September 22 I headed up Antler Trail and continued to South Bay, aiming to first check the upper East Trail Pond beavers and then look for otters in the Lost Swamp Pond and Big Pond. As I walked around the woods west of the East Trail Pond, I looked for trees the beavers might have cut. I didn’t expect to see any. I expect this family of beavers to tease me with more subtle signs of their survival. I found a seat on rocks north of the pond from where I had seen them before as they swam under the vegetation through just visible channels in the pond. I had seen them in the early evening, and today I was sitting there at 2pm, so I scanned the pond for signs they had been there. As I did two vultures swooped down low over the pond for a few minutes, suggesting to me, ironically, that there was some mammalian life down there. I saw some cut cattail stalks below me, but toward the middle of the pond there was a larger collection of them and the water there looked muddy, maybe even some dredging.
As the photo shows, it took a bit of imagination to picture beavers operating in that mass of vegetation. But I thought I could see the line of a channel and it led to an opening with more cut vegetation and a bush with several of its branches nipped off.
I stood and tried to tease a new lodge out of what I was seeing, but couldn’t. Then puffed up by my ability to read a story in what to most would appear to be mere vegetable noise, I saw that beavers had boldly returned to gnaw on a trunk of a twinned oak up from the north shore of the pond. Nothing subtle here.
Beavers have to gnaw wood to keep their incisors from growing too long, so I think they gnawed here without any intention to cut the trees down. Meanwhile over at the two pools of water they dammed up between what had been Shangri-la Pond and the wet meadow that is the East Trail Pond, one of the red maples they had been cutting above the upper pool had been blown over and got hung up in another tree. The pool was not muddy suggesting that the beavers have not been using it.
However, the lower pool was quite muddy, as was the little channel on the other side of the dam.
I couldn’t pinpoint what they might be eating here, but off to one side there are cattails and a beaver started gnawing the trunk of another red maple.
Beavers generally don’t cut down red maples, but in the last three years beavers in this family have cut down several. Indeed since they did gnaw a good bit of bark, and segmented several logs, I began to think these must different be than the usual red maple. I crossed the East Trail Pond meadow on the old boardwalk and did not see any evidence that a beaver crossed it or went under it. There is a pool of water behind the old dam, and if the dam were repaired…. I did disturb a painted turtle who was making its way down the pond. I crossed along the Second Swamp Pond dam so could check the areas there where the otters latrined in the spring. The pond is rather low and the dam rather thick with vegetation.
There was an easy trail through, made by deer I assume because hunting season has not started. The old otter latrines were over grown and unvisited. There is still a pond behind the dam, still widening the old creek, and certainly looks like an otter could navigate it.
Over the years, I’ve had some luck seeing otters on my birthday, but not today. I did flush a flock of geese when I walked up to the Lost Swamp Pond. I walked up the ridge between the Lost Swamp and Second Swamp Pond so that I came up from below the Lost Swamp Pond dam and there I saw fresh scats in the latrine just below the dam.
There were several scats in the area, all new to me, and some quite soft.
Almost everywhere I looked I saw a fresh scat. All music to my eyes but no need for me to share a photo of every scat. There were two new scats on the side of the latrine west of the dam where they had latrined a few days ago. I sat on a nearby rock for a few minutes to make sure otters were not out in the pond, or nestled in the tall plants on the lodge next to the dam. Then I walked around to the rock above the mossy cove latrine and there I saw fresh otter scats literally dripping on the granite.
We had rain in the morning and it looked like it was washing the black out of the some of the scats even puddling it in depressions in the granite.
This was quite a switch from fussing over scats consisting of insect parts. These scats were as wet as those that I saw at Picton Island a few days ago. Otters also scatted along the bottom of the rock.
And even scraped up a bit of pine litter to scat upon.
I didn’t see any scats between the rock and the pond which leads me to believe that there were no otter pups involved in this foray. I suppose pups would be capable of climbing a rock by the end of September, but I don’t think they would climb up so high to scat when there was plenty of comfortable space below to do it. Again, this seemed like the otters I saw here last winter and spring picking up where they left off, scatting up on this rock that my imagination, fertilized by scats up here late last spring, has turned into the “otter map rock.“
I sat for 30 minutes and saw no otters in the pond. Often I can imagine that otters might be lounging on the far side of the big lodge in the southeast end of the pond, that I can’t see, but today I could see a goose standing on the lodge which it would unlikely do with a group of otters next to it. I expected to see fresh otter scats at the Big Pond latrine but I didn’t see any. No otters there either.
