September 17 we had a good inch of rain yesterday which wasn’t good for my plans. I wanted to get out and see if there was more fresh otter scats around the beaver ponds. Leslie and I biked over to the state park entrance and we took my so-called otter map route up to the Lost Swamp Pond. I didn’t follow the “map” that well because I got distracted over to the south by a rock standing sentinel on a cut of granite in the middle of nowhere but looking so important.
At the mossy cove latrine, I had my usual dance over fresh poop equivocating over the depositor. There was a dollop of smooth brown poop next the stringy otter scat I saw there the other day.
Otters do leave poop like this and as it dries one can begin to see fish scales. Leslie had no doubt that otters had been here. Down on the dirt closer to the water there was the same type of poop on top of old goose poop,
Which gets one to thinking about geese with loose stools, or raccoons…. We went over to the Lost Swamp Pond dam, well I did, Leslie enjoyed the bur-marigolds surrounding the lower ponds. On the way we saw a stately mushroom that Leslie identified as a shaggy-mane.
I didn’t see any gooey brown poop in the otter latrines by the dam, nor did I see any signs of beaver activity there. I left Leslie with the bur-marigold, where she also saw some high flying red-tailed hawks. I went to the Big Pond dam, tipped my hat at the closed gentian I’ve been seeing there and followed the deer trail along the dam. I saw two deer in the woods before I got to the meadow around the pond. At the north end of the dam, the water behind it was a bit muddy and it looked like something had been eating the frogbit there.
Deer, muskrats, or beavers could have done that. I didn’t see any other signs of the latter two. Up at where I saw fresh otter scats a few days ago, I saw what looked like fresh scat on top of what had been there. Here comparing photos is called for, and the top photo is what I saw today, the bottom what I saw on the 14th.
So I think what happened was that the older scat had been washed out by the rain and then an otter returned and scatted on roughly the same spot. There was another scat nearby, also fresh, about where a second scat was deposited on the 14th.
Anyway an otter or two is around. There were also some beige spots on the perch where I usually sit, and that too could have come from an otter.
I stood back to show a better view of this rather cozy area for an otter to latrine. There was another curiosity in the water behind the latrine, many small green seeds floating in the water.
I told myself to find the plant the seeds came from, but then I got distracted by looking for beaver signs. I plowed through the meadow below the dam to see if beavers had made any trails. No. This is a good time to plow through meadows. I tried to take a photo of a purple aster but the golden rods upstaged its blooms.
Then I headed back to South Bay and out to the willow latrine along the north shore of the south cove where I saw fresh otter scat and scratching on the 15th. I was in my kayak then and didn’t have a camera. Now I could take a photo of what I saw
And once again it wasn’t easy finding the scat.
I took photos looking back at the water,
And in toward the marsh which I theorize the otters skirt and then get to woods where it is easier to travel at this time of year.
There were no fresh otter signs which supports my idea that an otter swam here, despite the shallow water in the cove, and then went up to the beaver ponds.
We went to spend the night at our land. After I took another chair down to the Deep Pond, where I saw a beautiful butterfly in the surrounding meadow,
I hurried out to see how much of the fallen poplar the beavers ate. I expected to see some big branches already cut, but instead found that the beavers only trimmed off some small branches hanging down into the water,
And trimmed the same size fare up on the land.
I took photos of where I expected to see some vigor gnawing, the tangle of branches in the center of the crown,
And what looks like an orderly array of branches just off the east shore of the pond.
I continued around the pond not expecting to and not seeing fresh gnawing on other beaver projects. I sat by the lodge where there was no evidence of poplars being brought down. Just before 5pm I heard some hums from inside the lodge, an adult, and then a few minutes later I heard the kit whine. It struck me that the beavers were probably back on an early schedule. So at 6:20 I took the short walk down Grouse Alley, flushing a grouse from a tree along the way, and looked down at the Last Pool. I saw the water rippling but couldn’t see any beavers in the tangle of branches. Then a beaver appeared pulling a branch. I kept looking for it to continue down the pond, but I couldn’t see it so it may have parked the branch at a more convenient place for stripping. I found a good rock to sit on which afforded a good view of the middle of the little pond. I couldn’t see the beavers gnawing but I could see them going to and from the work. A few minutes after I eased back on the rock, a beaver surfaced in front of me and looked in my direction. It then swam up a canal angling toward me and away from the poplar. It was checking me out, I guess. Then it turned and headed down pond
I thought it was going to swim away but instead it turned like it was following a V-shaped channel and went back up into the poplar and I soon heard gnawing. I also heard the whining of a kit, though I don’t think the beaver I saw was the kit. Then another beaver swam up into the pool and veered over to the east shore where I couldn’t quite see it, though I thought I saw it rearing up as if it was trying to cut an overhanging branch. Here I was kibitzing on a beaver paradise, and I expected to see a bit more activity, but I suppose because it was a paradise of a full pool of water with poplar branches and leaves within easy reach, the beavers didn’t have to hurry their pleasure. I soon saw another beaver go over to the east shore, so I think there were four there, but all out of sight. I headed back for my dinner before it got dark.
