May 31 I took a morning tour of the beaver ponds. The vegetation thickening so much that I had to check once to make sure I was still on Antler Trail. I had no trouble through the meadows since the trail was flooded there and so easy to follow. What I call the otter latrine at the south end of the Big Pond dam is all grown over with grass. No otters have been there.
The pond remains low. No signs of beavers there. I saw a pair of mallards, I think, with ducklings but they all went into the marsh before I could get a good look at them. There is still water flowing out of two holes in the dam, but the volume of the flow has diminished considerably.
It looks like there will be a semblance of a pond when the flow stops. The holes through the dam are not as deep as some years. That said a generous portion of pond bottom, especially behind the north end of the dam is sporting bright green grass where the beavers dredged behind the dam.
The Lost Swamp Pond looked about the same as before, however, entertainment was in the air. I heard a toad calling. The geese families were all in the far southeast end of the pond, one family with six goslings and one with three. There were three adult mallards and no ducklings. And I saw a deer wadding into the pond and the water was hardly above its hooves. Very shallow. I sat for 15 minutes on the rock above the mossy cove latrine and was surprised not to see one muskrat, though I did see some ripples caused by something I couldn’t identify -- a baby muskrat is a good suspect. As I walked around the west end of the pond to the dam, I had three surprises. There was a tall yellow flower in bloom.
I expect the yellow blooms, other than buttercups and yellow violets, later in the season. Then I saw some relatively extensive digging into the bank,
that didn’t end in a burrow nor to any gnawed roots. Beavers like to dig in the spring but usually I see some gnawing on the roots they uncovered. The last surprise was a venerable dead tree that tumbled over blocking my ancient path around the pond. Soggy ground can do a number on dead roots. I sat at the dam and heard another toad singing. I thought I was hearing a correlation between the toad song and bullfrog croaks coming after it ended. I noticed that twice and had my camcorder ready the third time, but the bullfrogs were late in adding their grumble. There was no wind, and the temperature climbing into the 80s. The pond was still
but I kept seeing splashes near the shore but always focused on birds doing the splashing. Then I saw a muskrat up on the far shore, until a crow hopped down, pecked at it and sent it fleeing into the water. Muskrats often shy from birds. I trained my camcorder on that shore, but the muskrat disappeared. Later I saw that muskrat swimming back to the lodge by the dam, just as another muskrat left the lodge and swam to the opposite shore. A little grayish blue butterfly posed on my hand.
Meanwhile the shrubs on the west end of the dam are blooming yellow and pink, barberry bush and honeysuckle.
As I crossed the Upper Second Swamp Pond dam I took a photo of the Second Swamp Pond below, fast becoming a meadow.
When we discovered the interior of the island in the late 70’s we often crossed the valley at this point. There wasn’t a dam here but the pond below extended into an lush area of small trees, fallen logs and tangled shrubs. Our challenge was to get across without getting our feet wet. If we got wet, and we often did, we dried our shoes and socks as we lounged in the sun up on the rocky ridge across the valley. We never noticed beavers or beaver activity there. I think the beavers had built the Second Swamp Pond dam and created the huge pond and then were trapped out or had moved down the valley slowly creating what became Otter Hole Pond, or so I call it. The Lost Swamp Pond dam just up stream was created by 1989 or so, and by then most of the valley behind the Second Swamp Pond was dry. Unfortunately we didn’t take photos back them. Anyway, the beavers restored the Second Swamp Pond dam as they came back up the valley in the late 90’s. The valley is probably more lush on the whole than before the beavers developed it, as long as the Lost Swamp Pond dam holds up. If that fails then the portion of the valley behind it, which I recall as being a genuine swamp with a good bit of standing water, will become a rather dry meadow. Interesting how things change. I should add that I recall this whole island being much wetter in the 70’s, I assume from more rain. While all this ran through my mind, and I blush to say I am beginning to think like that on my hikes, I am becoming an old man, a little muskrat, a baby, I am almost sure, swam quickly into the dam I was walking along. I waited for it to reappear, but it didn’t. I studied the contours of what looked like a burrow into the pond bottom.
