February 2006 part two
February 8 we went to work at the land, for about ninety minutes in 20F, toes finally got cold. Two foxes walked across the Deep Pond;
rabbits worked the low bushes;
four deer crossed the Teepee Pond;
and the porcupines came up from Shoulette's land and back again,
and again. Most interesting was a large butternut hickory nut at the end of a small mouse hole in the snow.
Too big to handle?
February 9 Light snow this morning and I went out to South Bay to see if the otters might have come in. But first I checked on what the porcupine at the end of South Bay might have been up to, and in the little maple it fancies, it did go out a bit to gnaw on a limb.
Scanned the trees but didn't see it at work. To make a long story short, there were no otter tracks. Indeed, the little moss covered latrine, shaded by a willow, that is a sometime otter latrine, showed how daunting it is to find a comfortable place to scat when the wind whips up the waves along South Bay -- all is ice covered.
I took at glance at Audubon Pond, nothing happening there. Then I continued around to Eel Bay. The Narrows was largely frozen, save that the idiot who has a cottage there keeps plowing his boat through the ice. No otter signs there, but I saw that at the entrance to Eel Bay there is open water, not created by the idiot and his boat. I had a pleasant time negotiating the icy rocks (played a little otter and slid on my butt at places) and the snow which got heavy enough to conceal the Canadian channel. I sat a bit up on the top of the rocks, then went down to see if there were otter signs. None. But I did see fresh beaver work,
some small red oaks cut. I couldn't see any beaver lodge near by, but there are docks and boat houses not far away. I wasn't alone on the point. Two hairy woodpeckers were working furiously in a pine right over my head. I walked on the trail down to Sand Bay thinking that the water running out of the little creek there might have fashioned some open water, but the north wind raised waves that are now solid ice.
I continued on the trails into the interior of the island and came down above Meander Pond. I saw the brown of open water, quite impressive on a cold morning with the temperature still at 16F, and got out my camera despite the snow. Then when I sized up the shot, I saw the beaver swimming in the brown pool.
I think it noticed me because it dove and disappeared. I sat for ten minutes, then walked down the cliff and the beaver reappeared.
It tolerated me this time, and then I saw it repeatedly use its back feet and front to raise mud from the pond bottom. I am certain it wasn't groping for something to eat, and there was plenty to eat on the bank, where it briefly went. I think it was raising mud to make it harder for the ice to freeze. I got some video through the snow and then headed off. (Click to see video clip) On a cold day like this, it would be bad form to disturb a beaver keeping its pipeline to food open. As I walked around South Bay, I saw the little porcupine up in the maple tree where I had seen stripping. It was half way out on a limb.
February 10 below zero in the morning, sunny and calm. We got to the land a little after ten and after checking our ponds, where there was no action, we went down to White Swamp, walking along the road first, crossing two grouse trails, grouse that looked like they were in a hurry. We set out to find some active beaver lodges. From our tours in the winter in previous years (we've never paddled on this swamp), I knew that there was a central core of deeper water so we headed for that to see if lodges might be situated around it. What beavers would lose in proximity to trees they would gain in water to navigate in under the ice. Off the south shore of this pond within a pond we saw a large muskrat mound which was remarkable for the number of small sticks worked into it.
Then to the north we saw a beaver lodge in what must be an off channel to the deep pool of water nestled near grasses. The mud armor indicated it was active.
Unfortunately we soon saw another indicator of activity. As we walked to the other two lodges looming above the plain of snow,
we saw that traps were set for the beavers in holes 15 feet or so from the lodge. The traps were wired to sticks laying across the hole. Footprints indicated that the trapper had been checking on things between our two recent light snowfalls. No way of telling how many beavers he has killed, but since this has been done for years here, there's a good chance the trapper only takes a few beavers from each lodge. As far as we know these are the closest lodges to the pond where we had beavers for four years, where three litters were raised. Evidently this incredible expanse of swamp struck the beavers in our pond as a better place to spend this winter than our cozy secluded pond. I took photos as I went from the second
to the third lodge we saw, the only one close to trees, and some of them had been cut by the beavers recently.
