May 19 to 25, 2009

May 19 going to Ottoleo's graduation from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh afforded me many idle hours to ruminate on the failure of the beaver dam at Shangri-la Pond and my reaction to it. Surrounded by the triumphs of engineering
and engineers, I thought hard of the beavers' evident ineptitude and my premature poem shrugging off, almost celebrating the catastrophe. As soon as I unpacked the car when we got home, I headed off to check Shangri-la Pond. Heart and head battled as I hurried over the ridge on Antler Trail and then climbed the slope from South Bay and then the ridge overlooking Shangri-la Pond. The poem I sang into my camcorder on the morning of May 14 pictured beavers sleeping peacefully in their lodge and then adjusting to the situation, despite the same section of their dam
failing twice within one month. I soon saw that there was less water in the pond,

their lodge all but high and dry:

There was no evidence of fresh work on the dam that busted nor what I initially thought was a small dam made up pond after the catastrophe, the first effort of the beavers to save the situation.

I'm now wondering if what I first took as a new dam was only the line of their old dredging. But every time I overlook this scene of devastation, life springs into action. A muskrat swam toward the dam and seemed to inspect it. Then it worked its way over the little dam, or dredging, and then
climbed up and over the high part of the big dam. Then another muskrat popped out and swam up the north canal. Then just as the first muskrat went over the big dam, two joggers came up the trail. The muskrat beat a retreat back over the dam and hid under a log and looked up at me. Then it swam back to the big dam and this time went through the 20 foot gap on one end, and down the creek.

I went down to the dam to check the soil the dam had been built on. It was hard clay. I eyeballed all the mud the beavers packed around the pipe the state park people put through the dam back in 2001.

Were the beavers forced to dredge too deep behind the dam, exposing the hard clay, and did that cause the base of the dam to weaken and finally give way, or had something else caused the dam to fail, wind whipped waves, for example, and was the scouring down to hard clay only the result of the ensuing flood of water out of the pond, not to mention of rest of the trunk and stump of the dead tree sweeping through the dam? I guess I need to take a closer look at the section of the dam pushed a few yards downstream. I walked up to the small pond just to the northeast of Shangri-la Pond. I saw that a tree almost cut down a week or so ago was now down, stripped of limbs and a bit of the trunk gnawed upon

But the pond itself was rather low, with no evidence of work on the dam. So I don't think the beavers moved up to that pond. Walking along the old shore of the now empty Shangri-la Pond I saw a curious hole in the mud, filled with muddy water, and I could see where the beavers had cut the roots of the neighboring tree the better to get into the hole.

If I was still singing poems into my camcorder, I would say the beavers disappeared down that hole. Out of force of habit I took photos of all the beavers recent work, realizing that if the beavers were no longer there I could study that old work at my leisure -- perhaps for years, and perhaps that would not be a bad idea, to gain an understanding of which girdled trees survive the beavers and which don't, but my heart is always with the beavers and I set out to find where they had gone. From the little bridge over the outlet creek, now stained with silt and logs from two flash floods from Shangri-la Pond, I could get a good view of the East Trail Pond and meadow and I saw no evidence of beavers moving down there. Looking down from the bridge I saw a tangle of white flowers that
I never noticed before.

I'll have to come back and take a closer look. Then I headed for Thicket Pond which is where the family wintered in 2006-7 before they moved over to Shangri-la Pond. I noticed that the beaver that wintered in Meander Pond this year moved up to Thicket Pond in the spring. I had suspected that it moved out and joined the family in Shangri-la Pond which it could do if it had once been part of that family. However, I had no sure evidence to support that conjecture, and the last time I looked at Thicket Pond, I saw a bit more beaver gnawing on some tree trunks. Today I saw more gnawing on all those trunks, especially the shadbark hickories by the pond.

which might mean that Shangri-la Pond beavers had moved in, or that the lone beaver never left. There was no work on the dam however. I did see a small garter snake nestled in the sun on the dead grass,

which I unfortunately couldn't help disturbing. Gnawing on shag bark hickory, white oak, and an old thick and big maple, can't feed a hungry family of beavers, and Thicket Pond is slow to sprout grasses. So the beavers would have to go out on land to eat the new grass and it is hard to see
evidence of that. I thought the beavers would have a better shot of surviving off Meander Pond which is more open and probably well enough dredged since the beavers spent the winter of 2005-6 there. Walking along the north shore all I saw was old work and the girdling on tree trunks below the dam looked that same, save for a few fresh strips of bark taken off a maple.

