July 30 Last night we heard some dramatic coyote barking and yipping, and this morning as we walked down the road to White Swamp we saw a small coyote. It was about to cross the road when we came lumbering along. It turned and ran back into the woods. It was a cool sunny day which meant the afternoon was perfect for roaming around to check up on things I have been neglecting. I went to the Teepee Pond via the inner valley where the goldenrod out in the sun is beginning to bloom -- say at one quarter strength. The goldenrod in shady areas seemed to bloom earlier. The valley pool still has a good bit of water in it and the very green grass of the pool is mostly standing in water.
I didn’t see any signs of muskrats, and not many signs of deer either. On the valley side of the pool, the honeysuckle is really taking over but it seems to be moving into the valley not into the pool. The green grass surrounding the Teepee is pretty much in water too.
I couldn’t walk around and find mud near the water and look for tracks. I noticed three patches of pickeral weed and none of them had been trimmed back.
At one there were deer prints nearby in the mud. I used to blame deer for cutting this back every year. Muskrats must have done that. I brought my minnow net up and made a few casts in the Teepee Pond. I didn’t catch any bullheads -- have to come back at night, and only caught shiner fry. I caught one aquatic pond bug, a ferocious looking one.
When I flicked it of the net and back into the water, I noticed that it played dead, stretching out its rear legs and drifting down to the bottom of the pond. The First Pond looked muddier. I couldn’t find a place to cast the net, not only because of vegetation in the pond. The vegetation around the pond is thick including not a few thistles. I simply haven’t been up here enough to beat down the usual paths.
I saw a polliwog in the water. Unlike in other summers, I don’t see any clear indication that anything is eating the pond vegetation, not even turtles. I didn’t see any turtles but the water is probably so warm they don’t need to get out in the sun. I went back to the little pool above the First Pond, and there is no need to rescue stranded tadpoles and salamanders yet. There seems to be plenty of water. Here too much of the grass is in standing water.
And out in a mat of green in the middle of the pool, three green frogs ruled the roost.
I headed up to the turtle bog and it too still has water. Here the thick grass grows almost throughout, so I couldn’t peer down and look for things swimming in the water.
I took an old trail, probably as much a deer trail as mine, to the ridge and then hiked along the ridge to the beaver work above Boundary Pond. I saw a few blooming wood asters on the way.
It didn’t look like a beaver came up since I was last here. I couldn’t see any new work. I took a close-up of the gnawing on the stripped poplar trunk,
and a close up of the gnawing where a beaver pulled out chunks of wood. Did an adult gnaw the chunks and did a yearling just scrape the wood?
Years ago I commenced a study of gnawing like this, but didn’t get very far. So to answer my question, I don’t know. It was a little before 5pm and I decided to try to get down the ridge as quietly as I could and watch the beavers come out of the lodge. I had a hunch that a kit might come out and might come over to the clear pool east of the lodge
and then I could get a perfect photo of it. I made it down the ridge ok, I kept hearing humming from the lodge even after I rattled the now dry leaves. I didn’t have long to wait for a beaver to come out. At first it was hard to tell how big it was, though I could see it wasn’t a kit. Then it left the channel it was swimming up and climbed over a downed trunk and then flopped down into the frogbit. It was an adult and it began eating its way over to a clump of green grass. It briefly climbed up on it. I couldn’t see if it was eating grass, but probably was. Then it waded back into the frogbit and ate its way over to another channel.
From where I was sitting this salad looked delicious with plenty of duckweed in the mix.
The beaver swam up the channel, eating here and there, and slowly made its way up pond where I could no longer see it. Humming continued in the lodge. Then I saw what might have been a kit. Something small charged half way around the lodge, almost splashing as it swam. But it may have been too energetic for a kit. Remember I did see a muskrat here the other day. About 10 minutes later I saw rippling coming from the dam and then I got a glimpse of a beaver, but couldn’t judge the size. The beaver swam right in front of me, but completely under water. I just saw small air bubbles and some welling of the water. When it surfaced in the main channel, 20 yards away from me, it looked most like a yearling. I continued to hear humming which was encouraging, and then when that died down, I was not discouraged. Yesterday the kit went in and out of the lodge without much humming. Sometimes I thought I was hearing humming coming from the dam, but I eased myself over on the rocks and got a perch even with the lodge and after that all humming seemed to come from the lodge. Then birds began to entertain me. First phoebes snagged bugs just off the pond surface, more likely damsel flies than mosquitoes. Then one phoebe dove down an took a bath. That is, it dove a bit more deeply into the water and then flew back to a dead branch and fluffed and preened its feathers. Then a flock of chickadees flew by and, as usual, they weren’t shy about getting close to me.