It took about 5 minutes to walk from lodge to lodge, but on ice covered with enough snow to not make it slippery that is like a walk in the park. Then we headed to where the water flows in from our Deep Pond. On the way we saw coyote tracks going to a freshly dug hole into a drift that evidently covered a muskrat mound.
Then at the frozen over pool of water where the creek runs into the swamp, we saw more coyote tracks
and old otter slides -- that is two days old, snowed over so it was hard to tell how many otters had been there.
Up at the dam, there was one brief slide behind a little, mostly frozen over hole in the ice. We were disappointed to see that the otters didn't come up to our pond, where, I've always fancied there must be the best concentration of fish around -- evidently I'm wrong. I'll wait until tomorrow to check the beaver ponds on the island (where there is no trapping,) but I walked out to see if otters had been on the end of Goose Island - no.
February 11 another cold, calm, sunny day, and off we went to look for otter slides on the island. South Bay is nicely covered with two inches of snow, but no otters took advantage. There were the usual coyote and fox tracks. When I went up to Audubon Pond, I saw three deer on the causeway. The ice stretches out between the islands, save for the idiots breaking ice in ice boats. No otter slides at the latrine, or on the snow covered ice, nor on the rock on Murray Island that they had visited in December. At the fork in the trail going up to Audubon pond, a porcupine was denning at the base of a large tree with a slit at the bottom.
There was a beautiful spread of reddish pee and the porcupine was inside seemingly warmed by his own poop.
Nothing new at Aududon, just deer tracks, and so we headed to our best chance to see some action: Meander Pond. The beavers weren't out but the pool had been open yesterday, if not this morning.
The path to their work was iced a bit brown
and they had taken a bit off the last red oak crown to fall near the pond.
We walked down Shangri-la Pond and despite a day of making a point of ice safety -- showing off for Leslie -- I made one false step and one foot went through with water going up to my knees. Oh, well. In the woods on the way to the Second Swamp Pond, I saw some nice fisher tracks: the usual stride,
then some scuffing in the snow; then a brief bounding, two by two gait;
then walking on a small log.
I crossed the Second Swamp Pond, then went up to the Lost Swamp Pond and followed a bounding mink toward the den I photographed the insides of the other day.
The mink nosed in, but kept going, crossing fox tracks. Then behind the dam I was surprised to see slides in the snow surrounding two small holes in the ice.
At first glance they looked like otter slides,
but while there were slides and what could have been tail marks, shaped much like an otters tail,
there were no sure otter prints, no scats.
There were coyotes prints and I wonder if one dog was dragging the other, or two were playing with something that they dragged in the snow.
There was no blood however. Leslie was down below at Upper Second Swamp Pond and saw no slides there, but heard something swimming under the ice. I expect otters to make a bigger show when they enter a pond, but what if one of the pups, separated from the family, made it back to this pond, and was being tentative about making itself at home. There is no sign that any otter came down the Lost Swamp Pond, but one could have entered through the brush below the Lost Swamp Pond dam. I'll got out tomorrow and see what I see. Out in the middle of the pond there was a pile of coyote poops in the midst of tracks, and some dragging, too.
The beavers up pond evidently made no effort to keep some open water there.
We headed home and had an uneventful hike until we got to the wooded valley. Three grouse took off from the frozen creek bed
-- never noticed them there before. But they weren't just after the chance of getting water in the creek, they landed and headed into the rocks
and even up the ridge.
There were porcupine tracks at the bottom of the valley and the porcupine reclaimed the den in the middle portion, where the deer carcass had been. I was struck by a patch of green porcupine pee near green lichens exposed on the rock.
Such curiosities almost reconciled me to the lack of sure otter signs.
