August 15 I had a chance to make a quick hike to the East Trail to see if the beavers were still there. There was a light rain most of the way which provided a nice accompaniment because most of the way I was under trees. But the rain limited my photographic explorations. At the little causeway on the South Bay trail there was a flock of noisy blue jays. Due to the lack of rain both pools were very low and there has been no more gnawing on the red maples above the upper pool.
There was plenty of mud exposed around the lower pool and the only tracks on it were from raccoons.
And the channel over the dam going into the thick vegetation of the upper East Trail Pond marsh no longer looks muddy. So I think the beavers have left. I didn’t scout the upper pond as well as I should but looking from the high ridge I didn’t see any beaver work, and in wet cloudy conditions it is easier to spot fresh beaver gnaws. I walked along the south side of Teepee Pond which as usual at this time of year gives the impression of not being a pond at all.
But off and on from 1999, beavers have summered there. But when they do summer there, there are trails up through the vegetation around the pond up into the woods, and there are none now, save a deer trail or raccoon poking into the vegetation here and there. I could get across the slope between Thicket Pond and Meander Pond by walking under the few trees there. I walked up the trail between the ponds, which didn’t show evidence of beaver use. Then as I walked up toward Thicket Pond, I saw a black furry animal sniffing the ground in an circular area without any high plants. It quickly jumped over a log and disappeared going up a small trail to Thicket Pond. I didn’t see or hear it go into the pond. It had a somewhat spade shaped tail. It wasn’t a beaver nor a muskrat. The tail shape suggests otter but otter pups aren’t that plump at this time of year and I would have heard an otter go into the water. I’ve seen many baby and small porcupines and it was much too agile. I looked at what it was sniffing over. Seeing scat on a wet cloudy day is not easy. However what little I could see reminded me of what I’ve come to think is skunk scat,
And if baby skunks don’t have markings, maybe it was a baby skunk. But I’ll have to check the books on that. Last August while sitting by nearby Meander Pond I heard screeching which was not unlike otters but then, I ascribed it to osprey flying off that I didn’t see. Of course, I sat for several minutes a bit away from the pond to see if anything would stir, nothing did, and then I walked back to the pond, which does have water in it, with less surface vegetation under the buttonbushes.
The problems with otters being here is that there are no fish in the pond to my knowledge. Osprey come here only to get away from the crowd and pick at the bullhead in their claw. I have noticed that non-aquatic mammals can ran toward a pond to escape. I’ve seen groundhogs do that. They don’t go into the pond but disappear into the vegetation, and here it is very thick. Another mystery, but the main mystery remains: where are the beavers? Judging by the state of the path going down to Meander Pond, almost imperceptible, and the clear water in the well vegetated channel, I don’t think beavers, or otters for that matter, have been going down it.
Walking around the pond, along the north slope, I saw only one thing a beaver could possibly have done. The bark on a half down ash tree had been scraped.
Porcupines don’t touch ash, but a deer might do that, or, since the scraping is on the surface, a woodpecker might have worked it over. Next I walked through a thriving patch of a flowering plant that I’ll have to look up.
I was surprised to find a bit of a trail through the vegetation around the pond, probably made by deer. The pool of water behind the dam looked unused,
And the dam was thick with vegetation. Beavers, muskrats, or otters would have tamed that a bit.
I continued around the south side of the pond and stopped wondering where the canal coming off the south pool of the pond was. I looked down and I was about to step into it.
Vegetation is hiding everything. I went up into the woods and angled back to the East Trail and then the South Bay trail. As I headed up Antler Trail, I saw a doe and a fawn together. They saw me first and rushed off, going their separate ways, before I could get my camera out.
We had dinner at our land, and Ottoleo and Justin joined us. It was dark and almost rainy evening, but still light enough for us to see beavers around the Boundary Pond lodge. The better eyes of the younger men were a help, and they knew what to look for. I first took these two out together in 1997 when they were 10 years old to look for otters. They saw a beaver swimming down the pond and then I saw it well enough just before it went to the lodge to identify it as an adult. Soon after a yearling came out and swam out pond. I promised they’d see kits, and they did. One came out, looked around and then dove back into the lodge. Then an adult came out of the lodge to gnaw on the pile of logs behind the lodge. A kit soon came out and instead of the kit bothering the adult, the kit led the adult up the main channel. We soon followed going along the ridge and then down beside the Last Pool, and adult and kit were there, quiet, evidently having as hard enough time seeing us as we had seeing them and pondering what to do about it. We headed back for dessert.