I also saw a flicker again and heard its cries and chortles. I waited until 6:10 for another beaver to appear and just as I was about to go, one came out of the lodge, quietly enough that I thought it might be a kit. The sun had moved and I was now fully lit up and when I moved to get a better look at the beaver, it saw me before I saw it and it slapped its tail with enough authority that I am sure it was not a kit. Walking back home for dinner, I didn’t see the two beavers I knew were out in the pond. I did see that they had cut down the birch along the Last Pool channel that they had just stripped,
and had cut a log off the end of the downed trunk.
July 31 I cut ironwoods down in the morning and pulled logs out to my sawing rock. I had my camera with me the whole time but saw nothing to photograph. After lunch I went down to the Deep Pond to hammer together some boards for a swimming dock, and not expecting to see much action at 2pm on the a bright sunny day, I didn’t take my camera. As I approached the pond, a great blue heron flew up from the shore, and then a great white heron flew up with. I know that this far north we only have great egrets, but this bird looked exactly like a blue heron except it was white. The blue heron flew away directly, but the white heron flew up above, what a beautiful bird, somewhat lingering and I think I could have gotten a good photo or video if I had had the camera. Maybe it will come back. From now on I’ll always have my camera. We went back to the island and before dinner I kayaked over to South Bay. I paddled directly down the old willow latrine on the north shore of the south cover of the bay. I looked for bryozoa and didn’t see any. The lily pads are looking quite used but there are still blooms and a few spatterdock too. At the latrine I could see that the grass had been knocked down, which deer could do, but deer wouldn’t leave what looked like a strip of black up on some of the matted down grass. I got out of the kayak, and saw that otters had been here leaving three or four scats that the flies were still interested in. The trail through the grass continued back into the marsh, and roughly toward the interior ridge route to the Lost Swamp Pond that I fancy the otters might use. I looked for scats in other places along the bay shore, and saw none, but there might be a trail in the thick grass at the latrine above the entrance to South Bay. As I continue on from the willow latrine, I was entertained by a large flock of swallows snagging bugs just above the trees at the point. Then as I nosed up to one possibly latrine on the south shore of the north cove, I saw a half coiled water snake on a rock. As I paddled down the north cove, I saw that some spatterdock flowers had been cut, and there a few cattails pulled out. There is a beaver foraging here now. On the north shore I saw where it had cut some alders. I don’t think it cut too much more of the huge willow. I didn’t see any turtles, but the birds were quite active. I saw two kingfishers, a sandpiper and a blue jay, and over the point up at the Narrows there was a large flock of seagulls flying over the trees. While I couldn’t see the bugs above the trees, I saw little black bugs on the water, and beige bugs just flying above the surface. I saw a few fish fry jumping but not as many as I’ll see in a few weeks. I saw several osprey flying high, and a couple of great blue herons, not as many as I usually see, and I saw one common tern. The water is warm now and almost as high as it usually is at this time of year. As long as it keeps raining, the water level keeps inching up.
August 1 we were over on the island cleaning up our place for new renters which gave me the chance to bike over to South Bay and hike around to and out on the peninsula to the willow latrine, as I call it, where from the kayak yesterday I saw otter scats. Today I got a photo of the latrine, a nice square of grass stamped down,
With four scats spread throughout. One looked rather fresh.
Yesterday when I saw them the flies seemed interested in all of them. No flies around today. Some of the scats looked a bit older, but they had more scales larded in the black goo.
There was a trail going back into the cattail marsh that fills a little bay scooped out of north shore of the south cove below the big willow.
Before I explored whether I could prove that the otters went inland, I looked back and took a photo the of the latrine with the south cove of South Bay behind it.
I also stuck my camera up high and took a photo of the ridge where I theorize the otters went, or came from.