I soon saw that beavers had just been in the pond, and in a big way. There was mud all along the dam, fresh mud with big heaves

and the single beaver that had moved here in the late fall never did that. It was not hard picturing a family just traumatized by a dam failing twice moving into another pond and firming up the dam straightaway.

There is a good bit of small things to eat around this sprawling pond with channels snaking through grasses and shrubs, and I saw a line of alders where some had just been nipped.

I went up to an old lodge in the bank from where I could see one of the old lodges in the pond. Neither looked like they were being used.

But a tree had been cut behind me, I think it was just down, and I saw evidence of something coming out of the water, though I was easily distracted from studying that by a lush bunch of violets on the shore.

I suppose I need some evidence of beavers moving in -- I suspect three or four beavers to be here, before I can announce that the refugee beavers have settled here. Their old bank burrow looked like a beaver hadn't looked at it for four years.

So maybe there is some life left in that poem I sang into the camcorder; the beavers slept easily, woke up and the oldest said, there's a crazy meandering pond your mother and I once lived in, not far away. Oh, yes, that crazy guy always looking at us used to look at us there, too. With too much time to think during my recent journey, I worried that the beavers blamed me for the dam busting. As I stood above them on the ledge looking down as they floated in the water below me, they might have taken me for a bad omen -- but no more poems,
please.

May 20 we got back to our land this morning and I went down to the Deep Pond and saw no evidence of a beaver having been around the dam and west shore. So I think the beaver is long gone. Then, after we tended to the needs of the garden, I sat by Boundary Pond and walked around it. As I sat, a muskrat swam up pond, and several ravens yodled and croaked, not at me, but amongst themselves. I heard some hints of dog barks and bittern thunks, like a couple of the ravens were trading notes. The pond looked a
little lower which made it had to judge if the piles of nibbled sticks on the bottom of the pond were getting bigger or just easier to see.

I did see some long thin sticks half stripped, looking like a beaver might come back to finish stripping it in a few hours.

The best evidence that the beavers were still around was that the pond was muddy, especially the Last Pool.

Then there was the dam. I suppose it is more a case of the water being lower than the beavers making the dam higher,

but relying on memory alone, I think more logs have been pushed over. Old logs that I remember being at an angle have been, I think, knocked straight by other logs being pushed over.

My current theory is that beavers don't go below the dam to rearrange logs. And I saw very long, thin stripped sticks, just like the ones they seem to be stripping now, pushed over the dam

and there is a big birch log over the dam, that I don't think was there before.

After what I saw at Shangri-la Pond, I applaud all logs pushed over a dam. The lodge has so many logs on it, I could only tell if new ones had been pushed up after a close study of old photos.

All the girdling work seems to be the same as when I left it five days ago

Perhaps the tentative gnawing into the stripping on the smellest poplar is new.

Meanwhile the big white trillium mature into pink old age

and I got a lucky photo of a shy columbine.

 

May 21 I took Ottoleo, the engineering graduate, to Shangri-la Pond and he was amazed at how easy it was to see the snapping turtles down in the pond.

We saw three, two in canals along the south shore of the pond and one in the remaining central pool.

Then we contemplated the broken dam. The first question: was the curving line of sticks and muck an attempt to make a dam after the failure, or was it just the line of the channel dredging the beavers have been doing the last two years?

We both thought it was an effort to make a dam. While we sat on a rock discussing it, a muskrat appeared from the back of that little dam, swam down into the very shallow pool behind the busted dam

and then swam right below us and climbed over the little dam and headed up pond.

If it could only talk. It probably new what happened to the dam and the beavers. Then we looked at the dam. With another person available I could get a photo showing the extent of the dam failure. Ottoleo is about 5 foot 9 inches tall.

What makes this dam different from other is that there is a pipe through the middle of it that the beavers, over two years, stuffed with mud.

When the beavers moved into this pond in 2007, the pipe was a good foot above the pond level. The beavers used much dirt to defeat the pipe. Did the bulge of earth in the middle of the pond help increase the force of wind whipped waves and current?

