August 7 Yesterday a cold front moved through and I cut dead ironwoods in our woods most of the morning. I took my camera along but it was just me and the trees. I gave the beavers a break in the evening and sat by the ponds they are not using. The Deep Pond had a couple of green frogs twanging and a good chorus of crickets for what would be our chilliest night for weeks. I heard splashes as I stood by the Third Pond and saw the reflection of a bat that was flying over the pond. I sat on the cedar log between the First Pond and Teepee Pond. I heard a half dozen green frogs around the First Pond, but only tentative gurgling from around the Teepee Pond. I saw no bats there. I had left the minnow net up at this pond so I could see if the there were any bullheads in the pond. They are most active at night. I made three casts and brought in one shiner. No bullheads. It got down into the 40s last night, and I wore a jacket during the first part of the morning. I looked for more dead ironwoods to cut down for firewood. Leslie drove off to get some manure from a farmer a couple miles away and came back reporting that she saw a white heron in a pond along the way. So I went back with her and got a photo of the elusive bird.
The photo shows the legs as looking darker than they looked in real life. Black legs are supposed to be indicative of a great egret, but I prefer calling this bird a white heron. It usually hangs with blue herons, as it did today. I hope it comes back to our pond. After cutting down a couple dead trees on the ridge just west of Grouse Alley, I went down to check on the beavers in Boundary Pond. I noticed a fresh trail going into the Last Pool which was muddy. I followed the trail, which basically followed my trail up the valley. Just off the trail I saw where a beaver nibbled and stripped some little branches from a sapling, but the trail continued up the valley. Then it veered off of my trail and headed toward the ridge west of the valley. On its own the low squat beaver with a big tail makes a very nice trail through the tall grasses.
As I walked up their trail I saw two cut maple boughs on the trail.
At the fringe of the woods along the ridge, I saw the cut crown of a sugar maple hanging down through the honeysuckle.
Following the trail in the wood, I saw how a beaver cut some smaller vegetation in the way including a juniper branch.
A beaver also gnawed some bark off a hornbeam but didn’t cut it down, yet. In this valley that the beavers have lived in the past 4 years, they’ve been foraging along ridges dominated by tall trees. Now the ridge to their west is getting much lower with an easier slope and the trees are thicker along the ridge. But they no longer have a flat with hundreds of small hornbeams to harvest. The maple they cut was not that thick, for all the leaves it sent up searching for the sun.
They also cut another small maple a little higher up the slope and that’s the one they’ve seemed to have cut up and carried away.
While I was scouting for dead trees to cut for firewood, I came within 20 yards of this beaver work. I cut trees thinking of future warmth. I suppose so do they. I went back down the trail to the Last Pool and walked around it. I didn’t track up the trail from the wallow, but a beaver did go over and started cutting the big poplar/aspen.
Beavers can probably cut down a poplar this size in a day or two, if they want to. They’ve been on again off again with this tree for over a year. They also started gnawing the large poplar on the east side of the pond.
It might be more accurate to say that a beaver continued the girdling on a tree they had cut into a few inches a few months ago. The freshly cut maples are about 80 of my strides from the end of the Last Pool, say 200 feet, so that work is farther away than the poplar they cut up on the ridge. But to get to the maples they don’t have to climb. I climbed up the ridge and saw that since I was last here four days ago a beaver made the trip up and stripped more bark off the smaller of the large branches that once held the crown of the tree together.