I’ve watched otters around here since 1994, and seriously tracked them and tried to account for them since 1999. Until this year, seeing fresh scats here in late July would have prompted me to come out at dawn the next day either on foot or in the kayak or boat and look for a mother and her pups. I saw pretty clearly back in 2002, 2003 and 2004, that a mother raised her pups in the marsh. However, my observations of the otter family this year, when I didn’t see evidence that the mother separated from her pups or the pups dispersed with siblings going their separate ways, spawned a crazy theory about this family “mapping” a trail from the Lost Swamp Pond, where they spent most of the winter and spring, to South Bay along the high ridge between what I call the first and second swamps. Especially from 1994 through 2003 there was a path up the creeks through ponds that I assumed was attractive to otters because there were ponds to forage in all along the way. Now most of the old ponds between the Big Pond at the head of the first swamp and the Lost Swamp Pond at the head of the second swamp are relatively dry meadows. Consequently otters might prefer a wooded route. Starting from the Lost Swamp Pond, I twice traced out a route which I based on a “map” I think the otters practiced on. The map is a rock on the south shore of the pond where they began to latrine in the late spring and which they began approaching from the east and climbing up on from the south, not from the north directly out of the pond. Along the ridge between the Lost Swamp Pond and South Bay, there are a series of granite outcrops. As you approach them from the east, if you climb up them from the south, you will stay up on the ridge and not be seduced to go down little valleys that lead you back to the meadows where the going it slow. The trail the otters took from the willow latrine led to a wooded part of the peninsula. The photo below was taken in the woods looking back at the marsh behind the willow latrine.
In other years otters had latrined and fashioned a rolling areas in the dirt under these taller trees, and, I am pretty sure, had trails over to the cattail marsh along the south shore of the north cove of South Bay.
To wit, the otters had a shortcut through the woods of the peninsula from one cove of the bay to the other. Now I am proposing that they have a trail continuing east in the woods heading up the ridge and the Lost Swamp Pond about a half mile away.
While I could see trails through the woods, I know deer frequent this area. Down in this low wooded peninsula, there is a granite outcrop, just like the ones on the ridge and beside the Lost Swamp Pond.
To prove otters used this trail, this “map”, I would have to see either the otters themselves on it, or their scats. So I went up on this rock, and saw no signs that otters had been there. Probably a good thing. Many years ago the hotels at Thousand Island Park dumped their trash here, and broken bottles and cans surround the rock. Coming down from the Lost Swamp Pond, which meant you were going down hill more than up, this route makes a lot more sense. I soon faced going up the ridge, and had to wonder, with no outcrop in view, what prompted an otter to climb?
But I am not pixilated enough to think that otters, like humans, always need maps for long trips. This winter the mother otter had not led her pups on trips through her territory. She confined them to three ponds in the interior of the island. So that is why she rehearsed how to address the rock outcrops. She was preparing them for their trip to the west, to South Bay. Coming back they would already have some familiarity with the route, or so I theorize. Indeed, I couldn’t drive myself to reverse the routes I took down from the Lost Swamp Pond. I did go to the last rock outcrop on the ridge, or the first if you are heading back from the bay to the pond. Last time I was here, I saw some scraping that otters could have done. Today, I saw no hint of scraping much less scats. So, like that, I forsook my route and slipped into a level valley north of the outcrops, which got me to the Lost Swamp Pond. I saw another non-chlorophyll plant on the way. This one had more red in the stalk and the top.
It looked more like the one I saw last year though not as elaborate. As I approached the rock above the mossy cove latrine, I picked up a rather definite trail through the grasses under the trees, but I frequently see deer here. Anyway, this otter map had given me hours of enjoyable speculation, and I was fully prepared to go the rock above the mossy cove latrine, which is the “map”, and find no signs that otters had been there in the last few days. Instead I found a large scat,
And then an array of four smaller scats.
There were two scats going down a ridge in the rock, and a large scat at the base of the rock, and along that line, I could see several scats down in the mossy cove latrine just up from the water.
The scats on top of the rock appeared a bit dry and laced with insect parts. Perhaps a family of skunks was here, and not otters. I went down and got a close-up of some of the scats in the mossy latrine (the otters had scraped away most of the moss long ago.)
A large flat scat looked more like what an otter would leave.
Obviously this could be a coincidence, but in all my years of tracking otters, I have never been able to predict that I would find scats in one spot based on what I saw a half mile away. So once again, I took a photo of the famous rock above the mossy cove latrine, famous at least to a family of otters, perhaps, and me.
Of course, I sat on the rock and looked for otters. Instead I saw the two ospreys often here. I moved up to a rock with a better view of all the pond, and I saw an heron fishing along the south shore of the pond.
