw last year, pine drops, but didn’t see any. Then I got out of the woods and into the deer flies as I walked through the thick meadow up to the Big Pond dam. I expected to see the otter latrine at the south end of the dam all grown over with grass. Instead it was matted down. A raccoon did some of that and left a poop up on my perch.
No problem, it was too humid to sit there anywhere. But on the north side of the perch I saw a trail through the grass and then an area scrapped over with about four piles of grass molded like typical scent mounds,
with older scats on some
and fresh scats on others.
The otters were back. In my old paradigm, if you will, I would be excited by this and think that a mother otter and some precocious pups were about. But this array looked much like what the old otter family has been doing all spring and early summer. Of course, I was excited. The game is still afoot. Some scats were fresh enough
that it behooved me to frequently scan the pond. I saw a half dozen mallards on top of the lodge at the far end of the pond. One wood duck flew off as I approached the pond. Otherwise all was quiet. The vegetation on the dam forced me to find deer or raccoon routes through the thick and tall cattails.
I periodically looked back to see what I avoided. I must say what I couldn’t traverse looked rather beautiful, green highlighted with the blue of the vervain.
Then the beavers helped me along. Every few yards there was a nook where the grasses were cut or matted down.
There seemed to be more unnibbled sticks then stripped, but these sticks might be small enough to eat whole. Another was obviously a place where a beaver, or perhaps a muskrat, simply went over the dam.
At the last nook near the north end of the dam, there were a few cut, and uneaten willow fronds.
I could discern some trail going through the vegetation below the dam
and I could have followed for a few yards. I always say I am going to get on my hands and knees and see how far I can get down trails like that, but I never do. High summer in the swamps is not the best time for crawling around. The deer flies are always pushing you into the woods. Unfortunately, the flies I picked up along the dam stayed with me through the woods and bugged me as I looked over the mossy cove latrine. I expected to see signs that the otters visited there, but all I saw was goose poop, probably the same load the geese put there just after the otters left a few weeks ago. There was no place to sit on the rock above the latrine. I moved to a rock closer to the upper end of the pond and spent a few minutes mostly pondering deer flies. Actually very few broke off their furious flying around my head to land on my bare arms. Were they too busy bickering with each other? I saw a small flock of geese in the northeast end of the pond, and one duck that I couldn’t identify. There was not much vegetation on the lodge up there and maybe beavers inside are keeping it in trim.
Of course my otter-map theory was in the back of mind. If the otters came from the river back to these ponds, did they take the route up along the wooded ridge that I claim they mapped out on the rock above the mossy cove latrine?
But I hadn’t even seen evidence of their having been in this pond. So I headed over to their old latrine by the dam. Through the spring they had been pushing this latrine farther back from the pond and sure enough I found grass scraped up and some digging a bit farther still from the pond.
However I didn’t find scats here like I did at the Big Pond latrine. I found some laced with crayfish parts
But when I broke it apart, I couldn’t be sure if I was getting closer to the world of otters or raccoons.
I saw one other squirt of scat but it had a little yellow in it and that could be from a duck or even a skunk -- and a skunk might have done the digging.
I also saw a dead frog with its head bitten off.
So I decided I was not compelled to follow my otter map route to South Bay to see if the otters had left any signs of their passage. Plus I had to check on the beavers between the East Trail and Shangri-la Ponds. I went via the Second Swamp Pond dam and checked the old otter latrines there which looked unvisited. This dam too was choked with vegetation and some of the vervain a foot or two taller than me.
I looked for cardinal flowers in the shade along the creek coming down from the East Trail Pond dam, but I didn’t see any. The nettles there are getting very tall and perhaps engulfed the more delicate plant. As I headed for the little ponds the beavers made, I didn’t see any evidence of their moving down to the old East Trail Pond dam. As usual a red tail hawk was flying and screeching above the pond. Walking along the boardwalk through the meadow, I saw two monarch butterflies on some milkweed leaves.
And another butterfly on some buttonbush leaves. I guess a skipper of some sort.
The little dams the beavers fashioned still look to be in good repair and the beavers seem to be more interested in terracing pools of water downstream, and not upstream back toward the busted Shangri-la Pond dam.
I think they are eating the cattails here. But I should make a closer study of that.
All the pools are muddy and it looks like beavers have been walking over the dams.
And they gnawed more on the maples, red maples I think, on the slope above their upper pool.