It was too early, just before noon, to expect beavers, and I went back for lunch. Back on the island I kayaked over to South Bay. My first stop was the willow latrine and I saw some digging up on shore between the water and where otters scatted a week or so ago. I got out to investigate and expected to find otter scats, but all I saw was the scraped up dirt. A bit farther back in the latrine, I saw some grasses rolled over and other grasses scraped up, much like an otter would do, but again there were no otter scats. The hole was the kind skunks make to get at bees. I can’t say what animal had been there. I didn’t see any otter signs anywhere else along the bay. There are still a few water lilies blooming in both coves. Many lily pads are coated, perhaps better to say, puddled, with aphids. In the north cove I saw that several spatterdock flowers had been cut. A beaver is probably still swimming around in this cove. But I didn’t find any new cutting of alders or willows along the north shore. Several painted turtles were out sunning themselves, perhaps because it was so cold last night. A southwest wind was rather playing along the north shore of the bay. And there I saw a few fast flying flocks of damsel flies and fast swimming schools of shiners, or fry that size. But the swallows were a bit out of the wind, but quite active in their pursuit of bugs. Ospreys hovered high above me, and, much to my surprise, I didn’t see any herons. Nor did I see any bryozoa and there is still very little algae. Not sure why. Back at our land, I came out to see the beavers after dinner and got to my chair overlooking the Boundary Pond at 8pm. I didn’t have to wait long for a beaver to come out. It came out the east entrance to the lodge, away from me, and since it swam around the lodge in the up pond direction, I thought it might be a kit. The yearlings, or at least one of them, tends to swim toward the dam and then up a channel along the east shore of the pond. Each of these beavers seems to have its own style in getting up pond. But I soon saw a yearling who went up pond along the main channel. Then I heard a splash up pond and I saw another beaver swim off from west shore along a side channel through the frog bit to the main channel and directly down to the lodge.
There had been no humming from the lodge all the time I had been there. But a few minutes after that beaver swam into the lodge, the humming began, rather loud too. Then several minutes after that a kit came out of the back entrance and swam around the east side of the lodge toward the dam. No question that it was a kit, with a little quivering tail that it couldn’t quite seem to control when it ducked into the water for a shallow dive. Unfortunately, it was getting dark and I didn’t see where it went. Probably right back into the lodge to add its might to the humming inside. The cedar waxwings are still snapping insects. The mosquitoes were not bad tonight.
August 9 Yesterday we had to prepare for renters and then when we got back to our land, it rained, which we needed, but it kept me away from the beavers. This morning was sunny, but humid. The trees were too wet to saw. Around 10am I went out to see what I could do. Walking down Ripple Rock Trail which parallels Grouse Alley, I saw a large dead ash tree that I’ve walked by, thinking it too rotten to cut. But I pealed away some bark and decided to take a chance. Under the bark I found a large black beetle
that moved off promptly looking for more bark to hide under. Then when I peeled off more bark, I saw a beautiful millipede
Which didn’t budge at all. Then another peel revealed a large slug
also unperturbed. Before I went back to get my saw, I walked down to the trail the beavers' made into the woods along the same ridge I was walking on. I’m not sure if they did any more work there, but the light was different and I could get a better view of what they had cut. Several small saplings around the small maple they cut were also cut and carried off.
And I got a good photo of a long pole of a trunk, still green, that they had cut down.
It will be interesting to see if they segment this into logs and haul them away. It will only take a few bites. I went down their trail to the Last Pool to check on the big aspens that they had started working on again. The one just above the Last Pool is now about half cut.
In my experience, when they cut an aspen this far, they go all the way. This tree is a softwood. There is a white oak nearby, cut about this much six months ago and still standing, but it is a hard wood. While they contemplate this big lumbering, they are also stripping twigs and leaving them in the Last Pool
which I always think is the true measure of beaver contentment. As for the other large aspen they are working they continue only to girdle it.
They are getting down into the roots, which, I must say, look tasty, since the under bark has a reddish color.
They stripped a little bark off the big ash tree nearby. I didn’t check the ridge. Walking back up the east shore of the Last Pool, I saw that they had girdled a small hemlock on one of the moss islands.
I walked up the trail from the wallow about the Last Pool into the meadow above. I followed a trail that veered off but I don’t think beavers made it. I soon flushed a deer, probably a fawn because I couldn’t see any of it as it leaped. I took a photo of where it had been,
a lush patch of meadow. There are patches of Joe Pye weed among the torrents of boneset and goldenrods, some of them still not blooming yet. Most impressive are some lone Joe Pye plants that are easily 9 feet tall. I did cut the dead ash, which proved more rotten than I had hoped. One branch that had lost its bark and seasoned high up in the sun will do, and I’ll get a log about 4 feet long and 1 foot in diameter that is mostly good wood. While I sawed I had to be careful not to squish the slug. The millipede got its many legs working and fled, but the slug seemed held up by its trail of slime.
I planned to check on the beavers tonight, but we had some light rain in the evening, which is not so deterring in itself, but the darkness is and the rain always seems to invite more mosquitoes out and I was just beginning to feel good about them not being so bad.
