May 18 on my way to see the beavers at the East Trail, I looped along the beaver-less ponds. I have known beavers to move out of a pond in May, so perhaps beavers might move into these ponds. But no such luck. After a pair of mallards flew off, I contemplated the Big Pond hoping a muskrat would swim about looking for something to eat. Last May there were muskrats but not this May.
I stood up from my “perch” of a long dead fallen down tree and found that with my camcorder I could take a pretty good photo of the old lodge along the upper north shore of the pond. It looked high and dry.
The Lost Swamp Pond was a bit livelier. Many geese were up in the southeast end of the pond as usual. A pair of geese were on top of the lodge in that end of the pond, trying out a nesting site for next year, I suppose. I saw two adult geese nipping bugs off the tall grasses along the shore. I didn’t see any goslings with them. Usually when there are goslings one adult goose keeps a strict guard without eating. I sat on the rock above the mossy cove latrine and in a few minutes enjoyed a common tern’s fishing and a muskrat’s cruising along the north shore. The simple reason for the Lost Swamp Pond being livelier than the Big Pond is that it has more water.
But with less to observe, I am turning into a historian of these ponds and years ago, the land flooded by the Big Pond was a worn out old farm field and pasture and the Lost Swamp Pond was a boggy wet land with low shrubs everywhere that concealed the depth of the standing water. Those shrubs are long gone, stumps and all, but the Lost Swamp pond bottom might be more fertile because of that. The wild flight of the common tern included two head down in the water splashes.
Then its flight leveled out a bit and it made two dives in which it only skimmed the pond surface; then it flew off. I also saw a kingbird that kept landing in the crook of a small dead tree standing in the middle of the pond. I took close-up photos but they didn’t show any signs of a nest there. As I walked around the west end of the pond I stepped into a muskrat burrow, nothing unusual about that except this burrow was on the flat part of the shore, not the bank.
In most of the other summers I watched this pond, this area would have been flooded. So perhaps this was a burrow used in the winter to get under the ice collapsing down on the pond bottom. Or this was a burrow useful even when it was flooded because it provided cover along the way to the deep burrows in the bank. I think muskrats are a bit leery of the large birds, heron, ospreys and hawks, that fly over the pond. I didn’t see any more porcupine gnawing along the north shore and no signs of beavers. I didn’t see any ospreys either but I don’t think they loiter in dead tree perches until the summer when the nests, many now a top power poles, are abandoned. I didn’t expect to see many turtles since it was after 5pm. But I did see four painted turtles in a line on a log, enjoying the last of the sun.
Then as I walked closer to the dam, I saw a muskrat come out of the lodge just off the east end of the dam. I stopped and trained my camcorder on it but it stopped, abruptly dove and then, when it surfaced, it swam away from me. The dam was about the same as the last time I saw it except that the major leak in it seems to be in the middle of the dam. I didn’t walk out on it to investigate. There are mustard garlics blooming on the lodge, no otters have rolled there. No signs of otters anywhere.
The pond below the Lost Swamp Pond, Upper Second Swamp Pond, continues to shrink.
However there was a large shore bird perched on an old stump.
When I first hiked in this area back in the late 1970s, when we went from granite ridge to granite ridge and tried to avoid getting our feet wet when we crossed the valleys, the Second Swamp Pond dam backed water all the way back to this area and there were enough fallen logs and living shrubs to get across. Now everything is wide open but the mud dam of the beavers which they made 10 years ago still serves and all behind the dam is mud.
The logs, shrubs and rooty clumps that kept feet dry have been silted over. Now there are intriguing channels big and small in the mud. This has always been a favorite spot for snapping turtles so I assume they make them. I didn’t see the usual muskrats signs. My hike over to the East Trail Pond dam was uneventful save for the “chick-bing” of a scarlet tanager. I took a photo of the East Trail Pond dam, just for the record. It is obviously in good repair since the water level in the pond is higher than ever. It doesn’t appear that the beavers are doing much foraging down there, perhaps waiting for the green cattails.
I found a seat up on top of the ridge north of the pond, careful not to disturb any beaver that might be out. But I didn’t see any in the pond. A muskrat was about, and to my delight it swam directly toward me making a sharp fan of ripples.
Then it emerged from a clump of shrubs and deposited a poop on a rock almost below me.