September 18 we had a beautiful sunny morning and we made our annual trek to see the closed gentians on our land which we usually find blooming at this time of year along our boundary line just above our neighbor’s pasture. This is not an area we go to frequently so we clip the trail as we go. To get there we crossed our inner valley where some of the goldenrods are beginning to fade. Then we went up past the valley pool and turtle bog, up the juniper jungle and then down a gentle slope where there are many birches akimbo until we reached the edge of the pasture, and that’s where we found a handful of blooming closed gentians,
most in perfect condition.
Because of the rains late in the summer, I thought this would be a good year. And that moisture helped a patch of ferns along. There are usually some around a nearby spring but these had spread into the woods.
On the way back, I took a closer look at the Turtle Bog which now has enough water to host frogs,
And at some point in the fall the Blanding’s turtles will move back in for hibernation. I didn’t check the beaver pond before I went there to look at beavers a little before 6pm. On my way down Grouse Alley I was startled to see some old beaver work on the west slope of that gulley. I saw a small tree cut long enough ago that its leaves were now dead.
A beaver probably cut this a month or two ago and despite walking up and down this trail many times, I just noticed it tonight because, I think, enough leaves had fallen off a dying basswood up on the ridge to finally throw some light on this work. But I should have been more observant. I found my rock to lie on and was right to anticipate that beavers would be there early. At 6:04 one swam in front heading down stream, dove and disappeared. Adding to the comforts of this paradise are mossy mounds, remnants of old tree trunks and stumps which make comfortable islands for beavers to mount and take twigs and branches to gnaw. I could see some stripped sticks on the moss island in front of me.
While a beaver was here early, I was disappointed at the pace of activity. A beaver swam from the poplar into the middle of the pool where I could see it and then down the channel where I couldn’t. Then a beaver came back, perhaps the same one, and swam over to the east shore. In about five minutes it swam back out carrying a pretty large branch and headed back down the main channel. If the family had three kits, this is what I would expect to see. I didn’t hear a kit in the pool tonight so perhaps the kit was back at the lodge waiting to be fed. But that was the only ferrying I saw. Then I began to get glimpses of a beaver swimming near the poplar and at the same time hear one gnawing the poplar. The beaver I saw seemed small. The kit? Maybe it was hanging out with an adult gnawing the poplar but under instructions not to whine. I’ll have to think of a better vantage point for watching them work on the poplar. Getting this central view would be great if the beaver kept swimming back and forth. Once again I could account for four beavers. There should be five in the family: the parents, two yearlings and one kit. But no need to jump to conclusions.
September 19 I went down to the Last Pool to chronicle the beavers’ work on the poplar. It was easy to tell that the beavers had been active because the water was muddy.
That’s to be expected, but I was startled to see that the beavers had started piling little logs on one of the moss islands next to the channel through the pond.
Are they starting to build a new lodge, or are they just clearing the channel, or is this another place for one beaver to be alone like the “hut“ built down along the east shore of Boundary Pond two months ago? Then I checked to see how many branches the beavers trimmed off the poplar. They seem to be working mostly on the east side. There I could see a wet trail out of the pond and some nipped branches.
Taking a closer look I could see where a beaver had gnawed bark off one of the bigger branches.
While trying to see the beavers here in the evening, I could hear splashes. Evidently they were from the beavers reaching up to cut higher branches.
Then again, maybe I am not hearing too much splashing because the beavers can also climb the moss islands to get to branches.
Today, I didn’t make excuses for not climbing the east ridge and, as usual when I get up there, I was surprised. The poplar they had cut around that I thought would fall down the ridge, fell up it.