August 10 leaving our house at the our land last night to take a walk, I flushed a woodcock not far from our back door. The bird chorus in the evening and in the early morning is quite meager, but between 4 and 5 am I still hear the whip-poor-wills sometimes. Another hot humid day, but I had a chance to take a hike on the island so off I went. I headed up Antler Trail toward the Big Pond. On the shady ridge above the first swamp, I saw a clump of the non-chlorophyll plant that I keep seeing above the dead leaves well in the shade.
There was no red on these woody stalks. Of course, I’ve been rethinking my observations of scats at the Big Pond and Lost Swamp Pond otter latrines, and I have now reconciled myself to concluding that I was seeing skunk scats these last few weeks, though I cling to my belief that an otter visited the Lost Swamp Pond latrine because I got a whiff of the unmistakable odor of otter scats. But I approached the otter latrine at the south end of the Big Pond dam ready to see a fresh otter scat. It was clear that something had been scratching through the grass, but I got more evidence that skunks frequent this latrine because at the end of the disheveled grass, I saw a snout sized hole in the ground just like skunks commonly dig.
Plus many of the scats that I thought might be from otters had been washed or scratched away. Otter scats have much longer staying power than skunk scats. The high cattails blocked any wind, of which there wasn’t much, so I didn’t sit on my perch there. I waded through the vegetation below the dam and then clambered back up to the pond right where there was a perfect little nook for a beaver to nibble.
As I continued along the dam I saw other spots where a beaver had been but the vegetation crowded in defeating any legible photographs. Beavers don’t seem to mind having the vegetation they eat rise to suffocating heights. Nor do the bees and butterflies. I got a photo of one of the two monarch butterlies fluttering around the swamp milk weeds, and one of the many bumble bees.
I had one more ploy to resuscitate my claim that otters had been in this pond in late July and August. I went out to the old lodge on the north shore, not used by beavers this year. The otters I watched scatted there frequently though I never saw them there. I saw some deer beds along the way, but there was no matted down grass near the lodge, no more otter latrine, and no scats of any kind. Green grass ruled.
I pressed on to the Lost Swamp Pond. I had flushed a pair of mallards and one wood duck as I crossed the Big Pond dam. There was more commotion when I walked down to the Lost Swamp Pond. I flushed an osprey from a tree on the south shore who flew up and over an osprey in the usual dead tree behind the dam, and it flew off, not quietly. I heard a kingfisher, and set off four wood ducks. I didn’t see any new scats at the mossy cove latrine or the rock above it. I looked at some old scats and saw that the old otter scats still had crayfish parts. The buggy parts of the skunk scat just needed a strong wind and rain to become just a memory. I took a close up of the large scat at the base of the rock above the latrine that, two weeks or so ago, I was sure was an otter scat. It too seemed to be all insect parts, a skunk poop.
Back away from the pond, I saw what raccoon poop looks like at this time or year.
I walked around to the dam and along the north saw some trails I thought a beaver could have made but I didn’t see any telltale stripped sticks. Then just before the dam, I saw a wide trail
And the telltale stripped sticks.
So one beaver at least still survives in this pond that now is a largely treeless pond. At this latrine
I was sure I smelled otter scats. I took a close up of a scat that looked most like something an otter might leave.
Yes, I should have tweezers and a magnifying glass, but it is too hot for that. These revisions don’t necessarily shake my otter map theory. Otters were definitely here and they left later than usual at a time when taking the ridge was easier then going back in the what remains of the streams down to South Bay or through or along the lush thick meadows. But my idea that otters scatted at the willow latrine along South Bay and then came up here, or vice versa, is suspect. I went back more or less the way I came, without incident, except I stumbled as I walked on the Big Pond dam and discovered that there are some nettles growing there.
Back at our land I went to the Boundary Pond relatively early getting there at 6:15. No beavers were out, and not many deer flies nor mosquitoes. The usual pile of stripped logs just behind the lodge seemed bigger and there was a long stripped log floating beside the lodge.
That long stripped pole reminded me of the trunk I saw lying in the beavers’ trail up where they cut some maples well above the Last Pool. But it would be very uncharacteristic of them to go all the way up there in the day and drag a pole or anything else for that matter down to the lodge. At about 6:20 I heard some tentative humming coming from the lodge. Then just before 6:30 I saw a beaver swimming down the main channel heading to the lodge.