February 12 another sunny cold morning, but with a strong east wind which kept my head bowed as I headed up the golf course. I went out mainly to check behind the Lost Swamp Pond dam to see if anything slid around behind it. But there was nothing new today, there or on the pond. I walked down to the Upper Second Swamp Pond and saw that nothing had been on the ice nor had anything fashioned a hole in the ice behind the dam. I was careful to check for prints going into the always open water (though less of if after so many cold days,) in the creek coming down from the Lost Swamp Pond dam. I walked home via the Big Pond dam and there was no activity there either. Then we went to the land and checked for tracks. A mink had come onto the Third Pond, and dug a hole in the muskrat mound.
There was no sign that the mink got any muskrats. Few mounds like this survive without being dug into by minks or coyotes during the winter, so I assume muskrats have ways to escape. Perhaps since this mound is on our property, we will dig into it before the thaw, when, I've noticed, something else, probably muskrats, often takes the mounds apart. Then we took a hike up the creek that feeds the Deep Pond.
Since this is not our property we have never gone very far up it. While tracking otters last month, Leslie did go up far enough to see that it was quite interesting. There is a jumble of rocks coming down from the ridge on our right
and that makes for good porcupine dens. Below the cliff which is a hundred yards long or so,
we seemed to pass a porcupine trail every 20 yards.
She had seen the otter slides around a small pond that seemed to be formed just because that section of the gully was deeper. Although it looked like it was dammed, there was no evidence of beaver work around.
Further up the valley, there was another pond that seemed to be formed on the same principle, only this one had lost its water so the ice collapsed down a couple feet.
We'll have to come back when there is no snow and try to figure out what is going on here. This year is the only time we've noticed otters coming up here, though we never looked hard in this direction and an otter could come up the creek coming into the Deep Pond and not leave any slides in the snow along the banks. We left the valley, up the ridge to the left and eventually got to our neighbor Burrows fields. Then we walked along the ridge back to our land. On my way to do some sawing, I saw that a muskrat came out of a hole at the end of the Teepee Pond,
and went into a hole into the valley pool.
February 13 almost an inch of fresh snow in the morning, wet enough so that the brisk west wind didn't blow it away. I was blown up the golf course at 3 pm but the wind didn't keep the deer off the grass. One large herd and two smaller ones came for the grass scarcely covered by the snow. At the top of the valley I was startled by a vole dashing from the snow at my feet and finding refuge along the edge of a small mossy boulder. I don't think of voles operating in such rocky areas. And then as I stared up at the ridge looking for porcupines, a grouse flew out of the pine I was looking beyond. Rarely have I ever seen grouse in a tree stare though I may. I thought this boded well for the hike -- see one animal, likely to see others is always my hope. But going down the valley and across the Big Pond, I didn't see any fresh tracks of porcupines, raccoons, fox, coyotes, not even squirrels. So I decided I better go a bit out of my way to learn something new even if I didn't see any startling activity. So I went up to the lodge in the Upper Big Pond to see if there was any signs of those beavers coming out to eat in their cache which, unlike the usual beaver set up, seems to be entirely on top of the ice. There was no sign of recent nibbling in the cache, let alone tracks in the snow.
I headed up pond and saw that there was little likelihood of their having another lodge or burrow up there. A small creek goes through a marsh and woods for a good quarter mile coming down from a series of larger ponds up there. (I usually wait until I am on skis to check there, but may have to go up soon, before the final thaw.) At the end of the little pond they are in, or at least have been in, I saw another half eaten mound of dogwood twigs.
It would be nice to see these beavers. But that will wait for another day. As I headed up and over the ridge, a flock of birds flew off a high tree -- not waxwings; starlings puffed up in the wind, I guess. There were no tracks on the Lost Swamp Pond, nothing behind the dam, and no tracks on the Upper Second Swamp Pond. So I made a beeline toward Meander Pond, where, since the temperature was just below 30F, I expected a beaver or two to be out. On the way I did see some tracks, a mink checked out the East Trail Pond dam. I walked down Shangri-la Pond and couldn't resist another photo of the magnificent rock.