Muskrats can do their own developing, but being so small what they do is generally not writ large like a beaver’s work. When I cross the emburrowed portion of the dam, I turned back and took a photo of it.
It was so hot and sunny that I hurried into the woods and walked down to the Grotto pool. No fresh signs of beavers, though I was startled by some nipped elm branches on the ground several yards away. I trust a porcupine trimmed them, though I couldn’t see any other porcupine work around. But over the years a porcupine has usually foraged in these woods. I knew it was too early in the day to expect to see a beaver, but I was most curious to look for more otter signs. I have looked at the old latrine beside the old East Trail Pond dam, no signs of otters there. Of course, I inspected the beavers’ works. They have been firming up the dam and even draped a stripped log over it, the better to weight it down.
They probably can’t find too many rocks here to do that. I didn’t see any fresh work along the shores of the pond, but I did see the crown of a cut tree in the pond at the far west end.
I’m not sure where the beavers got it but the trail heading west from the pond looked well used.
I noticed little white star flowers all over the slope running down to the pond, hard to get a good photo of them.
Then I went to the rocks at the bottom of the ridge north of the pond where I saw otter scats a week ago. Those scats are dry now, and still look like otter scats, though I don’t think any more was deposited.
Back under the rock shading the scat I saw a knot of caddis flies in a frenetic dance. I sat up on the ridge, hoping to see Blanding’s turtles again, but today was treated to the rapid foraging of three snapping turtles, that kept the tadpoles in the pond jumping. I got some video of one lurking under water and making small things jump for their life.
And then I saw a smaller turtle which I took for another snapper. It kept sniffing the air and then swam as fast as it could underwater to the west. I lifted a still from the video, and judging from that it doesn‘t look quite like a snapper. Curious.
I also saw an oil sheen on the pond below me.
Did a turtle secrete something? And all the while, the green frogs kept twanging. When this was a prime pond for otter and beaver watching, this chorus was an added delight. Now that the pond is half restored, the frogs are back in full throat. They twanged from all points
and had four patterns: one twang in respond to one twang; two to two; three to three; and then for about five minutes a din of twanging.
Perhaps the snapping turtles finally got on the nerves of the frogs. There was also a catbird up in a tree on the north shore doing some great singing but not mimicking the green frogs. I checked an old otter latrine on rock going down into the pond.
Something had been there but left no scats, could have easily been a turtle on its way up the ridge to lay eggs. I saw what looked like scraping of the pine litter a little farther up the ridge.
It was hard to leave the pond, the frogs were still going. As I walked west of the pond, I bumped into a snapper,
Maybe one that I saw swimming in the pond a half hour earlier. I went to the west end of Thicket Pond where I think the otter mother made some scent mounds, and I had seen some scats. Nothing new there, and no signs of anything using the trail -- though the grass is growing fast now.
I also walked around Meander Pond and checked the end of canals and around the dam. From the state of the canals, with bottoms cleared of vegetation, I got the impression that muskrats might be around,
but there were no signs of otters.
In the late afternoon, I assumed the coolest place was on the river. Enough of a breeze had picked up to lift the cool from the water which is probably hovering below 50F. The water is high enough to flood the marshes so I could poke into the channels piercing the marshes, which I did. I didn’t see much. I did hear a Fowler’s toad in the marsh along the north shore of the point. All told the water level rose about 4 feet since March and I saw no signs of animals adapting to it. Perhaps a willow branch was nipped by a beaver up nearly below the otter latrine overlooking the entrance to South Bay. I also saw cut cattail rhizome floating in the marsh. As for the carp, usually their wallowing makes the water muddy and you see where they are when they bump the bottom of the kayak or you see their tails thrash above the water. Today I saw several swimming below me in stately decorum. Humans like their tubs full but animals don’t mind taking their chances in half a tub. It’ll be curious to see how the plants underwater respond. I only saw two herons, and only one osprey when I got back to our dock. There were four common terns putting on a show. No cormorants or loons. One strange looking small duck and my knee jerk reaction is to always think it was a teal. No geese no ducks, but it was the late afternoon of the hottest day of the year. No shame in perching in the shade.