I don't think I have mentioned that the section of the dam that didn't fail has solid ground below it. The failure took place where the dam blocked the old creek bed. In answer to the second question, how did the dam fail, Ottoleo
didn't think the trunk in the dam and the rest of the trunk and stump behind the dam had anything to do with the failure. I agree. He thought the dam failed because of water washing over it. I think it failed from below, in part because of the rotten
wood and grasses that made up the dam, largely unbraced by solid long logs

Ottoleo noticed something that had escaped me. The beavers had a large and deep burrow beside the dam. I never noticed any beaver using it, but obviously they did.

Green things were shooting up in the remaining silt. I got a better photo of the white flowers under the bridge over the outlet creek. That creek is jammed and bordered by the washout from the pond above, including some fearsome looking rotten logs, trunks and stumps, but also these white flowers, probably a variety of Virginia waterleaf.

Then we got down on the long south shore of the pond. Ottoleo wanted to get close to one of the snapping turtles. Couldn't find any -- easier to see them from well above the pond. A mayfly did latch onto me.

At Thicket Pond, I didn't see any new work on the hickory or white oak, but I did see a hornbeam that looked just cut. It was down far enough to suggest that a beaver coming up from Meander Pond could have cut it.

I didn't see any other fresh work as we walked down to Meander Pond dam, but there are patches of alders and other palatable shoots (for beavers) all around the gangling pond. I don't think there was any more mud pushed up on the dam, and the water in the pond was so clear I could see the pattern of the beavers' dredging.

That lack of muddy water doesn't mean the beaver left. Especially if three or four beavers moved into this pond, they are probably denning well back in the pond in one of the old lodges, not the burrow in the bank beside the lodge. The park people have still not cleared the drain at Audubon Pond, though while we were there one of them drove his garden caddy to the edge of the water lapping over the causeway and put his hipwaders on. We didn't hang around to see what he did. Judging from the logs on the bank lodge, one of them looking just stripped, the beavers are still bolstering that lodge.

The lodge in the pond is completely flooded. In the photo below, showing two geese easing into the pond, a stick or two of the old lodge is just perceptible. When the pond is drained, as it must be, the beavers may have to move back there.

Indeed, hemmed in by humans, the two beavers in the pond appeared in the middle of the pond, one of them slapped its tail at us. The otter latrine above the entrance to South Bay was completely grassed over and walking back down the north shore of South Bay, I thought my inspection was over, as the water level in the river was higher, making any recent beaver gnawing on the willows hard to see. Then at the docking rock latrine, we were greeted by a pair of large crayfish claws,

and, nearby, a string of otter scats

plus a scent mound that didn't photograph well.

So one otter at least hasn't forsaken the delectables of South Bay. I'll leave checking the otter latrines along the peninsula in the bay for another day. Saw my first king bird for the season at Shangri-la Pond. Then at the little causeway at the end of the south cove of South Bay, we flushed a wood duck with a brood small enough to stick to her bulk seemingly by the mere force of gravity, though their little flippers were paddling,

off to face the wide world. We spent the night at the land, arriving after dinner, and I had a chance to sit by the Boundary Pond for an hour. A few veerys entertained me, and then some peepers joined the tree frogs. Two beavers were about but the one that ventured close to me was coy. Must have known I was watching. Finally at the end of my vigil, a beaver climbed up on some mud and began nibbling but it was too dark and I could not really see what it was doing. Mosquitoes were also out in force.

May 22 sunny but not that hot of a day. I headed off in the afternoon to check the Big Pond and Lost Swamp Pond. I went up the Antler Trail, then cut through the meadows well traveled by deer and then down the deer trails along the ridge, and didn't pick up any deer ticks. The woods on the ridge were busy with birds, and the leaves were large enough to make it hard to spot the orioles and rose breasted grosbeaks. I had better luck seeing the yellow warblers around the Big Pond dam. The pond there is bigger than I
have ever seen it, with water belly up to bar of land around it.

I sat on my usual perch just in the shade at the south end of the dam, and saw a meal of beaver cut sticks spread out before me, half stripped.

I saw that the section of the dam holding back the pond water from flooding down the creek had been built up with mud and even shaded by freshly cut honeysuckle boughs.

Last year the boughs were set back on the dam. This year some reach up behind the dam, perhaps the better to quench the morning sun.