There was a light wind in my face, and the beaver didn’t seem to notice me even though I was sitting in full view. It dove into the lodge and came right back out -- it looked like the same beaver, and swam over to the stripped pole, gnawed it a few minutes and then went back into the lodge. Soon after that I began to hear some humming, the higher pitch of a kit and something a bit lower which I assume came from the yearling that just swam into the lodge. A few minutes later I could tell that a beaver was swimming underwater behind the lodge and when parts of it broke the surface, I thought it might be a kit. They typically look a little goofy when they swim just below the water. But the beaver that eventually surfaced was a yearling, if not an adult. Meanwhile I could clearly hear two kits whining in the lodge. The other beaver was still on the surface of the water staring back at the lodge, not reacting to the whines. Then it dove back into the lodge with a flourish which means it might have grabbed a stick underwater to take back into the lodge. VIDEO Then two minutes later an adult beaver surfaced behind the lodge and immediately climbed up on the stripped logs behind the lodge propping up another log not completely stripped, and began gnawing away.
While it was gnawing another beaver surfaced, a yearling I think, and seemed to want to join the adult. The upshot of that was that the adult swam back into the lodge and the yearling swam up pond. A little before 7pm, a kit surfaced behind the lodge. Generally when beavers dive into water their tail gracefully follows, unless they aim to slap the water to scare you away. With kits, it almost looks like the tail springs straight up forcing the kit’s little body to go under water. I saw that and then the kit surfaced again and tried to get its mouth around a leaf on a twig.
Then I saw what I feared I might have missed in the last month. An adult beaver surfaced, well behind the kit, and swam behind the kit over toward the stripped pole at the side of the lodge. The kit turned and briefly hitched a ride on the adult beaver’s back. It was easy to see the kit was just too big for that to work.
To me, it looked like the kit slipped off the back. It followed the adult over to the pole and as the adult started gnawing, the kit tried to nose up and if not gets its share, at least get some attention.
The adult did not pay any attention to the kit. The kit even swam around, and climbed up on the log, so that it was quite in the adult’s face. It soon flopped back into the water, swam the length of the pole and evidently not figuring out how it could get anything out of it. Then I lost sight of the kit. I think it swam completely around the lodge, because I saw soon a kit behind the lodge and it grabbed a small leafy twig in its mouth and swam back around the lodge with it, practicing being standoffish, I suppose, just like its parent. The beaver gnawing the pole went back into the lodge, and maybe it finally noticed me. An adult came back out of the lodge and very quietly swam below me,
But didn’t stop at look up at me as these beavers have often done in the past three years I’ve watched them. It returned to the lodge. Then a few minutes later a kit surfaced behind the lodge and seemed unsure of what to do. It soon grabbed a twig and then a second kit surface and in a few seconds, it looked like the kits scared each other. They both dove with a with swirling splash with their tail. Only one surfaced.
Needless to say I was delighted with this show, and it soon got better. An adult surfaced behind the lodge, and once again climbed up on the stripped logs to do some gnawing. A few minutes another adult surfaced and fished up a branch and began gnawing on it a few feet away from the other adult.
Here, I think, were the mother and father, and then presto, a kit surfaced and swam up between them.
The adult who surfaced second immediate broke away and swam around the lodge. It looked smaller which generally means it is the father. The kit followed and after a demonstrative disgruntled waggling in the water by the adult, the kit swam back to the other adult, still gnawing away seemingly oblivious to what was going on.
And then the second kit surfaced, and the two kits tried to horn in on her gnawing. The kits also liked to dive under her, perhaps reliving those happy days when they were at the teat. Beavers are weaned early so the mother ignored those advances, and she seemed to break away on her own terms leaving the kits alone.
Meanwhile, father beaver, if you will, swam and climbed through and up on a plain of frogbit near by and managed to find a leafy sapling, which it cut and it began to eat the leaves.
I said to myself that this was a perfect way to lose the kits because they could probably not manage the frogbit. But I was wrong, when the adult sloshed its way toward a channel, a kit appeared behind it and followed. They both settled in a channel of clear water and both nibbled the frogbit along it. This time the adult seemed to tolerate the kit. And this time when the adult swam on, the kit didn’t immediately follow, but finished the vine it was eating and then swam up the channel where the adult went. I could have stayed until darkness closed the show. The kit who stayed behind was dancing wildly with a leaf behind the lodge. But my stomach was growling and I had seen quite enough. As I walked down along the upper channels of Boundary Pond, I scared two beavers who were munching along the shore, probably frogbit. They fled with great splashing heaves. Perhaps they were the two yearlings. The adults generally don’t show such panic. Although the mosquito population was down, and hardly bothering me, the cedar waxwings were as active as ever, which suggests they might have been eating other insects all along.