I studied the lodge in the southeast end of the pond closely because there was a black line on it. The line never twitched so I assumed it was a shadow, which the photo below shows pretty clearly. (I had forgotten to bring binoculars.)
I saw ducks up there. A kingfisher flew onto a tree in front of me, and then another kingfisher flew into a nearby tree. I walked around the west end of the pond over to the dam along the north shore. I didn’t see any signs of beavers coming up to eat vegetation along the bank, as they had been earlier. There was not even the usual pruning of the underwater vegetation in the pond.
Back up on shore, I saw asters blooms in the middle of a patch ferns.
But today I was looking for otter signs, and there were no lack of them in their old latrines just west of the dam. There were scats on the rocks,
And in the grass between the rocks and the pond.
Here I could sniff the characteristic smell of otter scats. I have no theories about maps here. In the winter, the otters seemed to prefer the lodge on the east side of the dam to the four other lodges in and around the pond, but it certainly didn’t look like otters had rolled on their backs up on that lodge. There were goldenrods blooming on it.
I suppose I should have gone back along the route I think the otters mapped, but it made as much sense to walk down along the Second Swamp Pond and meadows below to make sure there were no signs of otters down there. So I went that way but didn’t do much exploring. I paused to look over the shallow Second Swamp Pond,
but didn’t study the thickly vegetated meadows. I decided that walking in the deeper woods was much easier going because there was less underbrush and fewer sticks to trip over. Since we are not spending much time on the island, I won't be tracking the otters here much, which may be for the best. Perhaps the otter mother did make a map, but she has probably moved on to other tricks for survival. Otters can’t afford to get stuck in a rut, so neither should I.
August 3 I braved the hot and humid afternoon and walked down to Boundary Pond. One beaver at least has renewed its interest in the wallow above the Last Pool. The trail to it was wet, the wallow muddy and fresh mud pushed up on the side.
Too hot to walk into the meadow above the pond to see if a beaver has gone back there again. The one birch the beavers cut along the Last Pool has been completely stripped.
That raises the question of why they do not cut down and strip more. Just a few feet away are birches on which a cut was started but left untouched for weeks.
I noticed that an area of Boundary Pond that I took a photo of a few days ago because it was coated with pollen, now is almost closed over with frog bit.
Their foraging of this vine doesn’t keep up with its spread. I climbed up the ridge trail to check on the poplar crown and saw that beavers had been there stripping and cutting more of the two big branches off the trunk.
Another three feet off the larger of the branches has been cut off and more of the bark stripped off below their last cut.
Judging from the small incisor marks on the trunk, it seems clear that at least one of the yearling beavers is making the climb up to this work. I looked around to see if a beaver is ranging higher up the ridge and did see one small ironwood cut and taken away. It had been sprouting out from the base of the trunk of a larger ironwood.
I sat for a while up on the ridge enjoying the wind. Unlike a week or so ago there was little bird action along the shady ridge. I heard one fledge screeching and a flock of chickadees snagging bugs high in a tree. There was much more action along the shore of the pond. With every step some frogs leaped from the shore into the water. I could not get a photo of this. But after I saw one small frog jump about four feet from the base of a rock just into the water, I took a photo of where it made that impressive leap.
I sat on a rock across from the lodge to see if anything was stirring at 4 pm. I noticed how the beavers tasted two large hemlocks at the same spot, right where a root merged into the trunk.
I began to hear some gnawing in the lodge and by 4:15 I started to hear humming, with one kit continuing more or less nonstop. I waited to see if one of the other beavers would swim out of the lodge to either get something for the kit to eat, or just to get away from the noise. Of course, I hoped the kit itself would come out. As I gazed at the lodge, I noticed something furry on the opposite shore 30 yards away. It looked like a ball of fur to me, then it leapt out on the frogbit of the pond and then quickly back to the shore. I thought it must be a muskrat and then saw it jump up on a tree. It was a grey squirrel, probably after acorns. One must have fallen out on the frogbit. I resolved to leave at 4:45, and thought I might come back after dinner if the wind kept up. Then I saw bubbles in the pond, bubbles in bunches coming toward me. A beaver surfaced in front of me and we were both still, figuring out how to react to each other. I took a photo
and then switched the camera to video. It made a shallow dive, then surfaced and swam slowly in front of me. Then it dove and while under water twisted around and turned and swam back to the lodge. It surfaced looking like it was poised to slap its tail and I wasn’t sure if it dove back into the lodge or over to the far shore, probably the former. I headed home as quietly as I could. Meanwhile the humming in the lodge had stopped. The wind stopped after dinner so I didn’t got out. Sweltering in our little house was no treat either. As I write the wind has picked up again. The birds have more or less stopped singing, even the whip-poor-will. Only the cuckoo makes a show of being around. But now as I write, I hear whistling around the house that reminds of a distempered raccoon that I saw one winter, but it could be a confused bird.