August 16 we had a few light showers yesterday, then finally had a heavy but too brief downpour last night, probably around 4am. Just after the downpour stopped I heard the screeching whine of a porcupine. This morning we heard more whines and saw two porcupine squared off on a high branch in the scarlet oak next to my sawing rock.
As often happens when porcupines square off, one had backed the other almost to the end of the branch. But they were quiet for the next hour. Then we left and did chores elsewhere. When we got back, I remembered the porcupinea at about 5pm. They were on the same branch but farther apart.
That didn’t seem to make the one at the end of the branch look any more comfortable. It looked a bit like a baboon at its ease, but porcupines never seem comfortable when they are standing.
I was beginning to fear that we might have a noisy night, but then we heard some whining and crawling on the branch. By 7 pm they seemed to have reached a denouement that might promise a quiet evening. The porcupine that had been nearer the trunk was now on a higher branch seemingly sleeping as its body was flat on the branch and its legs hanging limply over the branch. The other porcupine was still on the end of the other branch and still alert, but not standing.
At 7:30 I headed off to watch the beavers. I didn’t have long to wait to hear humming from the lodge. Then a kit came out of the back entrance, took a quick look around and dove back into the lodge. Then a yearling surfaced behind the lodge and went directly up the main channel heading toward the Last Pool the last I saw it. Then I saw ripples suggesting that a beaver came out the east entrance to the lodge, which is very difficult to see from where I sit. I expected a kit to come swimming around the lodge, but nothing did, so either the beaver went back into the lodge or it swam under water up the channel along the shaded east shore of the pond. All the while I could hear kits humming in the lodge. Finally a kit came out and stayed, wrestling with sticks behind the lodge that were half underwater. It kept diving too and just when I thought it might have gone back into the lodge, it popped back up. Then it positioned itself to gnaw the logs piled at the back of the lodge, most of which looked stripped.
Now and then I heard another kit humming from inside the lodge and finally the other kit emerged. It surfaced well behind the lodge, got its bearings and then swam slowly over to the other kit. It was too dark to use the camera so I switched to the camcorder. The kit at the logs turned and the two kits met nose to nose.
Then the shoving match began. They treated me to the best beaver shoving match I’ve ever seen, even though it seemed that the kit that had just come out of the lodge was stronger than the other.
When over powered and pushed down underwater, the weaker kit would dive away, pivot underwater, brandishing its tail up high and then try to mount another shove. During the match neither made a sound that I could hear, and only the crickets were singing tonight. The overmatched kit swam up the channel, in the usual sprightly manner of a kit, and seemed to know where it wanted to go. It veered left up a channel through the frogbit then headed to the west shore. Then it clambered over the frogbit and I lost sight of it as it approached the shore. The victorious kit had the logs behind the lodge to itself and for a while it made the most of it. Then it swam up the channel but rather slowly for a kit. It stopped and with both tail and nose up pointed itself toward the west shore. Then it swam a bit about pond and paused again to catch the scent or sound of something. Of course, I first fancied that it felt lonely and wanted to find its sibling or a parent or a yearling, but perhaps not. It turned and swam up a channel toward the north shore and then paused at a shrub, or so it looked to me, and reached up and started trying to cut it down. Unfortunately, due to the distance and darkness I couldn’t see it well. It cut a twig almost as big as itself and brought it back down the channel, floated behind the lodge, and ate all the leaves off the twig. I was impressed. Then just before it got too dark, I spied the other kit. It was down off the west shore in the middle of the frogbit munching just a yard or so from an adult beaver also munching frogbit. All this was well satisfying but I think I am reaching that time of year when I better position myself away from the lodge and hope to get some good sightings of the kits foraging. But this pond and the Last Pool are a long stretch and I’ll have to think about the best place to position myself. Meanwhile, Leslie reported that the porcupine started screeching. More to keep too many boughs from being nipped on the oak than to keep the porcupines quiet, she banged some metal. Both stayed in the tree, but I didn’t hear them at all during the night, only the usual whip-poor-will and then the cuckoo in the early dawn.