I briefly sat on the rocks above the upper East Trail Pond. I didn’t see any signs of beavers having been there, but there is still water below all the vegetation and what looks like a trail through it all, if you have a bit of an imagination.
Walking down the East Trail, I was flanked by mushrooms most of the way. I also saw another non-chlorophyll plant,
I’ll have to hit the books to try to identify that. It is much less elaborate than the pinedrops I saw last year about this time, though it does have a similar "drop," but there is no red color.
Back at our land, I went out to see the beavers at 5:45 pm. I must say what I saw between roughly 6 and 7 o‘clock was what I saw between 8 and 9 o’clock except that it was easier to see everything because it wasn’t getting perceptibly darker, and there were far fewer mosquitoes, though I was glad I had the mosquito netting around me head. On other nights I saw a yearling beaver swim into the lodge at a little after 8. Tonight I saw one come down pond and swim into the lodge a little after six. I heard kits humming in the lodge just as I did other nights, and because there were fewer birds and frogs making noise, I could hear the hums better. The barred owl did wake up while I was there and boom out some rusty hoots, and then evidently went back to sleep, or off to feed. However, I still don’t think I saw the kits. A beaver came out of the east entrance to the lodge and I saw something dive into the water. This is usually done by a beaver dredging something up to take to the dam, but I didn’t see a beaver go to the dam. I also continued to hear gnawing in the lodge. Then an adult beaver, certainly the biggest beaver I’ve seen in this family and thus likely the mother, came out of the lodge carrying a half stripped white oak branch with a cluster of leaves still on it, which was how I could identify it. It parked the branch on the side of the lodge and started gnawing it.
Then a yearling swam down the east shore of the pond, turned toward the lodge, and humming a full din, nosed up to the adult beaver. She immediately backed off and swam up pond, leaving what remained for the yearling. I guess there wasn’t much because it immediately dove into the lodge, where I continued to hear a little gnawing and a little humming. My impression is that the oak branch had been taken in to feed the kits, and that the mother came out to get her share and then she gave it up to a yearling, who I’ve noticed over the years like to make a point of getting their share as the adults try to feed the kits. I got another impression: the mother beaver seemed a bit wearied, swimming rather slowly, and paying no attention to me. A few months ago all the beavers would at least look up at me. I am making this hour seem more eventful than it was. I had plenty of time to look around and see the cedar wax wings forming for the evening mosquito hunt. They knew that the pickings in that regard were still relatively slim. I also saw that the beavers had been stripping bark off an ash tree that I saw them nosing up to in the dark a few nights ago.
I would have liked to sit longer, but I was due for dinner. I walked up pond along the ridge and then down, as I usually do, to the Last Pool. The other day I noticed some fresh gnawing on a curly birch. Now I saw a beaver there gnawing away on the same birch.
I got my camcorder ready in case the beaver was trying to cut down the tree. I have missed seeing trees cut down and branches trimmed and carried down to the lodge for the kits. Then the beaver broke off that work and got into the channel. It swam up pond, not down, so I don’t think I interrupted it. I walked cautiously up pond, and saw that the beaver swimming up pond, an adult, joined two other beavers, both relatively large. Had the mother, father and two year old left a yearling or two in charge of the kits? And it seems I still face the same problem: when are the kits allowed out of the lodge? When I come again I will come early, at least until the mosquitoes calm down.
July 21 another humid morning, not the best time to split firewood, but I’ve completed my first round of sawing, so I worked up a sweat for a half hour or so. Then I walked down to the beaver pond. The goldenrod in most the inner valley still hasn’t bloomed. However, at the south end of it close to the Last Pool, the yellow blooms have started.
In an attempt to get beyond my obsession with seeing the kits, I tried guess what the beavers have been up to and decided that their time had come to try to cut down another big aspen/poplar. Last year they cut one down on July 16. Having a big tree to trim makes it easier to feed the kits and as the kits get more adept at swimming, gives them a place to go. A likely poplar to cut down is the one at the end of the Last Pool near the two they cut earlier. I saw that they did resume their cutting, but not in a bold way, just one strip of gnawing about a foot long and a few inches wide, suggesting they were in no hurry to cut down the tree.
Closer to the pond, I noticed some dead ferns. Sometime when there is too much rain some plants just up and die.
As I continued down the east shore of the Last Pool, I saw that they are gnawing two curly birches along the channel.