So the beavers have to climb a bit higher to get at the branches of this tree. I saw no nipped branches even though some touch the ground.
This is not the same species of poplar as the tree cut along the flat above the Last Pool, notice the teeth on the leaves. This is a big tooth aspen. Down along the east shore of the pond, I looked hard at the area where beavers periodically camped out during the day, and thought there might be more sticks there added to the little pile they had there. There is a ubiquitous ground plant along this shore that is rather plain looking when the leaves are green, but now the leaves are changing and some plants are quite striking with yellow splotches and pink in those parts of the leaves about to turn brown.
I walked below the dam so as not to disturb the beavers and when I got up in the chair half way up the ridge on the west side, I did hear a few adult hums from the lodge. I could not clearly see any poplar branches brought down to the lodge but I could see leaves sunk in the water.
I think the pond here is rather deep, at least 4 feet. I walked up the west shore, looking more for places where they might have parked poplar branches for stripping, then looking for new work on the usually neglected west shore. I took a photo of the Last Pool dam which the beavers breached last year when enough water backed up from Boundary Pond dam.
I doubt if they will close this dam. Boundary Pond dam looks quite perfected. Looking up stream, the Last Pool looked wide and the channel down the middle of it brown, and probably a good few feet deep.
Up at the upper pool of the Last Pool, I saw what might be a growing pile of sticks on another moss island,
But the sun rising over the east ridge was right in my eyes as I tried to study that development.
September 20 A beautiful day and I went to Picton Island in the motor boat. Usually one can plow right across Eel Bay, but the water level has been dropping precipitously and I was surprised to see large swaths of milfoil in the bay almost reaching the surface. I saw the usual complement of cormorants, and one group of six on a shoal rock. I motored down to the last active latrine/den that I’ve noticed in the last year and began rowing back up along the shore along the boulders spilling out from the old quarry. Where I had seen otter scats out on a rock fronting the water, there were none today. I studied the area under the big pine latrine back up on shore, and couldn’t see any obvious scats there. My next stop was that high wooded bank where there had been no quarrying and where I had seen an otter slide down from a tree a bit up the bank where they had latrined.
I saw scats on a rock a few yards back from the deep edge of the river.
I maneuvered the boat as close as I could to the rock and by sight and smell determined that some of the scats were rather fresh.
And I saw that there were scats on the next rock toward shore.
Here too there seemed to be some older scats -- though not that old given some of the rock washing rains we’ve had recently -- and some that looked fresh.
So I got the impression that otters were just here and have been here for a few days at least. I continued rowing up the shore trying to remember other places where I saw otters scat or eat fish. One low area seemed to have some dark splotches on the rocks
So I got as close as I could and standing in the boat and leaning over I saw what looked like fresh scat in what looked like a scoop out rock.
And back along the edge of the bushes I saw a rock peppered with what looked like older scats.
I got out of the boat and began leaning over the fresh scats that seemed to be everywhere.
I couldn’t resist taking close-ups marveling at how juicy some scats could be
And how dry other scats were
But that dry scat with fish bones scattered about surrounded what looked like a fish part. Before getting back in the boat, I took a photo of the view from this rocky shore now so redolent of fresh otter scats.
I motored around Quarry Point and looked up at the latrines there. I didn’t see any smudges, piles or scraping to entice me out of the boat to take a closer look. Anyway, I had my story. Otters are still here. After lunch I headed off to check for scats in the Wellesley Island beaver ponds. Last fall I thought the otters at Picton and in the beaver ponds were different. By the spring I thought they were the same. Would I see otter scats as fresh as these in the latrines at the beaver ponds? When I came up to the latrine south of the Big Pond dam, I could see that something had come out of the water and stamped down some of the grass.
And I saw and could faintly smell black scat in the grass.
A month or so ago, I had struggled over whether black scats with insect parts in them were otter or skunk scats. The scat below me had a large insect wing in it.
But otherwise it smelled and looked like an otter scat. The last time I was here, on the 17th, I saw little beige dollops on the old trunk perch I usually sit on. Today I saw what looked even more like an otter scat, black and with fish scales.