August 4 I braved the heat and humidity to do a bit of arranging at our ponds on our land. Yes, autumn will subdue the excesses of summer, but in August, it’s hard to resist not trying to reclaim some space from this year's virulent growth of plants. But to begin with, I had to shoo off a peeper that planted itself on the seat of my sawdust toilet.
Then I went up to the strip of ground between the First Pond and Teepee Pond, where we used to pitch our tent when we first bought our land back in 1998. Two winters ago a large red cedar there was blown over during a storm, along with a much larger pine tree. Last night I had sat out near the road at 10pm to see if a predicted display of northern lights would appear, no. While sitting there I realized that the mosquitoes are calmer and that August nights are a nice time to watch the stars. So I fancied that the trunk of the downed cedar would make a nice seat upon which to watch both the two ponds and the sky which is a little fuller from that vantage with that pine blown down. So I cut more branches off the trunk, and cleared away nearby honeysuckle bushes. After we stopped using the grassy area between the two ponds, the muskrats often foraged there and sometimes beavers. But the beavers left in 2005 and since then the ponds have not been too popular with muskrats. Consequently various tall plants have subdued the grasses. I don’t mind the vervain, jewelweed, goldenrods and boneset. But I do mind the thistles and ragweed that flourished right beside the downed cedar trunk. Now most of the thistles there are dead -- not sure why.
So I cut and pulled, though it is probably too late in the season for something pleasant to grow there. I also cleared honeysuckles so that from a seat on the trunk, one could get a good view of both ponds.
A large pine branch bobs over the seat which might keep birds from getting a good look at me. A great attraction of being up at those ponds on a moonlit night is the wind in the many surrounding pines. Then I went down to the Deep Pond, with camera ready in case the white heron should be there. There were two blue herons who flew off. Even with camera ready, I just barely got a photo.
From now on I’ll have the camera ready to take video. Then I finished a little portable dock I have been making that I hope will make it easier to swim in the pond. I gave it a try, noted adjustments that needed to be made, and thought the lack of deer flies buzzing my head a good sign. Meanwhile patches of new plants around the Deep Pond that I thought might be pilewort with its fuzzy-never-blooming flower, turn out to have yellow flowers that are slowly coming out.
Walking back around the pond I saw a viceroy butterfly.
Back near the road, I saw galls on some of the sumac branches.
We spent most of the afternoon and early evening back on the island, and I biked over to the state park and then took a slow hike along South Bay. A strong wind made the heat and humidity just bearable. I didn’t go out on the peninsula, and instead checked to see if there were scats in the other otter latrines. There were none in the latrine above the old dock. While there I checked out the huge willow a beaver was cutting, and it seemed like it had given up on that project. From the kayak I had seen some alders the beaver cut, but I couldn’t see them from the shore. Up at the docking rock latrine, I saw one small smear on a leaf, likely a dry otter scat.
I didn’t see any trail up the bank or scraping around the scat. Then I veered up to walk along the Audubon Pond embankment. While the pool below the embankment still looked comfortable for a beaver, and a bit muddy, and evidently something crisscrossed through the duckweed. The beavers seem to have left off trying to cut down the large tree by the dam.
But I didn’t go down to get a closer look. As I pressed on to the otter latrine above the entrance to South Bay, I played hide and seek with a doe,
And was treated to a nice high tail before she crossed a gulley to relative safety.
Looking up at the latrine from the kayak a few days ago, I thought I could see a fresh trail in the grass. Today, standing up on the grass, I could see a neat trail through it with two areas of dead leaves scrapped up.
However, I had to strain to find some scat and the bits I saw looked pretty old, but maybe no more than a week old. It is hard to tell in this baking heat.