August 18 yesterday morning we checked on the porcupines. They were quiet during the night, and only one remained up the tree. I think it was the one that had been at the far end of the branch. It looked grayer and because of that looked a bit chastened.
I worked at my sawing rock just under it for most of the morning and didn’t budge. Today I finished another round of sawing ironwood logs into sizes convenient for splitting. Now I need to collect some ash tree logs. So I headed up to my sawing rock near the Teepee Pond going via the inner valley. I paused to take a photo of the blooming goldenrods in the inner valley which are at their peak.
Of course, I veered over to check the valley pool and saw that it still has water, which was quite muddy. The grasses that grow in this pool usually collapse, but never so artfully as this year.
Usually the path to this pond from the Teepee Pond loses its water and stays muddy for a while, but the water continues to puddle in the path so I couldn’t see tracks that showed which animals were making the pond muddy. I assume deer are, maybe raccoons, and, I hope, some muskrats. I found a dead ash tree on the ridge southeast of the Teepee Pond and cut it down but much of it was too far gone. There’s a nearby ash that looks to be dead save for one branch sporting leaves. I think I might cut it anyway because woodpeckers are digging into the dead branches. The trail between the First Pond and Teepee Pond is muddy, and I saw the trail of a muskrat dragging its tail, I think.
Or perhaps dragging a stick. And those could be raccoon tracks. Actually I was hoping that was a turtle dragging its tail. It’s almost late enough in the year for Blanding’s turtles to reappear. The First Pond remains muddy and looks much as it has all summer. No obvious signs of a muskrat living or foraging there.
I did find some dead or almost dead ash trees around the pond. The little pool above the First Pond has dried out.
Raccoons and a fawn left prints in the mud. I didn’t see the remains of tadpoles so perhaps everything living in this vernal pool matured and left when the pond dried up.
I went back to the tip of our land by the road, back where the beavers who lodged in the First Pond between 2001-5 went back and felled a few big poplars. I remembered that I cut one down myself worried that the beavers would cut that tree down and it would block the road. After lunch I went to check on the beavers’ lumbering, which is not the proper word since they do eat the bark, twigs and leaves of what they cut. It was a cloudy but bright day so there was even and relatively good light at the end of the beaver trail off the valley into the woods along the west slope of the ridge. Today, I clearly saw that the beavers have been coming back to haul out what they cut and to cut more. The long pole of a trunk that they had only trimmed the top off was now all gone.
Last time I was here I saw where they cut a small tree a bit down the slope from that trunk. Today I saw that they cut another small tree farther down and along the slope.
And I am pretty sure they are cutting more juniper to make their trail more comfortable and more saplings here and there. However, back at the Last Pool where this trail ends, there are no piles of stripped logs and sticks. So the beavers are probably hauling what they bring down the trail all the way back to the lodge. The wallow above the Last Pool has no water but the dirt is wet enough to show tracks, so I could see that no beavers had gone up or come down that trail, only raccoons. The beavers have not resumed work on the poplar they started cutting last year and that they began cutting again a few weeks ago. A little more gnawing would bring it down, but instead a beaver is now well on the way to cutting down the bigger poplar a few yards up that they started cutting a week ago.
Looking back down toward the Last Pool, I saw that a beaver has a good start on girdling a fairly large elm by the edge of the pool.
Then down along the main channel of the Last Pool, I saw that one of the curly birches that they had started cutting a few months ago and then resumed cutting, had been cut to a point.
Unfortunately for the beavers its forked crown straddled the kind of birch they don’t relish as much, a gray birch. (What we call “curly birch“ is probably yellow birch.) A beaver nosed over to a much larger curly birch and nipped some of its exposed roots.
As I walked down the channel between the Last Pool and Boundary Pond, I saw where it looked like a beaver had cleared away some of the frogbit, done a little dredging, and even left a twig of leaves to nibble.
That might be a good spot to watch for kits. Then back in the woods, but still on the flat of the valley, I saw that a beaver had begun to girdle a beech tree.