Then the shallower water right below me forced it into a dodgy dance and if it was looking for something, it didn’t find it. Then it got to deeper water, reached rippling speed until it found something worth taking back into the lodge.
Nice overture, and I waited for a beaver to appear. Finally around 7 pm, I saw ripples in the clump of shrubs below the otter latrine rock. Some blackbirds flew out and I decided that their bouncing on boughs around a nest caused the ripples. Then I saw a beaver’s back roll in a dive. I waited for it to surface but it stayed down a long them. Then when it came up it seemed to notice me immediately, swimming right below me and lifting its nose high for some good sniffs.
Then it swam over to a clump of shrubs farther out in the pond where it mimicked a floating log, facing me.
At this time of year especially with higher water than usual, there are fewer places to hide. The beaver eventually swam out and I could enjoy its broad ripples
(must say, the muskrat’s ripples are more exciting.) It soon found something to gnaw.
Then it dove and I am not sure where it went. I took a photo showing the beavers' progress in stripping the bark off the red oak trunk that fell into the pond.
I also noticed that the lodge looked different. What I called the otter proofing, logs sticking out in every direction on top of the lodge, had been pulled down, giving the lodge the classic conical shape.
Otters haven’t been in this pond since the fall.
May 19 Ottoleo came down and when he headed off to do some fishing, I threw my kayak on the boat and he gave me a ride out to Quarry Point. I looked for otter scats and other signs but didn’t see any. Inspecting the rocks from the kayak gives me more of a chance to think about what I am seeing (something about a motor on the boat that keeps you going.) However, since the water is relatively low for the spring, I couldn’t get in as close as I wanted to where the otters often latrine along the northeast shore of Picton where the old quarry docks ends and the moss covered cliffs and pine covered flats begin. But I saw well enough to convince me that otters had not been there. As I paddled along the rest of the north shore of the island, mostly pine covered, I proved that my imagination was not dull. At one cove, I was certain that I saw a scent mound just below some scratching on a mossy flat. I got out of the kayak even though I had to get over knee deep in the water. I was that sure. But the scent mound was just a high tuft of grass and the scratching was just a typical pattern of life and death that moss is prone too. However, I did see a burrow dug into where I think some old pine tree roots had been and saw quite a pile of old mink scats, but I don’t think minks had anything to do with the features that lured my wet feet ashore. Paddling along I didn’t investigate a pattern of dirt that could have been trails along a huge granite cliff. Paddling around Picton provides a good lesson in the bedrocks of the region. Most of the island shows exposed pink granite, but the southwest shore has exposed strata of sandstone. Facing the prevailing wind, the waves have worn many small caves under the layers and sections of the long, but not high, sandstone cliff have fallen into the water. In my early days of searching for otters, I often checked these rocks and caves but never found signs of otters using them or any other animal for that matter. I did see two striking male common mergansers perched on a rounded rock in front of the sandstone. The flatter portion of the southwest shore is also interesting in that it has many stately willow trees, and only one of two showed any signs of being gnawed by beavers. This shore is angled to the weather just like the north shore of South Bay where the beavers had gnawed almost every willow tree and gnawed several to death. I have to think about this some more but I can think of two possible reasons. South Bay is shallow while the channel between Picton and Maple Islands is not. So it is more attractive to beavers. Many of the willows on the South Bay shore got so big that their trunks tilted down closer to the water which made them more inviting to beavers. I have seen beavers cut down large willows that grew straight up, but leaning willows always seem more popular. I’ll try to get out in the motor boat and take some photos to illustrate this.
May 20 as I headed down the road Leslie had already spotted the scarlet tanager up almost at the top of a pine tree along the edge of the woods on the ridge parallel to the road.
I got a short video before it flew back into the woods. Then when I almost got down to the Deep Pond I saw a hermit thrush low in a tree singing its haunting song. But it flew off when I got the camcorder trained on it. That happened twice and then it sang in a tree too far away from me to work my eyes through the leaves of the crown and to see it again. The Deep Pond is getting a deep brown color.
Which means the beavers are active, but I worry it also might mean they have to stir up more and more mud to get a fewer and fewer rhizomes. On the dam by the chair, I saw green frogs on the mud, not that you can see any in the photo below.
I gave myself over to listening to the green frogs. I saw one out in the pond in front of me with its yellow chin ballooned out,
But its contribution to the chorus seemed minimal. Then I saw a muskrat surface in the middle of the pond and it swam all the way over toward the lodge and dove, looking like it was headed for the east end of the lodge.