They usually eventually cut down these birches, but as with all the trees this summer, the beavers seem to be in no hurry to cut them down. I’ve given up expecting them to cut down a hemlock, and, along the Boundary Pond shore where they have been stripping the hemlocks, rather than cut one of the many stripped hemlocks down and get more bark from the trunks, they began attentively stripping two more hemlocks, both small.
I took a close look at the beaver hut and took another photo. I keep saying I will check old photos to see if the beavers have made changes. The chaos of sticks forming the huts always gives the impression of frequent activity,
But other than that choas, I see no other evidence of a beaver being in or on the hut. So here is a photo at roughly the same angle from June 30.
It looks exactly like today’s photo. I walked up the trail behind the hut, following it up the ridge to the maple they cut down. This trail looks like it is still being used and when I got up to where the maple is, I saw that I was right. They cut an elm two yards north of where they stopped segmenting the maple.
I saw that the trail beside the maple looked used which they would take if they wanted to strip more of the bark off that tree.
But they haven’t renewed gnawing the maple. A few yards south of its stump, along what is roughly the crest of the ridge, they have just about cut down an aspen/poplar.
So I was right in one respect, they are cutting another poplar, and wrong in another respect. If this tree falls, it will not be easy for the kits to climb up to it. And I saw that they cut another tree, smaller than the poplar, and I couldn’t identify it.
Plus the leaves on it were long dead. Strange, I don’t I would have missed seeing this tree cut down. Meanwhile along the trail up to this work, there are some luscious shrubs that look quite eatable.
Nannyberry?, and these beavers won’t touch it. I went down the ridge and continued my walk around the pond. As I walked nearer the lodge I heard a kit humming inside. Then I took a photo of the dam, to get a gauge of how high the water is,
And that got me thinking of the pond down below, Wildcat Pond, that the beavers left two years ago. Since there was humming in the lodge, I didn’t want to cross the pond along the dam and probably silence the humming by making too much noise rattling the logs on the dam. So I decided to perhaps get a look at the future. By seeing the current state of Wildcat Pond, I might be seeing what Boundary Pond will look like after the beavers leave it.
Of course, there was not as much pond as there used to be, and I think the vegetation now spread over the old pond bottom is pilewort.
Its flower, which never quite seems to bloom, appears late in the summer. Where the beavers dredged channels to trees they cut near the shore, there was a bit of duckweed encrusted pond water.
The area behind the lodge, also where the beavers did a good bit of dredging, still has water.
The lodge still has its shape. Let’s hope some muskrats are still using it.
Coming back up the Boundary Pond, I took a photo of its fullness. The valley is narrower here, and the soil is less silt and more forest litter, so maybe someday it won’t be a field of pilewort.
I sat in my chair above the lodge and continued to hear humming now and then, but no beavers came out. I was entertained by a kingbird nabbing bugs, usually close to the surface of the water. A tussock moth caterpillar lowered itself down on my pant leg.
When I walked up the west shore of the pond, I took another photo of the ash they just started stripping.
If they develop a taste for ash, there are quite a few they can cut. I must say I keep looking for swaths of frogbit they might have eaten, but I can’t spot any. But last year I could tell more easily because in the evening I would see them, and the deer, eat it. I got a close up of their birch gnawing, and saw no inclination to cut the tree down. They've begun to gnaw the roots of another big tree next to the birch.
As I headed up to Grouse Alley, I saw a mushroom than seemed to have offered a key to something.
And I saw a grey squirrel and heard several blue jays calling. The quests for acorns begins.