These scats were not as fresh as the scats I saw this morning on Picton Island, but these scats had been baking in the sun on a warm and dry today. As I took the deer (and my) trail below the dam, I noticed a stream of water in the little creek. Even after some recent heavy rains that hadn’t happened. So I followed the stream back to the dam and saw that it came through the deep hole in the dam that had appeared last winter when otters were around the dam. The beavers patched it in the spring. But because the hole was so deep in the water, I couldn’t be sure an otter dug it. That deep bottom behind the dam in the classic spot where dams start failing, and the repair job the beavers did on it, I thought, was inadequate. They patched behind the dam but left a canyon, if your will, below the dam. Indeed an animal coming up to the dam through the grasses might dig back through the dam. However standing on the dam and looking down, I couldn’t see the hole nor any mud nor muss suggesting that an animal had been there digging. But as I well know, otters can put a hole in the dam, even in September, in the effort to make it easier to catch fish. As I continued along the dam to the north I noticed another curious sight out in the pond. I looked like there was something brown in the water with a black turtle shell behind. At first my binoculars did not make this any clearer, then I saw that the black turtle shell was a muskrat’s tail that was moving but not quite rising above the water. The nondescript brown something proved to be a muskrat once it ducked its head and came up without grass around its nose. This appeared to be a rather big muskrat. It dove before I could get a photo of it, then swam toward the shore where I couldn’t see it. I went out to check the old otter latrines around the beaver lodge on the lower north shore of the pond. Just as the last time I checked, the grass in the old latrines was thick and high. Otters had not latrined there. I continued up to the surveyor’s trail and checked the otter latrine on the rock along that upper south shore. I didn’t see any scats. I saw something black on the beaver lodge in the southeast end of the pond, but that proved to be a duck. There was also a goose on the lodge.
This closer look at the lodge gave me some hope that beavers were still there. I saw green cattail stalks floating in the water near the lodge. As I walked around the west end of the pond, I could look back and see where either beavers or muskrats are cutting the cattails in a patch along the south shore.
Then I checked the rock above the mossy cove latrine, and there on the rib of rock where otters and perhaps skunks had frequently scatted were the smears of three black scats.
I am not sure skunks can do that. Insect parts make scats that wash away, if they don’t simply blow away. Farther down the rock, I saw more smears.
I took a close up of one of the smears which shows the fish scales.
Or so it looked to me. My new test for determining how much of a scat is made up insect parts is to step on the scat. If it crunches and disintegrates into an airy heap, it consists mostly of insect parts. If it compresses and stays about the same size, it has fish parts. By that test, this scat had more fish parts. I found a few scats just up from the pond. These even looked more like typical otter scats.
I headed around the pond to the dam to check the latrines there, and about five yards below the first latrine, I smelled otter scats. And then when I got around a bush and saw the latrine they favored when I last saw otters here in the late spring,
I saw an impressive spread of scats. The scats were not moist and fresh like the Picton scats, but I could smell them, and they had baked in the sun all morning and early afternoon.
What was impressive was how the scats were spread out and I could almost picture three or four otters hopping around.
Over at the flat rock latrine closer to the dam, there were more scats that looked about the same age as the scats over on the grassy latrine.
So while it is possible that the otters here left yesterday and returned to Picton, I think it unlikely. I’ll check for otter scats around South Bay tomorrow, and then if I get I out here in a couple days (I used to have great luck seeing otters here on my birthday) and if I see more scats then I think I’ve just about proved that the otters here are not the same as the otters at Picton. Of course I walked down to look at the Second Swamp Pond. On the way I saw a green heron perched on a little dead shrub in the Lost Swamp Pond. And then I could frame a kingfisher on top of a dead tree in front of the bur marigold encircled Second Swamp Pond.
I didn’t see otters down there, but the vegetation on the surface of the pond looked a bit broken up. Then as I walked up the ridge into the woods, I saw a young buck looking down on me. I took photos, none good, but the one below just shows its thin antlers.
I walked home via the Big Pond dam and saw another scat there.
September 21 I took a walk around South Bay to see if there were any fresh scats in the otter latrines there. If there were, it would suggest that the otters who scatted at Picton on the 20th might have been in the Wellesley Island beaver ponds on the 19th. I checked the willow latrine along the north shore of the south cove, the entry to my “otter map route,“ and there was nothing new there. The only scats I saw in the traditional otter latrines along the north shore of the bay proper were squirts not much bigger than 2 inches on the docking rock latrine which could have been left by a mink.