The beavers always dive into the west end of the lodge, which is built up with mud. Then I went up to the Third Pond and sat in the chair there. A few green frogs jumped into the pond as I approached. They give themselves away by the squeal they make when they jump. I saw ripples along the west shore of the pond that I couldn’t see, and soon enough a muskrat swam over below me and dove into the burrow in the west bank.
Taking stills from the video, I got a nice stop action of a muskrat dive.
The green frogs didn’t twang at all. Perhaps the pond was too small to get a frog conversation going. Then I went up to the Teepee Pond and just below where I sit there, on a cedar that was blown down, I saw a big green frog in the pond below me. It jerked forward a couple times, and a couple inches each time, evidently getting a meal.
I didn’t have the camcorder running. I soon saw a muskrat swim into the shade on the south shore of the pond. It was content to nibble grasses, and, for a muskrat, didn’t move much at all.
There was a bit more of a frog chorus here but the hungry big frog below me didn’t twangs in. This sunny morning, the bigger the pond the bigger the chorus. Ottoleo joined us for dinner and afterwards we walked down the road and got a look at the beavers swimming.
May 22 we got to the land in the afternoon and I sat down at the Third Pond a little before 5 pm. I saw ripples from the muskrat coming from the west shore. There is a silver maple branch that fell into the water there and I thought it might be nibbling on that.
But when it finally moved out into the pond where I could see it, I saw that it was eating the seeds from the silver maple and other trees above the pond that fell into the water.
It swam in haphazard fashion nibbling all the time, quite a dance, and, for once, completely oblivious of my presence.
Then I headed down to the Deep Pond to relocate the chair I had on the east side of the pond. When I sat there one evening, the beavers didn’t like it at all, plus I couldn’t get a good view of the dam. So I moved the chair back behind a big honeysuckle bush but with a view of the dam,
and the lodge, plus a view of the bank where the beavers often nibbled sticks and sometimes even climbed to cut things to eat.
Meanwhile a storm seemed to be approaching. I rooted for it to come because we need rain. But it’s a bad sign when you see too much light through the clouds,
And we didn’t get any rain. I walked back to the house via the Third Pond and when I almost got up to the road, a curled snake snapped its head at me,
a rather big a feisty milk snake. But it was patient with me as I took photos, at a respectful distance. After dinner when I came down to watch the beavers I didn’t go to my relocated chair, but to the chair by the dam. Both of the beavers were out, and the new beaver came right toward me. I expected a tail slap and an early end to my beaver watching. Instead it came close and didn’t looked upset at all.
Then it swam away with its chin up, which beavers do when they are upset with an intruder, but then it swam back and came close again. Meanwhile the other beaver, my old friend, was diving along the east shore near the inlet. Then the new beaver dove closer and brought up a root to eat.
Before it had never seemed at ease enough to eat when it knew I was around. Then old beaver swam toward him (I think my old friend is a female and the new comer a male,) and then they both swam close to each other almost nose to nose, which I think they do when they are comparing observations or assessing the feelings of the other beaver.
Then they almost swam as one, which I’ve seen them do. Once it ended with one beaver slapping its tail. But this time they were both peaceful and after swimming toward the west shore, they both swam back toward me.
Then, I am pretty sure, the new beaver swam close to me again and it was he, I assume he is a male, that swam off to the east shore just behind the dam, dove a couple times, and then climbed up on shore and started eating the leaves of the plant that I think is a kind of meadowsweet.
It nosed around and seemed to bite quite a few leaves before it cut a bough and brought it into the pond.
I may be wrong about the new beaver doing this foraging. But clearly both beavers were comfortable with me sitting by the dam tonight, not like the night when the new beaver was so upset by my watching them. The images I used above to illustrate my observations where lifted from the video I took. I did take some still photos with the camcorder which better show the features which I think distinguishes the new beaver from the old.
It has redder fur, which tends to stick out a bit even when wet and it has smaller ears. And I think it is smaller and younger. When older beavers float on the surface of the water the back of the body sinks under the water.
This beaver was all on the surface.