June 1 Before getting to work at the land, I went down to the Third Pond to see what the beaver had been up to. The browsing of the pond bottom outside seems to be fanning out. Of course, the muskrat could be doing that too.
The dam has more logs on it. No doubt the beaver did that. But there is still some water leaking through the dam.
I sat in the chair briefly to see if the muskrat might be about. No. But a dragonfly landed on my knee.
I couldn’t sit for long and soon walked around to the south end of the pond where the beaver seems to be doing most of its foraging. I saw a long willow trunk, if such a long thin sapling can be said to have a trunk, in the water where I had seen the beaver munching yesterday afternoon. It looked like it ate the willow leaves, but not the bark.
A shrub on shore had been nipped too. Not sure what kind. The beavers seems to starting a pile of sticks, perhaps for future nibbling.
One birch clump on shore had two saplings cut
Otherwise the beaver is concentrating on clumps of willows. I’ll soon see if it clears all the trunks in any given clump. So far it hasn’t
It has a lot of willow to choose from.
On my way to find, saw and bring out some ash and ironwood I cut back in November, I enjoyed the bunchberry blooms up around the Bunny Bog.
Laying like another bloom was a moth.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a clear photo but I didn’t want to bend too close and wake it up.
June 2 my job today was to segment an ironwood in the fringe of the woods just south of the Big Pond that the beaver half cut enough back in 2004 or 2005 so that it died in the meantime. I cut the tree down in November 2010 expecting snow and ice conditions to make it easy to bring it to my sawing pile on the north shore of Teepee Pond. But we had a bad winter for that. In the woods closer to the First Pond, really right at the edge of the woods, and this is the scrubby part of the woods, I saw how several new birch trunks had grown up from the roots of a clump of birches that the beavers cut before 2005.
This raises a hope that if beavers did come back to the pond where they flourished for four years that they would have trees to live on. However, I’ve learned to be skeptical of this regrowth. Beavers need a good deal more to eat. Maybe in another five or six years there will be enough for a beaver family to raise another three litter of kits. I think the basic restraining factor is that the pond is too small. Beavers prefer more sources of food. Perhaps out West where the cottonwoods and willows grow quickly and little else does, the beavers can thrive. But the deciduous woods of the East allow the beavers to be more selective. And there is nothing in evolution suggesting any virtue to staying put, as much it appeals to humans to have animals, even wild ones, in their place. When it came time to check on the beaver in the Third Pond, Leslie went down first to try to get her first look at it. But the beaver didn’t come out until I was tiptoeing up behind her around 4pm. I saw it swimming straight out from the burrow in the east bank, then it dove. A few minutes later we saw it swimming slowly over to the willows in the south end of the pond. It reached a few feet up to cut one -- my camcorder out of focus as I tried to zoom it. Then it pulled the long willow out into a clear area in the pond and started stripping its leaves off and eating them, cocking its tail half up most of the time.
We didn’t see or hear it gnaw the bark. Then it seemed to duck its nose in the pond water a couple times and swam over to the bank where, shaking water off its fur as it did so, it climbed out of the pond. The willows and then honeysuckles are so dense there we didn’t see where it went.
I went over and took a photo to update its work on the dam. Somewhere it found a huge old rotten log and almost angled it onto the dam.
Then we left the beaver alone. When I got to the road, I saw a deer standing on it. When it finally ran off, instead of going directly into the woods, it ran down the road and, I think, used my trail to the Deep Pond. The vegetation is so thick, animals go out of their way to escape on the beaten path. Heading up the road, I saw a painted turtle in the gravel, baring one beautiful leg.