Something crossed my mind last time I kayaked here, and again today. Since the otters commonly latrine on the exposed rocks along the Picton shore, why don’t they leave more scats on the exposed rocks along the South Bay shore? Meanwhile I had beaver activity to chronicle. Thanks to the light, I got a better photo of their gnawing into a beaver trunk on the north shore of the bay.
I don’t think there was more gnawing there, but beavers have been around. They cut the end of the one of the larger branches hanging down in the water and left a chunky log floating next to the shore.
I checked the activity in the little pool below the Audubon Pond embankment and saw that the beavers are gnawing on two of the larger trees along their dam.
Meanwhile they seem to be making progress in their effort to thwart the steel cage that protects the drain designed to keep the water level in the big pond low. They are stuffing the squares of the cage with mud. Looks like a long shot to me but far be it for me to comment on beavers’ ability to engineer mud.
Their main path down to the pond below is still well worn, but I also saw a fresh trail in the long wet grass up and over the embankment.
That ended at a small tree cut down and at least two logs cut off and hauled away, I assume, up the embankment.
Looking from that work down at the small pond below the embankment, it looks more like a muddy creek than a pond.
There is still one osprey in the area.
We spent the night at our land. It gets dark rather early now so I contented myself with walking around the beaver developments before dinner. The beavers did not add any more sticks to the pile on the moss island which I thought might be the beginnings of a new lodge or at least a new hut. I saw more work on the poplar, but I expected to see even more. I didn’t get the sense that any large logs were being cut off the poplar. All the work seemed more intimate, little cuts here and there.
I saw two limbs cut off at the end, but they weren’t that large, but it is a start.
I must say some of the areas where they were gnawing sticks looked like a rather comfortable larder for beavers.
The beavers are dredging channels to get up to the crown at various points.
As I continued down the east shore of the ponds, I didn’t see any more new work. I sat on a rock with a view of the lodge and I enjoyed the foraging birds. Two brown creepers came close to me. I think there were warblers going through but I couldn’t see them, only the chickadees who always seem to accompany small birds foraging through their territory. The tail bobbing phoebes were easy to see and they often rippled the pond surface with their dives. I kept seeing larger ripples and since I heard a hum or two from the lodge I braced myself for seeing a beaver, but none materialized. Then I saw a muskrat nibbling the frogbit along the channel heading up pond. From the low angle I had as I watched it, I thought it might be a baby muskrat, especially after it did some wild splashing snap dives, but when it swam back down the channel and into the lodge, it looked about the same size as the muskrats I have been seeing here. Muskrats can have more than one litter a year, but come to think of it, baby muskrats that I have seen are very timid. There were more stripped logs beside and behind the lodge but no evidence of their starting a winter cache. I didn’t see any piles of stripped sticks as I walked back up the west shore of the pond, so the beavers are taking their meals either at the poplar or all the way back at the lodge. The other day I noticed a trail in the grass coming out of the Last Pool and heading to the west, away from the downed poplar. I had glanced up the trail but didn’t notice any work. Today I saw that the trail still looked like it was being used, and as I followed it I saw a root gnawed here and sapling nipped there. The trail proved to be substantial and it turned up toward a hemlock shaded ridge and I soon saw that a beaver had dragged something down the trail through the brown dirt and hemlock litter.
I went up the ridge and after a few ups and downs the trail led to the stand or red oaks that a week ago I had belatedly noticed that the beavers were thinning. It looked like two red oaks about fives inches in diameter at the remaining stump had been cut.
And a beaver had cut another from a clump of three red oaks.
There were red oak branches on the trail waiting to be hauled out.
Every time I try to confine these beavers they go their own way. It has been clear for weeks that they have a taste for small red oaks. Yet when the poplar fell I assumed they would just flock to that tree widely held to be far more prized by beavers than red oak. In general I like surprises. I want my narrative of these animals, which I constantly rehearse in my mind during my hikes, to be humbled. But I have been so close to this family who are literally my neighbors so that because of all the attention I have been paying them, I hate to have it made so clear that I have not been paying enough attention. And as well as I think I know the geography of their realm, they obviously have a refined sense of it that I will probably never fathom. Beavers took two routes to these red oaks coming at them from opposite ends. Obviously for all its redolent odor and easy to gnaw wood and bite size leaves, one beaver at least craved the rough fare provided by red oak, and directly turned its back on the poplar to get to it.
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