So what does finding two relatively old scats in the other latrines mean? Do they have anything to do with the fresher scats at the willow latrine and up at the Lost Swamp Pond? So I headed for the latter otter venue, going by way of the East Trail developments to check on the beavers. As I walked along the East Trail, I looked down on the upper East Trail Pond and still saw channels through the thick vegetation that had water. But the channels were not muddy and I could not see any dredging.
I’ve never been able to see evidence of their eating the vegetation even in the old days when I often saw beavers eating the ferns and bushes there. Trimming a fern or a bush is not like cutting down and stripping a tree. I approached the little pools the beavers dammed up below the foot bridge by walking along the ridge, not the park trail. I saw a beaver trail coming up from the pool onto a little plateau of grass which the beavers evidently have been eating.
The pools are rather low with hardly enough water for a beaver to swim in
and it doesn’t look like they’ve done any more work on the dams that form the small pools,
Nor have they cut any more cattails. But the channel on the other side of the dam, going into the upper East Trail Pond is quite muddy.
When I have the time I’ll have to try to see a beaver here, and in the meantime I should check Thicket Pond and Meander Pond. Beavers might have gone back there. Crossing the boardwalk through the East Trail Pond meadow I didn’t see any hint of a trail to suggest that a beaver might have crossed over to go into the lower East Trail Pond where there is still a pool of water behind the remnants of the old dam. And I didn’t see any beaver work there. I walked down the now dry stream going down from the dam looking for cardinal flowers, which looking from afar, I haven’t seen yet this year. I found two clumps of flowers in the silt, much smaller than usual, and backed by much taller nettles.
These cardinal flowers probably got a late start in areas not yet spread over with nettles. Crossing the Second Swamp Pond dam proved easier than I expected. Deer had made a trail, but it took me well below the dam. Then I had to fight my way through cut grass to get to the otter latrine. The grass is finally over growing it. There were no new otter scats. The pond behind the dam was quite low. However, I remember one August when an otter family found enough fish in such shallows so that they could line the diminishing channels with otter scats.
I headed up the south shore of the Second Swamp Pond to get to the Lost Swamp Pond dam, and paid more attention to the black raspberries than to the ospreys up on the dead tree behind the dam. The osprey kept flying around and I took a photo of one perched on the highest point of another dead tree.
Looking over the arrays of scat again, spread on rocks and grass just down from the dam, I got the impression that there was more scat, but I’ll have to study the photos I took two days ago.
And I was wrong, studying the photos I can see there were no new scats. I walked around the west end of the pond to the rock above the mossy cove latrine. I didn’t notice any more scats on the piney plateau, but on the rock itself sloping down the mossy cove latrine proper I saw two new scats down the ridge and saw more scat on top of the scat that I saw on the steeper incline of the rock.
But when I went to take close ups photos of these new scats, I saw that they were dry and composed of blackened insect parts. Even more than two days ago, these looked like skunk scats. When I put my foot on one, it immediately collapsed so that a strong wind would blow it all away.
The usual otter scat flattens with a crunch and fish scales have more weight and tendency to stick. The best solution to my problem would be to look out and see otters. I moved up to a rock with a better view of the pond, but only saw ducks up around the beaver lodge in the southeast reach of the pond. The ducks didn’t help me with my problem. The duck weed and other pond vegetation below the mossy cove latrine was crisscrossed like something had foraged through it, but ducks could have done that as easily as otters.
So? Some of the fresh scats here are, I think, from otters. I remember another summer when there was a drought that I saw scats filled with insect parts and I kept wanting to attribute them to otters. But during a drought, ponds must attract all the animals around. I have never seen a skunk here but once when I hiked around with my brother’s German shepherd, unleashed, I began smelling skunks in areas where I had never seen them. While we don’t have a drought this year, there are few ponds left. Most of the old ones have become meadows. So at this time of year, why wouldn’t skunks come to the ponds? On the other hand, one August when there was no drought, and plenty of fish in the ponds, I saw otter pups snapping at the insects flying above the grasses. Otters are known to eat insect larva that they find in ponds. However, that an otter would leave a scat completely filled with insect parts is hard to believe. Scats like that are typical for skunks. I thought a good way to settle the argument would be to go over to the Big Pond otter latrines and see if there were scats there. But it was hot and it was getting late. So I once again followed the otter “map” and walked west on the ridge following the rule of that map: approach all rock outcrops from the south and continue west. I was once again amazed at how easy this made the trek back to South Bay. I had another thought: coyotes typically gain the rocky crests to get a commanding view of what might be below (or so it seems to me from some winter tracking I have done.) An otter out of its watery element might want to quickly claim every height just to make a sure a coyote is not already there. I flushed one small deer along the way. I also fell into a perceptible trail through the grasses, which was encouraging.