May 23 I headed out to see the East Trail Pond, late enough for beavers to be out. I prefer checking the Big and Lost Swamp ponds on the way, but I hadn’t seen Audubon Pond for a long time and for the last several years I have made it my duty to check the South Bay otter latrines. So I went over Antler Trail to the South Bay trail and saw no signs of otters in the latrines along the lower part of the bay. Up on the Audubon Pond causeway I saw two or three goose families enjoying the grass. One group had a couple of goslings who seemed well aware of the world around them.
Usually I enjoy long lines of younger goslings as they make their way in the world looking a bit goofy and half aware, but this year it was my bad luck to miss them. I walked down the embankment to the beavers’ bank lodge. The cache is less than half the size it was, which initially gives the impression that the beavers are not as active as they were. But there were some leafy branches out in the water that they had just collected.
I scanned the west shore of the pond for new beaver work but saw none. That hardly proves that there is none. I am used to these beavers living on grasses and other green vegetation late in the spring. Then I went down to the otter latrine above the entrance to South Bay and green grass was growing where I used to see scent mounds, scratching and scats.
My digital camera has not been behaving, so I used the camera function of my camcorder which has some advantages but rather turned the water of South Bay into a snow covered expanse. There was one area of scratching that I examined closely.
I suspected it was just a case of mossy areas showing old lumps and bumps, but I did see a large gray scat at the edge of some digging. The camcorder seemed incapable of taking a good photo of scat -- which rather cramps my style. However, it wasn’t fresh and I only saw one, but better that than nothing. Then I headed to the East Trail. Along the way down the South Bay trail I kept flushing such a small pileated woodpecker then I began thinking it might be something else but it was gone when I looked for it again. Too quiet for a pileated, but maybe little ones best keep quiet. Speaking of quiet, the osprey nest on the power pole between South Bay and Audubon Pond was quiet. I approached the East Trail Pond from the south because there was a light wind from the northeast. As I approached a female wood duck drove off an advancing male
as three other males seemed to behave themselves. The jilted male ruffled up some water, I suppose, the duck equivalent to a cold shower. The female nipped bugs off the surface of the pond water. No ducklings around.
They all flew off as I sat on a rock well low on the ridge but high enough to get a view of the dam and lodge. I watched patiently with only a little chipmunk furiously dancing out a defense strategy that ended with a long look at the white of my not charging eyes.
I also found that my camcorder was good for getting still photos of birds, like the oriole that was getting bugs on the leaves of the maple branch bowing over the pond shore.
Then, just like that, a muskrat appeared in the pond right in front of me just a few feet off shore.
It stared at me a long time, for a muskrat, and then I tried to follow it with the camcorder as it swam through the sere cattails
and then headed to the dam where I lost sight of it.
Then when I saw something swimming out of the cattails dragging some vegetation, I assumed it was a muskrat. But there was nothing green in what was being dragged. It was a beaver dragging a dead cattail by the root, I think.
It swam to and dove into the lodge.
Of course this got me to thinking that there were kits inside the lodge and either fresh bedding was needed, the dead stalk, or food to eat, the rhizome, or both were needed. Then I got another indication of changes in the pond. The muskrat swam back with greens in its mouth
and it dove into the bank right below me, evidently a burrow.
A muskrat came right back out swam off and 8 minutes later came back with another bouquet of grass
In the middle of the short video clip above, I can faintly hear beaver whining, which, was louder in real life. So I think the beavers now have kits and that the muskrats, who had been swimming in and out of the lodge, marking it and even taking some muck up on it, were asked to leave and they relocated to a burrow where they now have kits to feed. With those happy conclusions, I hurried home to dinner.
May 25 I went to cut some trails before the day got too warm and went up the gravelly road to get closer to the First Pond where our old trails around it had been reclaimed by buckthorns and honeysuckles. On the road, I saw a curious bug.
I first thought it might be two insects, one eating the other, but after I brought it back to the house to examine it, I wondered if it might be a larva, say of a stonefly, which had half metamorphosed with wings and legs emerging but then something went wrong. Perhaps a bird plucked it out of the pond and then dropped it. I did see a stonefly later in the day. Or was it a June bug that didn’t turn out right? I cut away the honeysuckle and buckthorn along the south side of the First Pond not so much to make it easier to see the pond, almost impossible to do that, but to make a path and to get some looks at the sandstone rocks at the base of the ridge there. I freed up a glimpse of ferns, a flowering columbine and other delicate plants, mosses and lichens arrayed on and around various small sandstone ledges.