July 22 a somewhat cooler day with some clouds so I worked at the land in the morning, and in the afternoon, back on the island, I paddled over to South Bay. I didn’t have far to go for my first surprise. I saw four small mostly brown but didn’t exactly see the mallard ducklings I was expecting, or did I? They had some blue tail feathers, but I thought they were too petite and their brown heads seemed too round even for mallard ducklings. Could they have been teals? This being high season on the river, there was a good bit of chop to paddle through around the headland, and only seagulls and people to look at. I paddled down to the willow latrine on the north shore of the south cove of South Bay. Before I got to the willow I had plenty of water lily blooms to appreciate. Then a heron flew off the willow or the turf below it, and its neck looked rather crooked. I got my binoculars on it in time to see the big bullhead it carried in its beak. I didn’t see any otter scats in the latrine, just the white remnants of heron poop in water. Paddling around the point in the bay, I passed a small flock of geese. I have been on the river so infrequently that I have lost track of the geese. I didn’t see many. Could they be flying already? There were many more water lilies in the north cove than the last time I was there. Of course, I kept my eye out for otter scats on the rocks along the north shore of north cove, and on the rock that juts out a bit west of the flat rock, I saw some crayfish laced scats. Over the years otters have latrined here. The scats were old and when I tried to scrape one down off the rock with my paddle, the scat simply broke apart. I don’t think this is a likely place for raccoons to scat, but I wasn’t sure. I continued to look for scats, but didn’t see anymore. One spring I saw scats like this near that rock and then on rocks directly across on the opposite shore. Since the shores were 50 yards apart, it was easy to picture otters swimming from one rock to the other nabbing crayfish on the way. I was also looking for bryozoa and map turtles, and I didn’t see any. I did see two painted turtles. The water lilies were quite striking at the very end of the cove, perfect flowers unfolding on stalks a few inches out of the water. Here, I thought, was testament to the lack of beavers in the bay this year. Then as I paddled around the old dock that sticks out in the water, I saw the small branch of a shrub floating out in the midst of a raft of lily pads. A beaver could have cut that. Then I saw two wide trails up onto shore, and one led to the huge trunk of a huge willow tree, which a beaver had started to gnaw into. So there is a beaver in the bay; maybe it just got here. I didn’t see any more beaver work nor any crayfish laced otter or raccoon scats anywhere on the north shore of the bay. I saw the remains of a dead bird, a big bird but I couldn’t identify it from where I floated in the kayak. I saw one common tern and a few more herons. The bay was about as lively as could be expected at mid-day on a warm day in late July. There was very little algae in the bay, perhaps it has been broken up by the downpours we’ve had every few days. (We had one last night.) And there wasn’t much duckweed either. Despite the lower water level, it’s been very easy to paddle through the bay without only lily pads slowing me down. The flowers along the shore seem tame too. Some outbreaks of purple loosestrife, and I saw what looked like a paler, smaller version of that flower, which also looked a bit like a mint. I took a sprig home and Leslie felt the rough stem with spines and identified it as a rough-hedge nettle, which is in the mint family.
Back at our land I went out to see the beavers before dinner again. I wanted to check on them last night but rain rolled through between 5 and 7 pm. There were a few strong gusts associated with the storm and I wondered if the poplar they are cutting up on the ridge was blown over. If so, perhaps I would see beavers ferrying leafy branches into the lodge. The humidity had been picking up during the day, and that encouraged more mosquitoes to join the swarms. I had to cover my upper torso with mosquito netting again. As I walked down the ridge, I didn’t notice any beavers in the pond or any ripples, and as I walked down to the chair, I didn’t hear any humming. Were the beavers back on a strictly night time schedule? No. A few minutes after I sat down, a beaver popped out in front of the lodge. It swam up pond, and then another beaver popped out and followed, and judging from the ripples another beaver came out of the east entrance to the lodge. So I was seeing as much activity as I did the last time I was here, but I didn’t hear much humming from inside the lodge. Say, about 15 minutes into my trying to figure out what the beavers were doing, I heard what I’ve been calling the humming of kit. One of the beavers that swam up pond soon swam back, going slowly down the channels through the frogbit on the west side of the pond and pausing every few yards to gob up some of the frogbit.
I was hoping it would do the same when it got right below me, but when it got close to the lodge, it dove and fished up a log. It positioned that against the skirt of the lodge and began gnawing away.