September 23 warm day with east wind which for us means no white caps. So we kayaked over to South Bay. There was a large flock of geese on the rocks forming the north shore of the south cove and out foraging where I’ve been noticing a good crop of water celery. As I paddled in that direction, the geese moved off in slow procession and I found the celery pods still intact but many of the spiraling stalks holding the pods seem to have been cut. I can’t figure that out. Farther down the cove, I saw river grasses pulled out with the roots showing. With the east wind the river’s water level was rather low and I couldn’t paddle to my usual spot along the willow latrine. From a distance, it didn’t look any otters had been there. Today all the herons were in trees and two seemed to keep close together. I don’t know if they flock up before they migrate. We didn’t see any bryozoa. We saw some dead snails floating on the surface of the water but no snails or snail trails along the sandy bottom of the bay. The water temperature is still in the high 60s. I kept an eye out for beaver gnawing on willows and while there didn’t seem to be new gnawing on the one they had been working, several willows had been gnawed farther up the north shore of the bay. I’ll be able to get photos the next time I walk around South Bay. We heard and saw kingfishers, and also tried to see a flock of warblers in the low trees along the shore. We were about to conclude that the ospreys were gone, when one flew out from the nest between South Bay and Audubon Pond -- on a power poll, of course. The crickets along the shore were very sonorous and I wondered if the granite rocks added brilliance to their chorus.
September 24 it rained last night so I didn’t hurry out in the morning to look for otters. When I saw that it wasn’t going to rain any more I headed off for the Big Pond. Where my trail crosses a dry rock plateau, I have frequently flushed a pair of doves out of a lone cedar tree. Today they flew off from the rocks. I looked up in the cedar tree and noticed a nest laced with lichens out on a low branch.
Didn’t remind me of the last dove nest I saw which was much better concealed in a spruce tree. When I got up to the otter latrine at the south end of the Big Pond dam, I thought an otter had been there until I saw that what I thought were new black scats were actually dead leaves. Some of the large green leaves of low plants turn black when they die. Then up on the perch, I saw a neat tubular brownish gray scat, very fresh, with bees and flies feasting on it, and it was right next to the last black otter scat on the trunk.
I have seen skunk scat this color -- once my garbage can was caked with it, and have never seen an otter scat that looked like this. I got a stick and broke it apart hoping that would help me identify it.
I saw little white tubes that reminded me of maggots, but they didn’t look to be alive. I had a sinking feeling that a skunk was still haunting me in my efforts to identify otter scats! When I crossed the dam and got to where the hole in the dam is, I saw that something had come over the dam there.
Some animal is paying attention to the hole from which a large and steady stream of water is pouring out.
I can’t blame this on a skunk. Muskrats, as well as otters, can make holes in dams. The water level in the pond is getting lower. It was easy to see that the shore line had receded.
Evidently beavers aren’t checking the dam. I continued on to the Lost Swamp Pond and after scanning the pond and not seeing otters in it, I went to the rock above the mossy cove to see if otters had visited there since the 22d. So many scats were left there that day, that I couldn’t be sure there were not new ones until I checked the new against old photos. My hunch was that there were some new scats -- my hunch proved wrong, but that hunch did prompt me to sit up on a rock with a good view of all the pond. In about five minutes I saw the humps of diving otters out in the southeast end of the pond just to the left of the beaver lodge there. The otters soon swam out of view to the north shore of that end of the pond. I took a photo of where they had been,
I had not brought the camcorder, thinking that if I saw otters, I wanted a full view of them and didn’t want to trap myself in just following one of them. I did have my little binoculars, and since my camera would not reveal much at such a distance, I trained my binoculars on the otters when they swam back into view. My first impression was that there four otters, since I saw two swim back to the north shore, and then two others following. But minutes later, only two swam back and paused in the area between the shore and lodge. One otter looked bigger than the other. They dove heading toward the lodge and I expected to see them climb up on top of it but they didn’t. I formed the idea that two otters went into the lodge and two were in the burrows over in the north shore. Would they come back out? While I primarily stared at the area around the lodge, I also kept an eye on the northeast end of the pond to see if the other two otters went across the peninsula into that section of the pond. And they did. The photo below shows their ripples -- the black spots in the photo are old stumps.