But the trail soon headed down into a valley, not following the map rule. I looked on the last flat rock for otter signs but saw none.
August 5 At our land, just 52 acres, I am trying to embrace the summer. On this morning’s walk I saw a beautiful flower on a vine.
But on the island where I range 3 miles or so on a typical hike, I beeline to otter latrines and bend over scats as sweat drips from my brow. Or so I did today. When I got to the latrine south of the Big Pond, I saw in an instant that something had scrapped up grass and scatted.
Looking down from three feet it looked like otter scat and closer to the pond there was a spray of more scats, as otters typically do.
I went to other side of the fallen tree I often sit on going a bit below the dam, and there were scats there too.
Then I looked a yard of so beyond, even more behind the dam, where I saw mounds of grass and scats a few weeks ago. There were no new mounds but there was a large scat which I thought looked new. While the scats I had seen so far looked like typical otter smears. This scat had collapsed into a pile of insect parts.
It seems relying only on scat identification in the summer puts ones observations on rather flakey grounds. Were the other scats I saw here otter scats and was this a skunk scat? Or was this evidence that the otters are gorging on insects too? So I was on my knees, sweating over the smaller scats I assumed were otter scats. Could I find some fish scales? I found bits of bones
But couldn’t tell if they were from fish, fowl or mouse. My philosophy of tracking is not to twist the evidence garnered in any one day too much, and hope the next day's observations will make a clearer picture.
After dinner I headed to Boundary Pond just as a small thunderstorm moved east of us. We got a few raindrops. I went via Grouse Alley and got rather close to a woodcock that was probing the loose dirt under a large hemlock. I kept away from Boundary Pond until I got to our boundary line then I went over to the crest of the ridge and down to my chair. There was a thick stripped log behind the dam. I bet it came from the poplar up on the ridge.
All seemed quiet and then I saw a kit in back of the lodge. I was fussing with some mosquito netting that I was trying to put around the back of my head and when I got the camera out, the kit dove and swam back to the lodge. While it was still out in the pond, I heard a kit whining inside the lodge. So there are at least two kits. Then I saw bubbles coming out of the lodge, and a kit surfaced about 5 yards from the back of the lodge. It snagged a leafy branch and dove, before I could get the camera set. It might have been trying to get the branch into the lodge but stopped struggling. It probably nipped off a leaf or small twig and took that back into the lodge. Then two larger beavers came out, one after another. One swam up pond and the other swam over to the dam and climbed up on it. It nipped leaves and twigs on shrubs just below the dam.
Then it picked up a long stick from the dam, took it into the water, swam back to the lodge and dove with the stick like it was trying to take it into the lodge. Three-fourths of the stick remained underwater, but the rest stuck out. Then a kit came out for a third time and I had the camera on it long enough to get one photo and a brief video of it worrying some sticks, then itdove back into the lodge after having accomplished nothing, as far as I could see. For the first 45 minutes I sat there, the lodge was very noisy with whining, hums and glugs. I haven’t discerned any behavior related to the pitch or tempo of the humming. A kit leaving or entering the lodge didn’t seem to hum and the humming of beavers in the lodge didn’t seem to change with the kits' absence or return. Adults leaving or entering didn’t seem to make a difference either. I saw a kit briefly three times in the first 30 minutes. But then just when I was poised to see more interesting behavior, kits stopped coming out. An adult came out and dove under the frogbit, then swam into it for a meal.
Meanwhile the cedar waxwings going after insects were getting closer to me. Tonight there seemed to be more by-play between birds. Perhaps there were fewer mosquitoes and the birds had to bug each other. I also heard the buzz of a hummingbird. Then just as it was getting too dark to see, something small popped out in the water behind the lodge and swam quickly up the channel. Unless a muskrat is still around that was a kit. I couldn’t tell how far it swam up the channel and I waited for it to come back and got my camcorder ready. Then a beaver came back down the channel, but not a kit. It was carrying a small stick in its mouth, that looked stripped, and he took to the dam. Too dark to see exactly what it did with it.
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