The last time I was watching the beavers, I thought I observed a beaver bringing a leafy branch out of the lodge and then gnawing after propping it up on the skirt of the lodge. Judging from what I saw tonight, perhaps that beaver swam out of the lodge and also fished up a branch from the pond bottom. Beavers are accustomed to sinking branches before they gnaw the bark. Just like last time I was here, a yearling appeared, this time coming out from the lodge, sidled up to the other beaver with some insistent hums. The adult beaver pulled the log up away from the yearling, but there was a smaller stick left behind which the yearling promptly bit and then dove with it back into the lodge. This set off a good bit of humming inside the lodge. I watched the adult beaver gnaw away on the branch for about 15 minutes, and then a beaver came out of the lodge, stayed under water, and then surfaced with a branch in its mouth and started swimming with it up pond. Meanwhile I had been noticing ripples along the east shore of the pond about where the trail up the ridge starts. But I couldn’t see any beaver coming down the ridge. Anyway, the adult beaver beside the lodge bit the stick it had been gnawing and dove with it into the lodge. I lost track of the beaver swimming up pond with a stick, and judging from the ripples I continued to see along the east shore, I credited that end of the pond with two beavers, but I may have been wrong. Suddenly a muskrat swam down the main channel and dove into the lodge. I first thought it might be a beaver kit, but in a few minutes that little animal came out of the lodge and swam right below me and I could see its rotating tail. I have not seen a muskrat here for months. Finally a beaver swam down the channel to the lodge with a log in its mouth and the rest of the log under its body, somewhat riding the stick like a witch rides a broom,
and it dove, with the stick in tow, into the lodge. I left a little before 7pm, for dinner, and there was not that much incentive to hang at the pond. Our farmer neighbor was cutting hay, and in the still humid air it was quite loud at the pond. I could hardly hear a nearby hermit thrush. Walking up pond the other night, I saw three beavers. Tonight I didn’t see any in the Last Pool but I could see that they had done more gnawing on the curly birch on the east side of the channel. Then I startled a big porcupine, perhaps headed down to the pool to get a drink, and it climbed up an elm tree.
This is probably the same big porcupine I saw hanging over the trail here in the late winter trying to nip some early buds on one of the taller trees.
July 23 we had rain in the early morning. After it stopped, though we continued to have sprinkles most of the day, I headed to the ridge east of the Boundary Pond to see if the beavers cut down the poplar they had been working on. On my way, I saw that they gnawed more on the curly birches flanking main channel of the Last Pool but still have not cut into the trunk of either one.
It was easy to see that beavers have been going up the ridge to the poplar. Their trail was darker than the forest floor.
One beaver at least also flared off the trail to strip a bit off three hemlock trunks or roots.
It was also easy to see that a beaver dragged a log down the trail because that operation left a long mark beside the trail.
As I continued up the trail I got an indication that the beavers had cut the aspen/poplar down because I saw a fresh green twig from such a tree on the trail.
And yes, they had cut down the aspen/poplar, and had done more cutting since I saw the tree two days ago. So I probably can’t credit the strong winds we had the evening before last.
The tree fell down the ridge
The ridge there was too steep for me to ease down along the trunk. But it was easy to get to the crown along a lower “balcony” of the ridge. As the poplar fell it also knocked down some oak branches.
The beavers managed to crawl up some rocks and get into the crown of the poplar where they cut off one log and began stripping bark off other parts of the tree.
Although going directly down the ridge from the crown didn’t look much steeper than the trail the beavers are taking,
it is obvious that they are dragging all they cut over to their trail. I took a photo of where the trail to the crown curves into the old trail.
What fun to get video of beavers pulling leafy branches around the bend and heading down. I didn’t look for signs of more beaver activity. I had learned enough today and what I learned certainly challenges the standard explanation of how beavers forage for trees. To cut such a large tree so far from the pond and up such a steep cliff at this plentiful time of year is extraordinary. I’ve almost seen the like before. The beavers at the Lost Swamp Pond cut down a grove of big poplars up and over the slope west of the pond, though that was certainly an easier climb. The Big Pond beavers cut big poplars far from the pond but not up any ridge or slope. Obviously beavers have a lust for poplars, but there are several poplars down below much closer to the pond -- the beavers have already cut down two, one last year about this time and one in the winter. The poplar they just cut does seem rather vigorous, though I am hardly a judge of that. Maybe it smelled just right to the beavers and that’s what drove them to make this time, but before cutting the poplar they cut an elm and a maple. I had time to kill because it was too humid to split firewood, so I went up to check the mushrooms on the wooded plateau I call the Hemlock Cathedral. There were quite a few mushrooms
But I couldn’t rouse myself to do a rigorous study which would start with identifying what I saw. So I just ambled around noticing things. One of the two long ditches there that I call a bog had water in it.
I am not sure how this feature was formed. I doubt that humans dug it. I saw some beautiful small ferns on some of the rocks that form the other side of this ridge,
Lower down, almost in the valley behind our lower garden, I saw small seeds all about that I never recall seeing before.
The only large trees above were basswoods but I’ve never noticed them broadcasting seeds.
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