This was exciting. It’s been years since I saw that otters crossed the peninsula. I trained the binoculars on them and soon saw that there were three otters. Since they did not swim together, I assumed they were adults, perhaps the same ones I saw at Picton on September 1. One went toward the lodge; the other two stayed together briefly, then one charged on and caught a fish big enough to need a stump to steady it for eating. I could hear the otter gnawing on the fish. Then it swam down pond,
Which boded well. I hoped the otters would come up on the mossy cove latrine. I had a good view of it and a northeast wind might save me from being discovered. But I soon lost sight of that otter. Tree leaves obscured my view. Then I saw at least two otters scurrying up and over the rock behind the lodge beside the dam. Soon enough three otters swam out from behind the lodge, and I began to get a different impression of these otters. One looked bigger and the two smaller ones did seem to hang with each other. The big one, suddenly become the mother in my mind, swam over to the north shore of the peninsula, I think with a fish in its mouth. I lost it in the vegetation along the shore, and the two other otters, now pups in my mind, suddenly looked lost, and I saw two heads craning up out of the water looking anxiously around. I sight I’ve often seen when tracking otter families. The mother reappeared and the three of them began swimming toward me, though two went around the peninsula together while another hung behind. In the photo below you can just see the one behind, and the wakes of the two ahead.
The otters then swam up to the northeast end of the pond again. It was very difficult for me to follow their progress through all the vegetation on the pond surface. Then I saw two otters break out from the vegetation and swim up to the lodge. One fished around it and the other got up on a log just up from the water on the lodge, like it wanted to climb up and take a rest. But where was the other otter? The one that was fishing came up on the log too, and once again, I saw two otters looking for the third, only this time it was a larger and smaller otter on the lookout, the mother and pup looking for another pup. The little otter climbed a bit up the side of the lodge, then the larger launched itself back into the pond and swam back into the grasses. The smaller otter followed. I saw their humps a couple times and then they disappeared up a marshy cove, roughly toward a trail I sometimes take in the winter to get from the upper Big Pond to the Lost Swamp Pond. I waited 10 more minutes for the otters to come back out, but they didn’t. So I went around the west end of the pond to check the latrines there for fresh otter scats. I wasn’t disappointed. It looked one fresh scat trumped a big scat left there a few days ago.
There was another big fresh scat nearby, not on top of old scat.
On the rock next to the dam I saw new scats, though not fresh, so otters left them there yesterday.
I went to higher rocks nearby and took a photo showing the route the otters had just taken, coming across the peninsula then swimming down and then swimming around the peninsula back up to the southeast end of the pond.
I took the direct route back to the Big Pond and, of course, was careful to look for otters in the pond as I slowly crossed below the dam. And not a few feet along, I looked over and saw an otter, and then another.
I should say that a cool morning had suddenly turned hot and humid, record heat for us, heading to the low 80s. The sudden haze did not help my camera, but the otters didn’t help either. I did see the three together as they fished across the pond. And once again, my impression of them changed. I briefly saw leadership from the larger otter but then I seemed to lose track of it, and seemed to only see one of the small otters surface. Then I only saw one. The wind was at my back and they must have smelled me but the reaction was very muted. Mother otters are usually more protective. That said, as the otters dove, their tails were so small that I don’t think I can describe them as being any other than otter pups. If so, I may have more answers to the questions that arose during my spring and early summer tracking. Of course, I cannot be certain that the mother I saw today is the same mother I saw last fall. In other years two mothers at least had shared these ponds with their pups, sometimes uneasily. If she is the same, then her family last year, that seemed to refuse to disperse, had traveled with another adult female, an aunt, that I mistook as the mother. Since the otter population is low here, compared to 10 years ago, another productive mother around is good news. Now the question is how long has this family been in these two ponds; were they responsible for the dry black scats that I finally decided skunks left? I do have video evidence from 2003, I think, of otter pups snapping at insects. Had the mother also taught them how to dig for insects? As the number of ponds here has diminished, there used to be 6 large ones available and several small ones, not just 3 big ponds and 1 small one, I wondered if otters would adapt to living off meadows, eating frogs, insects and birds. I do not mind posing questions I probably will never be able to answer to my own satisfaction, and I must say I am quite pleased that things seem more as usual in the world of the otters. There is not a family that never broke up cruising from Picton to Wellesley dominating territory and preventing the usual annual birthing and nurturing of otters. When I got to the south end of the dam, I was surprised to see that the brownish gray skunk-looking scat on the perch that I broke up had turned back enough to look just like the older otter scat next to it.