August 11 I broke off from cutting down a dead ironwood to check on the beavers lumbering on the other side of the little ridge we are both working on. The long stripped pole I saw next to the lodge last night was not from the thin tree the cut on the ridge. It was still there, and nothing had been done to it but I think they cleared off some branches,
And cut another maple and took that away.
It is interesting how difficult it is for me to focus on all these saplings and small trees that are the beavers' fodder. As I keep telling myself, I really have to get down on my hands and knees, but…. Then I went down to see if a beaver worked on the poplar that is now half way cut through. I don’t think a beaver touched it since I was last here. But I think a sapling nearby was cut and gone, and it might have been a prickly ash. Numerous young green frogs leaped into the Last Pool as I walked along its margins. I actually tried to get a photo of a frog in flight, but that never seems to work. I could get a photo of a frog landed, and well camouflaged.
The big poplar, about the biggest, that the beavers are girdling looked untouched but I think there was a bit more gnawing on the big ash nearby. Then I climbed up the big ridge to check their work on the poplar there that they’ve been trimming. I don’t think they touched the two smaller trunks that formed the crown but there seemed to be fewer branches about and I saw gnaws and cuts on the branches that remain. Using a narrower focus, I saw that a beaver couldn’t resist cutting a low branch off a hemlock and even gnawing the trunk.
Of course, there are plenty of girdled hemlocks at the foot of the ridge right next to the pond. I guess they can't resist them. I went back to the main trail the beavers have always used to get up the ridge and I saw a small but well leafed red oak branch in the middle of the trail.
There are no tall oaks above the trail so this was beaver fodder. However I did see a small oak surrounded by juniper a little higher up the ridge and off to the north. When I got to the juniper, I saw that it had been parted,
And judging by the nipping here and there, it had been parted by a beaver.
I have never noticed porcupines or deer nipping juniper. I expected the trail to lead to a red oak, but it didn’t. It ended. Then I saw a white oak, surrounded by juniper, not far away. I checked the trunk and saw that it had been gnawed.
This could have been some porcupine tasting -- this is an area where, in the winter, I frequently see porcupine trails, if not the animal itself. However, it would be just as difficult for a porcupine to waddle in here as it would be for a beaver.
I sometimes fancy that if I live here long enough this 52 acres of land could become like my brain, convolutions tying knots around phenomena that for a certain moment at least seemed important and logical. These beavers have already reached that level so that an arduous climb for an easy to get maple, perhaps originally a desperate move to vary the fare the kits are eating, has turned into the discovery of a new world with all sorts of seemingly exotic tastes, even though every tree and shrub here can be found at spots nearer to the pond. I was impressed, once again, with the beavers’ sense of the world.
August 12 we made a quick overnight trip to Montreal to fetch Ottoleo, but got back in plenty of time for me to get out and watch the beavers at Boundary Pond. I got there at the same time that all the action started two nights ago, 6:15, but all was quiet. Very quiet. But the stage seemed to be set. There was a thin, relatively long, unstripped log propped up on the stripped logs behind the lodge.
I kept looking up pond for a yearling to come swimming down, like the other night, when its going into the lodge seemed to wake every beaver inside. Not until after 6:30 did I hear a hum from the lodge, and it was very tentative, and soon the humming stopped. The cedar waxwings were even late even though my active hands could attest to their still being mosquitoes around. The only excitement I had before 7pm, was the unmistakable hum of a hummingbird, the whirr, I should say. And I saw it address the two remaining blossoms on a once formidable mullein down the ridge.
Then the humming from the lodge picked up and at last at almost 7pm exactly a kit popped out in the water behind the lodge and looked around seeming at a loss as to what to do. Then an adult emerged and they swam around in somewhat of a circle, though both looking abstracted and not really engaged with each other.