I tried to protect it as best I could with rocks and logs at hand. Then back along the shore of Boundary Pond, I saw that another elm was being girdled and the gnawing on a small ash tree had started again.
I can’t help but get the impression that with the kits now having the freedom of the pond, all the beavers are enjoying girdling trees once again, though I haven’t seen the kits doing any girdling yet. Early in the summer the beavers girdled the hemlocks around a hollowed out birch trunk, which I thought quite artistic. Now they’ve stripped a little bark off the huge trunk in the middle, a nice touch.
I headed up the ridge to see if the beavers are still working up there and I don’t think they’ve cut and taken away any more of the poplar. They didn’t do any more girdling on a nearby white oak. It was a hot humid day and I didn’t relish going down the ridge and then back up the other trail the beavers made. Then it dawned on me that I could just walk along the ridge. I congratulated myself on my brilliance all the short way and then I seemed to get lost. I seemed to be too high up on the ridge and couldn’t pick up the trail. I had just crossed the boundary of our land so I wasn’t familiar with the area. Then when I went over the east side of the ridge expecting to see the stump of the tree I saw the other day, I seemed completely lost. I discovered a rather deep gully that even had a little puddle of water in it.
These ridges have this little gullies stopping and starting, but none as deep as this. I walked a bit down into it, anticipating how interesting it might be in the spring. Then I looked back toward our land and I saw that a beaver was starting to cut a poplar
and that a bit farther up the gully that another poplar had been cut down.
The branches of the crown dangled above the slope but the beaver didn't cut much of that, as far as I could see.
I was astounded at seeing this. I’ve learned about beavers by watching them on Wellesley Island as they kept cutting trees. Yet I’ve seen them survive and so in my thinking I’ve highlighted the beavers’ reliance on grasses, shrubs, duckweed, cattails, frogbit, even pollen, and then I stumble onto this heroic lumbering. My increasingly niggardly calculations of the beavers’ foraging habits has made me underestimate the imagination of these beavers. Certainly when it comes to ferreting out trees, the beavers’ wit and energy surpasses mind. Continuing back toward out land, going up a slope, I found the oak stump I was looking for, and now another one next to it.
Before going down the ridge, I had to sit down and think about this. I don’t know if I’ve seen evidence of a beaver going so far from any sense of a pond. Perhaps there is a two year still with the family, and it ranges far in anticipation of its leaving the colony, but why go to such heroic heights? Or is it simply a lust for aspen poplar and these up on the ridge are more desirable than those down in the valley? On Wellesley Island I know of stands of poplar that I think are within range of neighboring beavers but they’ve never sampled them. And there is a certain element of safety about being up on a ridge. A beaver’s low center of gravity probably serves it well galloping down a ridge while a bobcat or coyote might have a tendency to tumble. I went down the ridge trail to the pond and glanced over at the dam and below, didn’t look like any new excitement down there, and I wasn’t looking for new excitements.
August 19 walking down the road in the morning I saw a big green caterpillar.
Then I worked too hard sawing down and wrestling ash trees. I get more firewood, and more respect for beavers. Get your nose close to the ground and the woods gets more complicated, the meadows are probably more complicated still but I don’t think I’ll ever get down to that level of beaver understanding. A squally front came through but we were cheated out of any rain. It was too windy all day for rain to concentrate. Then after dinner I took Ottoleo and his girl friend out to see the beavers. As a courtesy to my companions on what was going to be a very shore hike -- about a half hour, I didn’t take my cameras. There’s a pleasure in sharing a vision and I seldom get that chance. The beavers put on a good show. When we got to my chair half way up the ridge west of the lodge, two adult beavers were relatively close together chomping the frog bit. Having young eyes with you helps. They saw them first and they first saw a kit swimming down the channel to the lodge. The kit climbed up on the pile of logs behind the lodge and did some gnawing, but soon enough lost interest and dove into the lodge. It was not greeted by humming which suggested that the other kit was out in the pond. Soon Ottoleo said he saw one over along the east shore, but I couldn’t see it. One of the adults swam back to the channel but didn’t come down to the lodge, not sure where it went. Then a kit came out of the lodge and swam up the channel and directly over to other adult where it hummed several times, and then swam back to the channel and then, I think, over to the far shore. It was getting dark and the mosquitoes were not inactive. So we headed back. I took them along the ridge and then down to the Last Pool. There we saw a beaver, probably a yearling, up in the grass west of the channel. Perhaps it sensed us, but it made a leisurely waddle back to the channel. Then one of the kits swam up the channel and into the Last Pool. Then it sensed us and swam away, but not back down the channel. Then we heard a splash at the upper shore of the pool. A small muskrat swam smartly down in front of us, stopped to study our scent and then made one of those snap dives with a curt splash that always seems to suggest how insignificant a threat a muskrat makes me out to be. The muskrat’s heroics seemed to embolden the kit to come back and it assumed that place in the pool that the muskrat vacated and as it nosed us, its tail curled up behind it. I made a soft hum and that didn’t impress. It turned and swam away. This was a very nice viewing of the beaver family; my guests enjoyed it but I’m left with squaring it with the heroic ridge climbing and tree cutting that I keep discovering.