We’re still a bit disappointed at the lack of bird song, but we’ll be patient. The thrushes, tanagers, grosbeaks and vireos should soon be singing as their young are hatched.
June 3 We got back from a night at the land in the late afternoon and I rode the bike over to the entrance of the state park, and walked around South Bay to check the otter latrines and the beavers at Audubon Pond. I didn’t see any suggestions of otters until I got to the latrine overlooking the entrance to South Bay and I saw another line of scraped up dead leaves.
And above that there was some more serious scraping down to dirt.
But I had a devil of a time finding some scats. I saw some spread out remains of scats on a rock next to the scraping.
And I saw some old scat, but more together, on some grass below the scraping. Plus I saw that the area that I thought an otter scraped out before had been scraped even more.
So? I think otters had been there, but not recently. I went up to the pond below the Audubon Pond embankment, with camcorder cocked, expecting to see beavers. But all I saw was a muskrat and a wood duck. I couldn’t be sure of any new beaver work around the pond or on the slope down to it. However when I got up on the embankment and looked down, I could see that the vegetation in the pond just below the embankment had been harvested, at least the water was very muddy and there were only a few remnants of vegetation that I could see.
I know that the muskrat and ducks I just saw could have done that, but the trail the beavers usually take down to that pond, going over the embankment, was muddy just the way a beaver would make it muddy. I took a photo of that trail as it came up from Audubon Pond.
Over on the causeway forming the east side of the pond, I saw a heron standing looking, I thought, quite content for a heron.
This pond seems more popular this spring for terns and herons. Maybe because the river is relatively deeper, this pond is then relatively more shallow, but I’ll have to think about that. When I walked over to the causeway, I saw a goose family making its slow way into the pond.
They were reacting to my approach but so fearsome was I that all but the gander kept eating as I approached. There was a clump of blue flag irises growing in the pond just below the causeway. I took a group photo,
but was in too much of a hurry to take a close-up. I headed to the East Trail Pond to see if beavers were out there. Back on the South Bay trail, I saw a pleated woodpecker hopping down on the ground and pecking up something.
I am accustomed to seeing them in trees, especially around here where the trees are mature. After it finished its low feeding and flew off
I saw that it had been pecking ants off a rotting trunk after, I assume, drilling a hole where the ants were tending their eggs.
I approached the East Trail Pond by walking down from the East Trail to the north shore of the pond. Before I picked a place up on the rocks to sit and wait for beavers, I was startled to see that I was right. The otters were using this pond. I saw their scats and scraped up pine litter
There was some deep scraping and a scent mound of pine litter about an otter’s tail away. I saw a small scat in the scent mound.
Plus the were three large black smears of otter scat behind some more scraping.
Then just off the line from this activity to the pond below, a bit farther up on the rock slope, I saw what looked like an otter rolling area with moss scraped away to make for better rolling.
I noticed a smaller manifestation of this a few days ago and thought a turtle laying eggs scraped down to dirt. Taking a close look, I didn’t see the turtles usual style, and I didn’t see definite otter claw marks, but otters do like to move the clods around.
Meanwhile I heard a beaver slap its tail, so I sat on the rocky slope and tried to be inconspicuous. I finally saw the three beavers I expected to be here. I think a yearling or juvenile slapped its tail but not out of fear. It swam into the bushes right below me
and then back to the middle of the pond where it found something to gnaw, not sure what bit of shrub. I always like seeing the bush shake as the beaver cuts it. Then this beaver swam off with its meal, a few yards, and started gnawing. After seeing a muskrat cruise behind the dam, I saw a large beaver swim to it and dive. Its ears were so big and high above the water that I first thought I was seeing the head and tail of a smaller animal. Then I saw another beaver gnawing on something under the shrubs in the middle of the pond.
Then the smaller beaver swam back over to get a closer look at me.
I headed home for dinner excited at the seeing the beavers and ecstatic about the otter signs.