Should I just forget about skunks, until I smell one?
September 26 we went to Montreal yesterday and got back today. I went out in the afternoon to check for otter scat, if not see the otters. If I saw more fresh scat, I would go out in the morning to try to see them. When I got to the south end of the Big Pond dam, I saw that the pond level was lower exposing mud behind the dam. There were no new otter scats in the latrine but the water behind the dam was muddy. I looked over the exposed mud for prints and saw what looked like beaver prints, triangular impressions with three thick toes.
Then I cocked my ear and realized that the dam was no longer leaking. Sure enough, a beaver had patched the hole from the fronts with mud and grass.
This was a major operation, the hole was big, and the beaver had to dredge a good bit of mud behind the dam, which explains why the pond there is so muddy.
This patch job proves that beavers are still around and it preserves the pond. I could read a lot into the timing of the repair: it suggests that the beavers are up in one of the series of smaller ponds above the Big Pond and only check this dam once a week; or the beavers are still in this pond and waited until the otters left to patch the hole; or, even more dramatic, the beavers patched the hole and bullied the otters out of the pond! While the prints in the mud showed that a beaver had gone up on the dam, as I walked along the dam, I didn’t see any fresh tokens of a beaver eating anything there. As I was taking my hike some dark, but rain free clouds were moving over and that seemed to calm the waters of the ponds. Conditions at the Lost Swamp Pond were perfect for seeing otters and their wakes, ripples and splashes,
But there were no otters to be seen. These otters have spread a good bit of scat about in their latrines, but I am pretty sure that I could account for every scat I saw there today, so I think the otters have not been in this pond in the last 48 hours. That doesn’t challenge my idea that I was seeing a mother and her pups. Last year the family here was rather persistent, but in other years, the family typically moved around. Now I’ll have to figure out where they might have gone. Meanwhile, as I walked around the pond I was entertained by three large birds, two pileated woodpeckers and sharp shin hawk. I noticed one of the woodpeckers first as it perched high atop the crown of a dead tree, where ospreys used to perch, chortling in its usual fashion.
Then I saw another pileated flying high and loud, but it circled away from the other woodpecker and seemed to focus its attention on a hawk flying below it. The hawk perched on a lower tree seemingly unfazed by the woodpecker’s attention.
Soon enough the two woodpeckers flew off. The hawk left when I got too close. So without otter scats nor beaver work to chronicle, and no muskrats about, and most of the flowers dying, I was left with simply enjoying the changing leaves backed by the dark clouds to the east and highlighted by sun peeking out in the west.
After looking down at the Upper Second Swamp and Second Swamp ponds, I headed home the way I came and noticed that the close gentians out in the open just north of the Big Pond dam were still there. The flowers of the bigger plant had faded.
As I crossed the dam, the sun in the west got brighter and the clouds to east seemed darker, and colors danced between,
Perhaps the dark clouds were not quite as blue as in the photo above.
September 27 we got over to our land in the morning just before the rain moved in and checked on the beaver ponds. I haven’t been at our land since the 21st so as I walked down Grouse Alley I wondered how much steady progress the beavers’ made on their old work, and what surprises I’d see. I first got a surprise. Between Grouse Alley and the Last Pool a beaver cut a long pole of an ash tree.
This is surprising on two counts: these beavers have not shown that much interest in ash trees, though they just got around to cutting and stripping that was just behind their dam after cutting the elms and ironwoods months earlier; and, why cut an ash when the poplar was nearby? Then continuing on my way to the poplar I saw the crowns of two trees, not ash, on the way to the pond and in the pond.
Plus I saw that the trail heading up to the little ridge west of the valley, away from the poplar, was well worn. I’d check that later. As for the downed poplar, the beavers had cut some of the branches up on the land.
And gnawed on some branches convenient for a beaver that wanted to keep its feet in the pond.
But most of the branches of the crown had not been cut.
As I was heading away I saw a black lump in the water and I thought I best go back and check that. It was not a dead beaver and behind the lump in the water, I saw mounds of dredged up leaves and muck, along with crossed logs, and perhaps a hole into the midst of it all.
It is probably just the fruits of the beavers’ dredging, but if beavers are starting to build a lodge here, I have a photo of the start of it. Continuing down the east shore of the ponds, I didn’t see any more new beaver work. The first trail the beavers used to get up the east ridge had plenty of leaves on it, suggesting that beavers have not been up there recently. If the trail up the ridge closer to the dam also had leaves on it, I wouldn’t climb the ridge, but it was easy to see that beavers have been using their steep trail up the ridge.