August 20 with my right hand sore from pumping water for the gardens and sawing, I took a break from that and scouted around to find suitable dead ash trees to cut. I remembered that there were several large ash trees where I had cut ironwoods in the spring. Ash trees sometimes don’t get their leaves until June, so in the spring, you can’t assume that an ash tree without buds or leaves is dead. After I ascertained that there were some dead ashes there, I continued along the ridge heading down to where the beavers have been cutting oaks and poplars. When we first bought the land in 1998, this ridge was easier to negotiate than the ridge to the west. But thanks to my watching beavers along that west ridge these last three years, I have easy trails along that ridge, while the east ridge gets overgrown. I think there have been less deer on our land in the last three years and their trails on this ridge are disappearing. So, once again, beavers are prompting me to become better acquainted with our land. I found the head of the gully leading down to the new beaver work I discovered the other day. It was a nice little grove of white oaks, including one venerable, and good sized tree.
I turned back and took a photo to show the beaver trail down into the gully.
Then I walked down to the poplar the beavers just cut down, and took a photo to show its situation in the gully. I don’t think a beaver has been back here since I was last here.
I continued down to the poplar that has only a few gnaws and cuts on the trunk. Judging from the size of a chip of wood at the base of the trunk, an adult beaver is doing the work.
Then I continued down to the bottom of the gulley where there is still a puddle of water, and a lush garden of plants in the rotting upper side of a fallen trunk, most of which had probably been under water during the spring.
Then I went down the ridge on the beaver trail, veering to the side a few times where the trail was too steep. I stood with an ear cocked toward the lodge, and in a few minutes I heard some kit hums. Then I headed up the pond. I noticed the remnants of a white oak trunk. The tree must have died several years ago, and the beavers had nothing to do with it; no gnawing on the trunk and where it stands has never been flooded. Several yards farther up pond there is a white oak that the beavers just girdled, which is dying quickly.
I should able to saw it down which should provide some good firewood. A beaver did sniff around the curly birch that has been cut but is hanging up in another tree. No signs that it tried to address that problem, but it did gnaw a bit more of the roots of the curly birch next to it.
It didn’t look like the poplars along the Last Pool had been revisited by beavers, but I think they cut another small prickly ash nearby. Fortunately for tender skin most prickly ashes are small. I saw a beaver print in the mud of the wallow above the Last Pool and that pool was rather muddy and a fat maple leaf lay on the trail the beavers are taking as they bring down the saplings they cut along the ridge 50 yards up pond.
Half way up that trail to where they are cutting a trees, I saw a cut sapling on the trail.
Once into the woods along the ridge I saw that the beavers had expanded their foraging, taking some smaller maple saplings.
After dinner I went to watch the beavers, going with Ottoleo and his friend again. This time I took my cameras. We went to the ridge above the lodge and all was quiet at first. Then a kit popped out in the water behind the lodge and quickly swam up the pond taking the main channel. There were no sounds from the lodge so I kept looking up pond, assuming all the beavers were out. Finally I was able to focus on an adult munching frogbit not far up pond.