June 5 I took a tour of the island beaver ponds in the late afternoon. I saw three deer along Antler Trail, all getting their reddish summer coat.
I made my way through the lushness and decided to take a photo of virulent berry bushes. Their white flowers are popping up on most easy slopes.
Today, the grown over otter latrine was punctuated with a scent mound of sorts in a pretty wide clearing next to my trail to the dam.
I saw an animal’s trail from the pond through the tall grass to it. There was a smudge of black scat but I couldn’t say it was otter scat. There is no way for an otter to out of the pond without leaving its print in the mud surrounding what water remains. The mud showed some traffic, perhaps an otter print, but nothing convincing in that regard.
Deer and muskrat prints were easier to see elsewhere in the mud. Another nearby clue was digging in the mud like a raccoon or skunk might do.
I did raise my eyes and see some beautiful blue flag iris blooms.
Then I saw that the water in the pond was so low that I could inspect the dam from behind.
I had worried that the rush water would wear down a deeper hole in the dam. But the dirt of the dam had more integrity.
While there are no signs of beavers visiting the dam, muskrats seem to be making themselves at home in it. I saw muddy trails behind the dam leading from holes in the dam, with cut grasses scattered in the water nearby.
Muskrats will burrow anywhere and without a beaver around to continue patching holes, burrowing into a dam must be quite easy and convenient. At the middle of the dam I took a photo of the pond which still looks like a good sized pond, but I fear that it is very shallow.
That might be perfect for otter pups. I saw a heron out in the middle of it who looked quite comfortable until I disturbed it. Then it flew up pond and landed on the lodge where I last saw signs of the beavers,
On the way to the Lost Swamp Pond, I saw another reddening deer. I sat on the rock overlooking the mossy cove latrine and was entertained by a common tern who skimmed more than dived for food. Then I walked over to the dam and sat there.
I studied a phoebe perched on a dead tree but it didn’t do much. As usual a muskrats swam across the pond back to the lodge, and the wind picked up, which was nice because it was a hot day. I didn’t see any muskrat action as I walked along the Upper Second Swamp Pond dam. I gave up on checking the Grotto Pond and instead walked down the old shore of the Second Swamp Pond. That venerable pond has narrowed as the water drained away.
I took a photo of the auxiliary bank beaver lodge along the north shore, which had often housed otters and muskrats. From the knoll along the north shore I often had a perfect view of beavers and otters as they swam along the north shore of the pond. Now it is almost all grasses.
I saw a snapper right at the foot of that part of the slope which had long been an otter latrine.
I don’t even look for otter signs there any more. It was too early, 5pm, to expect to see beavers in the East Trail Pond, which was OK. I wanted to be able to look for more otter signs without disturbing the beavers. Grass is now growing up in the pond just behind the dam,
which I’m sure the beavers like but which will make it harder for me to spot them. I didn’t see any fresh work on trees as I walked around the pond but last time I was here, I saw how the beavers were eating the emerging vegetation in the pond. I didn’t see any new otter signs, and I didn’t see any turtle action. The clumps of shrubs are beginning to obscure views of the big lodge in the middle of the pond.
I decided to head home along the old board walk that cuts across the pond. During the winter I saw that beavers went down there to get some willows. I took a photo of the long dam looking from the bridge over the stream coming down from old Shangri-la Pond, now a meadow.
All the little dams that the beavers had made had been flooded over. I was surprised to see the large leafy crown of a tree down in the grasses of Shangri-la meadow. I went over to investigate and it turned out to be one half of one of the huge maples that the beavers had been girdling three years ago.
I don’t think their girdling caused the fall. The tree looked healthy save for a huge hole in the trunk left by the heartwood that rotted away. I didn’t see any signs that the beavers had cut anything recently along the boardwalk. For the moment the willow stumps they left are sprouting out, but we just had a very wet spring. I’ll see how they look in August. The last time I toured these ponds there was much excitement, today there was almost none.
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