I could see poplar boughs along the trail, and when I got up to the poplar they cut down, I saw that a beaver had cut off some small branches from large trunk limbs.
No beaver has made back into the crown to cut the wealth of branches there.
It seems a big tooth aspen, which is what this poplar is, has some appeal even with another aspen/poplar available that is easier to get at. I went back down to the dam, and saw that most of jewel weed on the dam had been cut down by the beavers and I saw several jewel weed stalks lying on the dam stripped of leaves and flowers.
A beaver had also left some wound up frogbit vines in the water just behind the dam.
That tangle of vegetation may not be the leftovers from a meal. The beavers here can’t easily dredge up mud to mark, so they may roll up frog bit instead. There were several stripped logs behind the west end of the dam, and here too one might have been marked by vegetation, instead of mud.
I sat up in my chair half way up the ridge west of the pond. I took a photo of the growing collection of logs and branches behind the dam.
This is probably not the beginnings of their winter cache -- last year they had that a bit farther behind the lodge so as not to block the block entrance to the lodge, I suppose, but there were several stripped log suggesting the beavers are still fond of their lodge. I soon heard a kit humming, and with some insistence, not the usual sporadic daytime humming that I imagine a beaver might do even while it sleeps. But while the kit was surely awake, it did not come out of the lodge. I walked up the west shore of the pond and saw no new work along the shore, but out in the main channel, right at the spot where it narrows, I saw some stripped sticks and a small collection of branches.
I think beavers go up to the Last Pool and bring their meals down here. The trail from the Last Pool up into the small ridge to the west still looked used. I followed and saw that a beaver cut down two hornbeams up on the ridge.
I couldn’t tell if the crown of one of the hornbeams fell down over the ridge or if a beaver was trying to take it down that more direct but more difficult route.
Finally, I walked up the trail the beavers are using to get to the little ridge west of the big valley. It was easy to see that they had just used it.
But now a beaver is not going into the wooded ridge but cutting small shrubs in the field.
Leslie identified it as a kind of dogwood, probably gray dogwood, but we’ll have to check the berries.
A beaver also cut two hornbeams and dragged them away.
I followed their trail up into the woods and saw nothing new. So it seems, the fallen poplar got the beavers’ noses back up into this area far from their lodge, and once there they sniffed out other things to eat on the ridge to the west of the Last Pool and up the valley above the pool. I see the beavers in the Big Pond and Lost Swamp Pond cut dogwoods and pile them up for the winter, but often many are left unstripped. Curious that these beavers who seem to have so much to eat are acting so desperately even with fewer mouths to feed. I saw a warbler flock working its way furiously through the crowns of trees. None was still enough to aid in identification. Walking along the road I heard a rough rendition of the white throated sparrow’s call.
September 28 after a series of showers, I took a walk around South Bay to check for otter scats and get photos of the beaver gnawing on willow trees along the shore. Before I checked the old dock latrine, where there were no scats, I saw a heron seemingly toe deep at the end of the cove.
Then I saw another heron in slightly deeper water. As I walked down the hill, they both flew off. I got photos of the two of the big willows the beavers are gnawing.
There is a third that I recall being more dramatic, suggesting a beaver walked up one trunk to gnaw into another. With the grasses dying and lying down, the otter latrine above the entrance to South Bay looked like it might have been visited.
But I couldn’t find any otter scats and no well defined trails in the grass. The recent rain has raised the water level of Audubon Pond but not high enough to undo the beavers efforts to make a mud wall on the big iron cage designed to keep the outflow pipe unobstructed. Beavers are still going down the embankment to gnaw on the trunks of another big tree.
I walked around Audubon Pond and saw no fresh signs of tree gnawing. There was a stripped stick beside the lodge.
I sat there until 5:15pm, not an unusual time for beavers to come out at this time of year but none did. Judging from the muddy water outside some bank burrows, muskrats are still here too.
But no muskrats entertained me today. As usual there was a vocal osprey perching around the pond. Some seagulls flew over and at first I thought the osprey was going to accompany them out over the bay, but it soon came back. My guess is that this is a young osprey playing the busy body around the pond but leery of leaving it. Then a pileated woodpecker pierced the air with its call. The osprey screeched back, but didn’t budge from its perch well away from that other big bird.