It didn’t move much, didn’t have to because the vines were so thick. Then we heard kit humming in the lodge. Something came out of the entrance on the east side of the lodge, hard for us to see, and I think it went back into the lodge. After several minutes a kit came out of the back entrance that we could easily see. It swam up the main channel and then curved around and followed a channel over to the west shore. It stretched up to bite leaves sprouting out of a stump and then tried to get through a patch of frogbit and get a grip on that. As usual with kits there were some clumsy splashes and awkward reaches of high bent tail, but the mouth was usually moving and presumably getting something to eat. Then we heard a splash along the west shore, and soon enough an adult beaver pulled a sapling into the pond and started eating its leaves and bark. A yearling materialized over in the east end of the pond and swam over to the sapling. The adult gave what sounded like a stern hum, I presume warning the yearling away. That only attracted the attention of the kit munching frogbit and it got back into the main channel and hurried up toward adult. As it approached it passed the yearling who was heading back to the east shore with a stick in its mouth. We don’t think it got any piece of the fresh sapling so perhaps it fished a consolation prize off the pond bottom if it didn’t make a feint underwater and get a bit of the sapling. The kit approached with loud plaintive whines that became insistent. The adult, again, did not seem pleased and seemed to yank what it was gnawing away from the kit but it may have been just adjusting its gnawing so the kit could get a share, and the kit did settle down and start gnawing on the sapling. We quit our seats on the ridge and eased on over to get a better look at the two beavers. With three people moving through dead leaves, quiet as we tried to be, the adult must have known we were there. And when we looked down its head was up and it had stopped gnawing. The kit meanwhile gnawed on.
The adult then pulled back from the sapling and swam behind the kit and back into the middle of the pond. I guess it decided we were no threat to the kit. Then as we continued up pond we saw another adult and kit paired together, both gnawing frogbit a few feet from each other.
Ottoleo saw a third beaver, but it was too dark for me to see it. This was good viewing and a good show for my guests.
August 21 since we are going away tomorrow, we spent the night on the island which gave me a chance to try to figure out where the beavers who moved to the East Trail Pond went since they evidently left there. Ottoleo and Justin joined me and they were not so beaver-obsessed as I. Ottoleo noticed some old bones among some dying mosses on a rock face along Antler Trail, where we flushed two does on our way. Then we saw some relatively deep holes in some dirt that filled gaps in the rock.
Of course, skunks are on my mind but would there be many buried insect larvae here? (Justin did see some grasshoppers about.) I have noticed fox scats up there over the years. Maybe a fox dug out some old bones. As we headed into the woods along the ridge, where, over the years, grouse have made their dust baths, I found a good example of that.
I looked for and found the strange non-chlorophyll plants I’ve been seeing. Then we got some sweet berries at the top of the gully made by the sometimes stream down to the swamp. And then at the bottom of the gully, we found a small dead coyote.
When I first got a glimpse of the carcass I thought it would be a fawn killed by a coyote. I saw one year several years ago, near that spot. I warned the boys not to touch the carcass. Ottoleo got a log and flipped it over, but we couldn’t see any bullet hole or other evidence of trauma. The mouth on the flip side looked snarled.
Justin thought that was just a result of the head being pressed down on the ground. While rigor mortis had set in, the crows had not picked out the eyeballs. It probably died last night. It didn’t look emaciated. We worried that it might have been poisoned. A nearby organic farmer who has chickens has been complaining about coyotes. We continued on to the Big Pond dam and the south end was very muddy. I assumed muskrats raised the mud because we could see a line of chewed water plants.
However, on the nearby tree trunk perch there was dry and smeared scat.
I am weary of puzzling over scat here, and I didn’t see any more. So I led the boys along the dam. The beaver nooks along the dam looked about the same as I last saw them. No fresh beaver work,
Then it began to rain rather hard. We got to the ridge over looking the Last Swamp Pond and sat under trees. Then we moved to the rock over the mossy cove latrine, still raining. I saw no new scats there. Still raining. I told the boys about my otter map theory. Still raining. Ottoleo tried to follow the "map." This was the dry route back to civilization. Ottoleo did pretty well, needing only one correction when he strayed too far to the north.We didn't see any otter signs, but did see a nice spread of spider webs in the wet grass along the ridge under the tall trees
No comments:
Post a Comment