I got the impression that these beavers had really just woken up. The kit swam up behind the adult angling for its nose and then without a sound from either beaver, the kit dove and went back into the lodge. The adult kept gnawing floating in the water going in a slow circle. It reminded me of an adult beaver I saw in 1999 in the middle of the day floating in Otter Hole Pond, barely twitching. I wrote a poem about it called “Golden Log.” There was no sunlight in the pond tonight. It soon fished something out of the water to gnaw on.
And no other beavers popped out from that back entrance to join it. However, a beaver surfaced after coming out of the east entrance to the lodge, and a yearling swam around to the back of the lodge. The adult started huh-huh-ing as the yearling approached. I am beginning to think that such vocalizing is primarily the way a beaver warns an approaching beaver that it doesn’t want to share what it is eating at the moment. Usually beavers have no trouble sharing and make room for another beaver or move on to something else to eat. I used to fancy that as an expression of their communal genius, but now I fancy that selfishness plays a large role in beaver life, and the furtive way the yearling dove to fish something else up to eat and its quick move back into the lodge seemed to be an expression of that. The yearling’s return to the lodge elicited whining, which I used to think was always a demand to be served, and probably was in this case. But not seeing into the lodge, I can’t be sure. Then a kit came out the back entrance to lodge and did not move over to bother the adult as kits typically do.
Instead, it whined a few times as it essayed trying to get something to eat near the pile of stripped logs. At the same time I could hear whining coming for inside the lodge. Within 3 minutes of coming out, the kit dove back into the lodge. The adult didn’t seem to bat an eye as it continued to gnaw away.
And for another 10 minutes it kept gnawing and the other beavers stayed inside the lodge, with the whines of the kits almost continuous. Not at all like two evenings ago when the beavers put on such a nice show for me. Then I heard a deer snorting on the ridge behind me. It was quite vociferous. I should have used my camera to try to record the sound, but instead I raised it to try to get a still shot of the deer.
Of course, the flash caused the deer’s eyes to glow, but that glare can symbolize the anger in its snort. Then with one last snort, it thumped away. I noticed that the whining stopped in the lodge. And then, before I could get the camera on it, the adult beaver stopped gnawing and dove. All was quiet. The beavers evidently obeyed the deer’s warning that there was a threat in the valley.
August 13 I got a chance to kayak over to South Bay, on a hot humid day with a light wind. Even the gulls seemed pooped at 4pm. As usual there were ospreys on high, and one did something I never saw before. It flew low along the water, stayed low and then lowered its claws so it made a running splash, and did that a couple of times without, as far as I could see, snagging anything in the water with its claws. As was the case the last time I paddled down the south cove of the bay, I didn’t see any herons. Then as my kayak nosed into the shade at the willow latrine along the north shore of the cove, a heron flew out of the tree with a low croak. Of course, from my seat in the kayak I could see the muss on shore that I’ve seen before. The digging in the dirt I could almost touch and the scats on grass that I could just see. But I didn’t recall blue flag fronds being knocked over farther back in the latrine. So I got out of the kayak. It is interesting that something seems to be digging and swaggering around here this summer, and all the years that I know otters were using this latrine in the summer, I didn’t see that. The scat looked like what I saw before, and there was no scat around the new commotion. I also look for bryozoa at this time of year, and I didn’t see any in the south cove, nor in the north cove where I usually see them. I didn’t see any otter scats along the usual latrines, and I didn’t see any fresh beaver work, not even noticing nipped spatterdock flowers. But I must say, that in the water things seem quite healthy. Not much algae has bloomed. I saw little fish swimming here and there. Room for things to breath, so to speak.
August 14 since we are having dinners with Ottoleo on the island, I do not get a chance to commune with the beavers in the evening. So I went out after lunch to make a leisurely investigation of what the beavers have been up to, which is also a pleasant kind of communing. I went down Grouse Alley where the beavers had made a foraging foray a few months ago, which I thought they might expand. They didn’t, but found tastier trees off the main valley. I went up that new beaver trail and was once again confused. Were the beavers coming every night and cutting something, or was I just discovering more things that they had cut days ago every time I investigated? A point in favor of the second explanation is that every time I saw something new to me, the sun was shining on the stump left behind.
But I can’t believe that I am that unobservant, and every time I come back here, there seems to be less clutter. However, neither the trail back to the Last Pool nor that section of the pool where the trail leads has nipped branches or stripped sticks littering it. Maybe I am now familiar enough with area and will see work I am sure is from the night before. At the Last Pool, I did see a freshly cut birch sapling in the channel that leads to the wallow.