I hasten to add that this is just theory, and I am not sure what advantage the beavers gain from shading the mud when they could easily come by and moisten it with a few shoves of water wet plants. I hoped that the beavers had pushed up mud along all the dam, because the last two times I try to cross on it, my feet got soaked. I soon found that the beavers had done a good job

and even pushed up a log here and there along the dam.

and I found a spot where there was a trail down through the thick grass below the dam, and a nice pile of nibblings on the dam and some spilling out into the water.

The lodge along the north shore of the pond looked different so I went around to get a look at that. Despite the thick vegetation it was easy getting there. I picked up a fresh deer trail going up and then an old beaver trail going
over. The beavers have honeysuckle on the lodge too, and they moved some rotten wood up on it. Perhaps that too would help keep things cooler inside what looks like a hot little hive.

The water around the lodge was muddy, and not just from beavers. As I stood there, a muskrat swam over to the lodge, with a small bunch of cut grass in its mouth.

It dove beside the lodge affording me a still photo giving evidence of a muskrat diving into a lodge where the beavers were also living.

I sw two herons fly over the pond, and land in the shallows, unfazed by my presence. Then when I parked myself next to the Lost Swamp Pond, two herons flew over and parked themselves up in crowns of dead trees, unfazed by my presence. They must be in love. I came to the Lost Swamp Pond along the boundary line and walked up on the rocks to the east of the line to check them for otter scat. I saw some spread out scales from two old scats, and took a photo to show the relation of those scats to the dam across the way, where the otters do most of
their scatting now.

My guess is that these otters are marking the western line of their territory and that they don't come up from South Bay, but that is hard for me to really believe. Will I ever see these otters? One good sighting and I might know. I expected to see several muskrats in the Lost Swamp Pond but at first saw none. I saw a male wood duck, and only heard the female cry, and a male mallard and didn't hear the female at all. Even the turtles were shy today, but the west end of the pond especially was very muddy, thanks I think to turtles, muskrats and beavers.

After a pleasant sit for a half hour, I walked around the pond to the dam. I saw no otter scats and can't be sure if there was more mud pushed up on the dam, probably.

Out at the lodge I saw a sprig of greens in the water next to a small granite rock with muskrat poop on it

and I saw a sprig of green beside the lodge and beside the lodge farther out in the pond.

Oh yes, and coming over to the lodge, I saw two muskrats swim up from it and disappear into the grasses to the northeast. I also saw a snake on the rock, looking hard at me.

Down below, the Upper Second Swamp Pond is lower

and the creek from the Lost Swamp Pond is half the size it was, evidence of the good repair of the Lost Swamp Pond dam

Could the Shangri-la Pond beavers have come here? I don't think so. But I think the Second Swamp Pond beavers may have moved up here. The two families in the neighboring ponds must be related to have lived so peacefully next to each other for a decade or so. Perhaps, they've merged. Really no way for me
to prove that. I got some deer ticks, but not the usual dozen.

May 23 worked at the land and the mosquitoes were bad -- not since '98.... It was also a humid cloudy day, cool when not in motion, hot with any motion. I sat at the Deep Pond where the catbirds were most active, and I heard an oriole. There were two pairs of ravens, noisy and in close formation, like one member of one pair was talking to a member of the other pair. On my way to fetch the logs I cut in the early spring, I checked the Last Pool and the upper end of Boundary Pool. I can't say that the photos I took
proved that beavers had come up to the Last Pool to find things to eat. But the light was perfect for good photos showing how pleasant the beavers' surroundings can seem.

Not that such a simple arrangement of stripped logs is typical. I try to monitor the piles of nibbled sticks, but the chief variation might be the rising and falling water level.

I don't think the beavers gnawed any more on the three poplars, but it was perfect light for photos

and with a close up of the smaller poplar they just began to strip, it was easier to see their stray gnaws.

The work on the poplar looks more impressive than the piles of small twigs the beavers collected. But they probably spent much more time with the twigs than they did stripping that poplar bark. The channel coming up from Boundary
Pond looked well used, worn down to orange mud with stripped sticks lining the channel.

