March 2006

March 4 Jeff Hanna came up for another hike and I set out to give him a lesson in otter tracking by showing him what we'd seen the last two days, and then I hoped the otters had headed back to the Lost Swamp Pond dam so I could show him how otters can make themselves at home in a beaver pond. We started at the hole on the south shore of South Bay which the otters used two days ago. No fresh signs of them but we were soon able to follow the old trail, and I got some better photos of their slides coming down the rocks

and showing how when they climbed the ridge to the west of the Lost Swamp Pond, they took the highest route, over the peak of rocks.

There was nothing new in the Lost Swamp Pond, which was disappointing. Then as I showed Jeff the tracks going down the Second Swamp Pond, something seemed wrong. I wanted to show him how far the otters swam under the ice and instead where they were supposed to be under the ice, I saw two slides in the snow.

I soon saw that since yesterday two otters had come down from the Upper Second Swamp Pond and we set out to find out where they went. They didn't go to the lodges beneath the ridge but took the easy way up the ridge and then veered down a rock

and headed for the East Trail Pond. I have not noticed an otter sign at this depleted pond since the early summer, I think, and had assumed that the otters had given up on that pond. But they did indeed go to the ridge overlooking the pond,

and then down onto it, nosing around the burrow at the east end of the dam, and then crossing behind the dam.

They didn't linger long at this dam, but headed up the ridge, the usual otter route to Otter Hole Pond, down the other side of the ridge and then down the creek to Otter Hole Pond.

These two slides met the three slides from yesterday, all going in the same direction. We were careful to corral in any deviations and also to check for slides coming into the ponds. But the long and short of it is, these two otters, like the three otters tracked yesterday, went into the hole under the old dock at the end of South Bay.

Since one of my passions is taking pictures of liquid, brown otter scats, I could see that there was a fresh one in the latrine outside the hole. We looked for slides along the South Bay shore but the rim of ice along the shore didn't make that easy. There seemed to be no signs of otters on the ice and snow. We went home for lunch and then returned to hike out to Murray Island over the rather rough but mostly solid ice. Back in December I noticed two otter latrines along the south shore of Murray, and at the brown boat house, the nearest of the two latrines,

we saw relatively fresh otters slides,

two otters, coming out from under the dock, scatting and going back under the dock

A portion of the rock had lost its snow and there were a number of old scats there. We continued out to the next latrine, overland when the ice seemed to get iffy, but there were no otter signs there. Then we hiked through the middle of the island and down to the west shore of the Narrows. There was some beaver work along the shore as we walked out along the ice, and there was more work along the Narrows, not far from the beaver lodge, tucked under a rock, that had been active in the summer. Of course, the Narrows was completely iced over and the beavers are living off what they managed to store under the ice, though this year, they have had a long spell of open water. We crossed the ice to the rock on the opposite shore where the otters often relieve themselves, but there was no sign of them there. We went up the easy slope to Audubon Pond, which only had some deer tracks on it. Then we tried to sneak up on the Meander Pond beavers. It was above freezing, and sunny, and soon enough we saw one beaver up on the shore above the hole in the ice, but it took alarm and went half way back to the hole, then reared up and sniffed the air. I have never known these beavers to be so touchy, but there were three of us. Then another beaver came up the path from the hole in the ice, and both beavers seemed frozen with indecision. The beaver coming down finally got around the beaver blocking its way, and that beaver continued up the path to the downed red oak trunk, reached up on top of the trunk, took a big bite of bark and brought that down to work on it. Then, perhaps because a deer passing along on the ridge above let out a loud snort, that beaver hurried back to the hole in the ice. We walked up closer to the hole and waited for a beaver to come back,

but none did. On the way home, I sniffed around the dock latrine again, but no otter had popped out to poop since the morning. So at a time when I expected the otters to disperse, with at least the mother leaving her pups, it seems I have tracked five otters into the same hole. Tomorrow I'll go back to the Upper Second Swamp Pond to see if I can tell where the two otters came from.

March 5 I set off bright and early on a sunny morning, a bit below freezing. There were only a handfull of deer on the golf course at that early hour. I took my usual trail and a few yards after the feather in the hole in the snow, that I saw a few days ago, I saw a similar feather in another hole. Evidently the remains of a bird, probably a grouse, are slowly blowing into innumerable shallow graves. Since we've had no fresh snow, my way is clogged with tracks -- my own, the deer, porcupines, grouse, fox and coyote. Yet the Big Pond still has very few tracks, save my own. Once again I hoped to see fresh otter activity at the Lost Swamp Pond dam. The only thing new was that another human walked by. The dam was still leaking but with less authority. Then I walked behind the Upper Second Swamp Pond dam and saw nothing that had not been there two days ago -- there were no trails from the two otters whose slides I saw yesterday! I went back to the Lost Swamp Pond and checked the mud dam along the northeast corner, and even walked to the inlet creek in the southeast corner of the pond, but there were no signs of otters. Then I checked for possible holes and tracks along the western end of the pond, nothing there. Finally, I went down to the Second Swamp Pond and followed the tracks of the three otters again, just in case two otters came up their old trails. The trail of one otter seemed to have its tail mark shaped in the wrong direction for going down stream

and I got a start when I saw some prints going up stream, but then I saw that a fox had backtracked the otters, leaving its prints. Then the slides all coverged and that five otters went in the same direction seemed rather obvious.