That this is on such a small scale can make it more special to discover. When I took a break from clipping I enjoyed the flights of a butterfly, of which I couldn’t get a photo, and a white tailed dragonfly.
Then as I resumed work a mating pair of four spot dragonflies latched onto a small tree branch at my eye-level.
Earlier in the day when walking up our road we saw dragonflies swarming all along the road, which is not really the best place to get mosquitoes. It seems it was sex not food that they were after. When I finally got a view of the pond, the Second Pond or Teepee Pond in this case, I scanned the banks for turtles and I saw a pair of painted turtles on a log where I often see four or five.
One turtle was larger than the other and while it seemed rooted to the log, one of its back legs kept treading the air, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. The smaller turtle in front kept looking back and the leg flagging turtle always had its head up looking at the other turtle.
Perhaps this is more mating behavior. I watched for several minutes but other than that twitching leg nothing else seemed to happen. Three years ago I cut honeysuckles and buckthorns on a flat between a ridge and Teepee Pond. I expected the beavers to move up to that pond and fashioned a sightline from a neat sandstone seat on the ridge to the pond. The beavers never moved in, and I rarely took that seat, though I did see some nice sunsets from there. However, I was pleased to see that the area is still open and the berry bushes are flourishing
As I clipped on, I discovered how grown over some of our oldest trails are. Since we kept cutting its low branches, our clipping years ago helped persuade honeysuckles to stop growing into a spherical bush, and try to become tall trees which they are not designed to be. Instead they tumbled over and then shoots and branches come straight up from the trunk now lying on the ground effectively making a wall across the trail. After a relatively early dinner I headed down to watch the beavers, this time using the chair I placed just above the southeast corner of the pond which was designed to give me a better view of the whole dam and a close view of the bank where the beavers frequently nibble and sometimes groom. The problem was getting to the chair without disturbing the beavers. I should have gone up the back side of the high ridge east of the pond and then down through the woods to the chair. Instead I went down from the Third Pond and then staying behind the many large honeysuckle bushes, all flourishing spheres, got into the woods and then to the chair. I feared I was making too much noise tramping through the tall grass, but I didn’t hear any tail slaps or dives down in the pond. I gained the chair and a few minutes later a wood duck flew over the pond and into the tall trees behind me -- perhaps doing duty at the nest that I suspect is in a cavity in one of the trees. I sat for an hour and no beavers appeared. I kept moving the chair closer to the pond to get a full view. Then as it got darker more shadows and reflections began to look like beavers but none were there. I was also disconcerted by seeing the green bough of a cut branch along the dam at the exact spot where I saw it a few days ago. Had the beavers left? While there was still enough light I walked around and took photos of their collections of nibbled sticks along the pond shore so tomorrow morning I could see if anything was added to it during the night. The whole time I was there, hermit thrushes sang and then when I walked home the whip-poor-will began to sing.
May 26 I walked around the Deep Pond beginning at the dam and while I didn’t see what I could be sure was fresh beaver work, but why should there be? The water level is comfortably below the dam.
We haven’t had much rain in the past few weeks. However, when I walked below the dam, I saw two leaks, one with a good flow. I didn’t see any evidence of beavers cutting anything in the area just back from the east side of the dam where they have been active. However as I walked along the high slope I saw a stripped stick floating in the water that should have been easy to see as I walked along that slope last night.
I didn’t take a photo of that area of the pond last night, but I did take a photo of corner of the pond near the inlet bay. There were some leafy honeysuckle boughs but they had been there last night too.
Of course honeysuckles are usually not stripped of leaves when they are cut. I walked back into the fringe of the woods where there are plenty of maple saplings bursting with big leaves that beavers should like to eat. But I didn’t see any signs of beavers foraging back there.
Much of this growth is coming from the stumps of trees beavers cut a few years ago.
It seems that beavers don’t find such regrowth that tasty. However, with everything growing vigorously it is hard to see if there have been any nips here and there. Down along the inlet creek, where the water is also receding, I saw some wet mud on the shore.
I planned to keep a watch on the pond beginning at around 5:30 pm which is when I used to see the beaver come out last summer. Today, I got down there a little late, and the beaver, the one I watched last year, was swimming in the middle of the pond and swam right over to me. But I’ll illustrate and narrate that story in next week’s journal.
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