Back on the island I headed off in the kayak to tour South Bay. Several herons flying over the bay and only one, that I disturbed in the north cove, gave me a piece of its mind, rather angry croaking. I saw two pairs of geese with goslings, on neighboring rocks on the north shore of the south cove. The group of four goslings was probably over a week old, and the other group had three little guys. Both parents were there and the larger goslings were getting a demonstration of how to eat the tops of the green grass. I didn't see any sure otter signs, but I
could just see a roll of leaves at the back of the willow latrine. I'll have to hike over to check on that. I saw fresh beaver gnawing on the willow at the docking rock latrine. Not many turtles about today. I think this is going to be a good year for algae in the bay. I was fascinated by the hexagonal design of what I took to be the forming strands of algae. No osprey about, which was surprising. There was one common tern and two Caspians terns. When the latter strayed over the marsh, red winged blackbirds chased them away.

May 24 I headed off in the afternoon to illustrate yesterday's kayak trip. Was that pile of leaves I saw at the willow latrine an otter scent mound? Yes,

and when I got close, I saw scales from old otter scats on the fronds of the blue flag iris.

Or did the iris grow up and raise the scales off the ground! No. There was much down to earth scat left by the otter on the piles of leaves it scraped up.

I could smell scat, but I didn't see any that looked fresh. So what does this mean? I hope it was left by a mother otter marking the territory of her young family. But I am struck by the positioning of the remaining active latrines around South Bay. This willow latrine is situated midway up the north shore of the south cove; the docking rock latrine is situated midway up the north shore of South Bay. It's as if an otter has found the power points that command this waterway.... Of course I looked for scats elsewhere on the peninsula and saw none. Going up the north shore of the bay, I saw a family, of humans, contemplating a black snake. It had been sunning itself,

and we proved so nonthreatening that in a few minutes it headed back toward the sunshine. There was nothing new at the docking rock latrine, though when I went down to check, I saw the goose family with four goslings out in the water.

I also wanted to check Audubon Pond to see what the park people were up to. When I last left the pond, one was putting hipwaders on. Last year, two men cleared away the logs and mud the beavers put on the drain, and caused a rapid drop in the pond's water level. Now, there is a rubber pipe in the water, going up and over the embankment, down to the stream well below the level of the pond. Water is flowing out, slowly, and it looks like the water level is going down slowly.

This is friendlier for the muskrats, who are once again using their burrows in the embankment. Indeed I saw one swimming along below the embankment. The pond will get much lower, if it doesn't rain. On the way back I enjoyed the choke cherry blooms along the South Bay trail, and saw a small bee
ducked into one.

Large black ants were also crawling around the blooms, and also out on the leaves. Must be sweetness everywhere.

May 25 I've been mowing trails through the grass at our land, to save us not only from the wet grass, but also the ubiquitous deer ticks. When I mowed grass on the high bank of the Deep Pond, I saw dollops of mud that only a beaver would push up on such a high bank. Plus the pond water looks very muddy.

After lunch I went down and sat at the pond, and saw a muskrat ferrying grass from that high bank back to its burrow in the dam.

I don't think it collected the grass I cut. Then I walked around the pond looking for beaver signs. I saw a stripped stick in the water near the knoll and what looked like a fresh trail up into the grass, but that didn't lead to any freshly cut saplings or trees. Then when I came down from the knoll, almost stepping on the beaver lodge, I heard a splash from in front of the lodge, and shortly after, a beaver surfaced in the middle of the pond.

It swam rather close to me, only slapping its tail once.

This was an adult beaver and it didn't act like either of the two beavers that were here. The more shy of those two beavers always went to the middle of the pond and acted like a floating log as it discreetly sniffed in my direction. The other beaver usually kept slapping its tail and crisscrossed the pond nose up. This beaver was not shy about sniffing me, and didn't seem that alarmed.

video clip to come

I had to cut another aspen that was beginning to shade the garden. I brought down two large limbs to the pond. The beaver stayed in the pond for about 15 minutes and for a while seemed loath to go back in the lodge. It stayed near the
lodge, near the shore, and kept raising its nose up as high as it could, sniffing me, maybe smelling those aspen leaves, too. The other show around the pond was the phlox, softly blazing blue or violet on the slope below the knoll and behind the lodge. In two area, there were plants with spherical shapes of blooms.

Never seen that before.

When I went up to the Third Pond, I saw a female common merganser and several ducklings. I couldn't count them because she took them behind some bushes. She gently clucked to reassure then and her crown feathers were stretched out, perhaps to intimidate me. I also heard a cuckoo in the woods. A week or so ago, I saw one around the Third Pond. It was cooler today with a north wind. The mosquitoes were not bad.