September 29 we went to the land aiming to spend the night and expected a bit of sun today, but it clouded over quickly. In my tree cutting chores, for firewood, I learned something from the beavers. I have been sawing an ash that, as many trees do, leans a little one way. I cut it about two thirds through the trunk and the saw began to stick. So I left the tree alone for a few days. Today, the tilt was a tad more pronounced and the saw cut better and the brought the tree down without much sweat. Patience. And so when I went to check on what the beavers have been doing, I cut them some slack. All their logs did not have to be cut and stacked. The ash they had cut between Grouse Alley and the Last Pool had not been touched. I saw that they had taken one of the branches in the Last Pool away, but left another. They are also using the wallow above the Last Pool again.
I walked up the trail a bit but it didn’t seem to have been used much above the Last Pool, so I think they used it to get around to their work on the nearby poplar. I saw that they did segment and carry away part of a long branch they were working on. Here’s a photo of the branch from the 27th,
And one from today.
Beavers also made a few gnaws on the trunk of the tree, but seemed more interested in a branch almost buried in the dirt.
Otherwise, I didn’t notice too many more branches that had been cut. However, the pile of sticks out on some humps of moss in the pool, that I thought might have just been the product of dredging, had grown.
Perhaps the beavers are thinking about building a lodge. I didn’t walk down the east shore of the ponds, deciding just to check the work around the Last Pool. I would go down to Boundary Pond in the late afternoon to see if any beavers were out. I walked up to their work on the ridge east of the Last Pool. I thought I didn’t see any new work. Then when I walked back down to the Last Pool, I a small neatly cut log along the beaver trail.
Of course, it is possible I didn’t see that before, which would be no compliment to my powers of observation. Then I went up the beaver trail to the work they have doing on the little ridge west of the inner valley to see if they cut more dogwoods shrubs or collected what they had cut. Instead I saw that they cut a 15 foot high red oak just where the trail goes into the trees on the ridge.
I didn’t see any of the branches cut off. This wasn’t the only tree freshly cut. I saw the stump of a smaller ash, which they evidently carried away, because I didn’t see the trunk of the ash tree. Meanwhile all the rain we have been having has brought out more mushrooms, usually small, prolific and sometimes colorful.
Walking along the road I saw some gentle pale blue flowers which I don’t associate with this time of year.
My other project for the day was to check the dead kit that I had buried a few weeks ago. I saw that the bones had been “cleaned,” that there was no flesh, skin or cartilage attached to it. The soil was quite moist and rather rich with fur. I dug out the bones with my hand after seeing that they did not lie in the hole in any discernible order.
When I got all the little bones in order, I saw a leg bone that seemed to broken. When I first looked at the carcass I thought it had trauma on one foreleg. I think this was the more aggressive kit. Perhaps another beaver bit it while pushing it away -- though I have never seen a beaver bite anything but wood.
I got out to my chair on the ridge above the Boundary Pond lodge a little after 6, and all was quiet. Then I began hearing a beaver gnawing up pond along the west shore of the pond. I waited for it to swim somewhere so I could at least see its wake and ripples, but it evidently was farther away then I could see. So I quietly walked up the ridge but still didn’t see a beaver along the west shore of the pond. I came down the ridge and began slowly walking up the main channel of the Last Pool. I saw wakes up in the upper pool and then saw a beaver swimming down the channel. It made an awkward splash but evidently didn’t see me. I soon saw that it was a kit and it swam past me
and then started gnawing. Then I saw another beaver swimming down the channel,
a big adult, and it looked and smelled hard in my direction. It didn’t quite go down to the kit, but gave the impression that it was checking to make sure it was ok. Then the adult swam back up into the upper pool.
I moved down to get a better look at the kit and saw it manipulating a fairly large log, gnawing up and down to strip off the bark.
Meanwhile I could hear another beaver gnawing up near the end of the Last Pool. I sat for several minutes hoping other beavers would swim up and or down the channel but none did. I tried to walk quietly up to where the other two beavers were but one sensed me and slapped its tail. I hurried away, not wanting to be too disruptive.
September 30 we were hoping that the predicted rain would hold off until later in the morning, but we had a shower in the night and drizzle at dawn. I hurried out to see if the beavers went back to trim the red oak they cut above the Last Pool. When I got to the Last pool, I saw a good bit of the red oak crown in the water.
I went up the trail and saw where a beaver cut that.
I generally like walking around on damp mornings, but the rain became steady and we packed up and left trying to keep the boxes of onions we carefully dried in our cabin for a month from getting wet.
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