The wallow points directly up the center of the valley and a beaver going that way would have to break a new trail to get over to their work along the west ridge. So they are foraging in another area too. Although the wallow is just about dry, the mud is wet and I could see the drag marks of what the beavers had brought down to the pond.
I didn’t go up to see where they cut the birch sapling, but I should. This birch sapling could have come from far up the valley where there are a lot more birches. Then I checked the aspens/poplars they have been gnawing. They are aspens in the book but folks up here call them poplars. The one that I think they will probably cut down has not been touch since I last was here. However, they began gnawing on a large poplar a few yards up the valley.
A beaver also gnawed on roots that surfaced and crossed over the buried roots of the poplar. Then I went down to check the poplar just east of the Last Pool and saw that a beaver gnawed down into another root, exposing tasty looking pink bark.
And a beaver is continuing to girdle the lower trunk and upper roots of a big ash tree a few yards away.
I loitered down the east shore of Boundary Pool still shady despite all the hemlocks that have been completely girdled. Tall maples still are vigorous and may survive since they were only half girdled. I went up the ridge on the beavers’ trail and inspected the slowly disappearing poplar crown. Here again, I can’t pinpoint new beaver work, but every time I go up there, there seems to be less clutter. Then I headed up to the higher trail through the juniper and I am pretty sure that a small oak that I saw there a few days ago has been cut.
The trunk was moved over a few yards and the top, where I assume the leaves were, had been cut off and hauled away down to the pond.
I checked another oak, a white oak, surrounded by junipers which a beaver tasted, and it was still standing, but maybe had been gnawed a bit more. The photos I took today and a few days ago were not taken at the same angle. I scouted around for other trees cut or tasted but saw none. I did notice that the beavers had a separate trail up to the this work that branched off from their main trail down where the top of the maple tree they cut landed. It was a rather steep little trail but the earth the beaver has to cling to as it climbs is rather soft, even for me, it is a pleasure to walk on.
Back down at pond side, I headed to the dam. The pond is getting shallower due to the lack of rain so I scanned the now drying margins of the pond to see what might be there. I noticed a fresh trail out of the pond.
At first glance I thought it led to a little cave, or a big hole, caused by gaps in sandstone rocks under the trunk of a large tree.
Nice place for a beaver, I’d think, but the trail actually went directly up the ridge
A much steeper climb than the trail I had just come down.
With no “thank-you-m’ams” to catch your breath as you climb up it. I kept looking up at the crest of the ridge expecting the leaves of some beaver-cut tree to beckon me on, but the trail went up and over the crest. Then looking down the slope to a shallow gulley behind the ridge, I saw where a beaver nipped some juniper and continued the trail.
The beaver trail ended at the stump of the tree they cut
I looked around and didn’t see any remains of the tree but did see wood chips where the trunk had been cut. I’ll have to take a harder look and try to figure out the type of tree. The beaver had to haul the logs up a slight slope before it could watch them roll down to the pond below.
Exciting things are happening around this pond, at least I am seeing the evidence of it. Then I got back down to the pond and walked a few feet to the dam and saw that the beavers had a trail over the east end of the dam
That ended at the exposed roots of a big ash tree that a beaver gnawed.
Earlier I had seen a trail over the middle of the dam that I thought muskrats might have made.
But in a muddy part of the trail I saw big beaver prints. I looked down the trail toward the old Wildcat Pond which mostly meadow now and I didn’t see any trees a beaver cut.
There must be something good to eat in all that greenery. The trail paralleled the little wallows below the main dam formed by the beavers digging where the original creek flowed. The last two years water always flowed or at least trickled through the wallows and judging how muddy they remained I thought beavers swam through and maintained them. However, now the water in the wallows is stagnant and I don’t think the beavers use them at all.
I sat up in my chair halfway up the west ridge just to see how long I would have to sit there before a beaver hummed or whined. About 15 minutes, and then off and on now and then, sleepy time in the lodge, I assume. The pile of stripped logs behind the lodge continues to grow.
I looked for fresh beaver trails up the west shore of the pond, and couldn’t see any. But the beavers are using the main channel. Through the Last Pool all the old dredging is visible
and now I’ll be able to check to see if the beavers are still dredging.
No comments:
Post a Comment