Behind me below the other side of the canyon a hairy woodpecker was going to town on a leaning tree. When I got to Meander Pond, there was a pool of open water, but no beaver, and no tracks in the snow. But there was a half stripped log half in the water, and I could picture a beaver gnawing on that.
All the downed trees made a convenient bleacher for me to sit in (save for the cold wind in my face) and wait for a beaver to appear. And bless my soul, the pool of water rippled by the wind, suddenly heaved and a beaver swam up, did a once around in the tiny pool of water, and then began gnawing that half stripped log.
Another thin log blocked my view, a bit, but in a way it helped frame the gnawing. I could see the claws and the jaws -- the essentials. Then it became a matter of battling the wind. I kept the camcorder out and finally thought I captured the essence of the gnaw -- scraping for a few seconds with the incisors, then the rolling bite of the molars. Once the beaver even got a sip of water to wash it all down. And the few times it brought its head up, I could just see its yellow teeth. After gnawing for a good twenty minutes, it dove and then came up breaking ice below the path it had been using to get up to the recently downed red oaks. While it dove, I moved and got to a position just above it. I tried to take video with my frozen right hand. I had to bring my left hand over to move the button regulating the zoom. I was a bit too close and beaver got wind of me and dove, but just as I got my camcorder packed away and was about to get my gloves on, it reappeared. I could just see its nose sticking out from under the ice, and then the head, and soon it was back gnawing on the other end of that log, that already looked rather stripped. Then it took alarm, backed off. I got a shot with the camera just before it dove with a flourish.
My rule in the winter is to always over dress in case I have to keep still to video beavers or otters. Today I forgot to wear a double layer of pants. Plus my glove had a hole at the thumb. So after almost an hour of videoing, my thumb was almost numb and my body almost at the shivering point. I needed to move and fast, and decided to take the less cluttered way home via Audubon Pond and the South Bay trail, which allowed me to move faster than if I took the direct route home, plus I saw that otters had not come to the pond or along the shore of the bay. The ice is breaking up out toward Grinnel Island. Perhaps I'll check the Narrows tomorrow. A snow squall accompanied me on the way home, and helped slow the wind, and warm me up.
February 14 Light lazy snowfall for much of the day, with temperature sometimes over sometimes below freezing. We headed for the Narrows a little after two, going over the TI Park ridge which in this type of weather seems more like a pillow. As we rounded South Bay I scanned the trees and about eight feet up a large basswood, the little porcupine was riveted on the big bark. As we approached it began climbing
This is not a tree the porcupines gnaw for food and the porcupine was on the tree long before it could have gotten wind of us. No tracks to study in the fresh dusting of snow, neither along South Bay nor up at Audubon Pond. However, at the otter latrine at the entrance to South Bay, where the ice in the bay seems to be thickening, there were coyote tracks where I was hoping to see otter slides.
I wonder if canines like to check here to see what otters might have left behind. I continued around to the rock dipping into the water at the entrance to the Narrows. There was much open water there, and a broad rim of snow covered ice that would easily show otter slides. I did get a photo of the ice in front of the rock that, with not much imagination, one could picture as having old otter slides on it.
But where the ice in the area was more broken up, it was easy to see that what looked like old slides was merely how the ice sheets were fracturing. Quite striking.
I sat for a while and heard a strange call coming from the woods on Murray Island. It had the pattern of a turkey call, which I haven't often heard, but seemed higher, more fluting, so I wonder if it might be a fox. On way back I noticed a willow that beavers had been gnawing. It looked like there has been recent gnawing. The good old tree is in peril.
I think I have an old photo of this. As I went back around South Bay -- crossing still looks iffy, I checked to see if there were fresh porcupine tracks around the tree. No. I walked around it, looking up and there nestled in a scar left when a very large limb fell was the porcupine speckled with snow, exposed to the wind, catching a nap.
Check out my other web pages: otters; beavers; minks; muskrats;porcupines;Leslie's art