Then when I got down to the old dock at the end of South Bay, I saw three, perhaps four, fresh scats,

two of them up on the slope and two of them tinged with that brown liquid that I've been seeing in scats recently.

I stuck my head under the dock, and did get a whiff of otter scat there, and saw holes heading toward the water, but couldn't see, or hear any water. Of course, it's obvious that the otters are using this dock as their entry way under the ice of South Bay, where they can get food, and probably thanks to the recent storms pushing ice up, where they can find galleries of air under the ice -- a dark world sufficient to their needs. But did the two otters we tracked yesterday also swim under the ice all the way to the boat house on Murray Island? Or rather than being the boldest of travellers, had those two otters I tracked on the interior ponds been lurking there for several weeks? I've observed that before, and a couple weeks ago we saw some strange slides behind the Lost Swamp Pond dam.

In the afternoon we went to the land where I expected to relax from otters by sawing up a few logs. As usual, we first walked down to the Deep Pond to see if anything new happened there, and along the far shore, we saw a single bold otter slide.

I back tracked it up the slope and almost directly up to the lone pine high atop the ridge behind the pond.

I followed the otter 50 feet up. I expected it to have come up from the Third Pond, but instead I followed otter slides, more or less parallel to our property line, that negotiated every ridge and valley in our land. On the wider flat at the end of our large inner valley, the otter crossed our property line, but the otter only went along the valley floor for 20 yards or more. I soon found myself back tracking the otter up a steeper ridge of jagged rocks, and from the other side of that ridge I could see the large flat valley where the farms are.

I didn't go down to that flat, and couldn't see any slides below -- I was a bit tired. I went to the Teepee Pond just in case the otter began its journey from there, which would make sense because there are fish there. But there were no signs of otters. I did see a bunch of grouse feathers in a depression in the snow half made by the hawk that attacked the grouse

and half made by the feather melting into the snow. Then on the bare ground near my wood pile, there was a pile of grouse down, as well as a white bird poop -- all this under trees suitable for perching. Then I went back to the Deep Pond to see where the otter went. It could have gotten under the ice at the outlet creek, a deer had even made a hole there the other day. But instead it left the pond,

veered to the little pool next of the pond, then went directly up the rocky knoll which I always thought led to nowhere. But this otter craved any heights, rockier the better. I followed and then the otter went down the other side of the knoll. I hope that meant it was going to curl back and sneak under the pond that way, but instead it turned up a gentler slope, then up over some bare rocks, and then across the road, and, I could see that it was headed directly toward White Swamp. I thought I had only one more hill to negotiate, which I did,

and then admired the otter's slides going down an easy valley.

But it didn't go onto the swamp, it veered up the rocky slope along the edge of the swamp. But I was on the swamp and saw otter slides behind me -- this time at least two otters going in the same direction.

Then there was a single otter slide coming from the other side of the swamp.

There seemed to be something going on with these otters, signs of short bursts of activity.

I back tracked them toward the area below the beaver dam that once impounded the water from the creek coming down from the Deep Pond. On the way, from a nondescript pile of snow around some brush there was an eruption of otter slides from a hole down into the ice.

Also interesting was how the slides stopped when the otters reached hard packed snow and they only left ethereal prints showing their bold leaps.

And then where we had seen otter slides before there were three holes, two into what I suspect is the channel from the creek and one off to the side.

There were scats outside the holes. I could have walked up the creek -- I still don't know where the beavers had their lodge around here. But I still didn't know where the otter I had been tracking all afternoon wound up. So I went back to the ridge where I left its tracks, and soon enough, as it headed west, it came down and went along the shore of the swamp. Then it hopped up a little slope along the shore

and there was a hole, well worn with otters rubbing down it,

and a healthy pile of scat next to it.

There were stray scats all around, patches of scratched grass, and a little farther along another hole with more scats around it. And there my tracking ended. So, once again, when I expect otters to be dispersing, I find them coming together. My most fanciful version of what I just saw is that an otter screaming on White Swamp prompted the otter I tracked to beeline back to the swamp, then approach warily from a ridge. Which is to say, I think I was tracking a male. After all, I keep expecting mothers to go away. And I would expect a female otter to be more respectful of the ponds on our land, rather than ignoring them. Of course, I'll never know. The other confusion, which let me hasten to add I foist on myself, is that while I am charting out a system of otter foraging around South Bay that entails otters swimming under the water from a point on one shore to a point on the opposite sure -- contrary to the idea of an otter swimming along the shore like they do in the smaller beaver ponds, I find the otters in huge White Swamp ranging along the shore making little volcanos that they pop out of with all their power. A warm spell is on the way, but I still will get three more days of these March lessons from five or seven otters along the river, and at least four otters at the land.

March 7 yesterday I took a break from otter tracking, but we did cross South Bay and check the latrine by the old dock, accompanied by Doug and his aging dog Rudi. Rudi got up to the latrine before me, and did a bit of sniffing, and once again there were fresh scats, one of the globs on one of the sticks was fresh -- and quite gray and scaly, but no evidence of any otters getting down on the ice. Then we walked back over to the south shore of the bay, and checked the hole in the ice there. No signs of the otters that I could see, but Rudi seemed quite excited as he sniffed into the hole.

This morning we headed out to check the beaver ponds about 10 o'clock. It was cold at night and no hurry to get above 20 in the morning. We saw a few deer as we crossed the golf course, and Leslie went up to see what was new in the turkey roost she discovered on our last hike. I went my usual route and when I got to the flat leading to the valley, I saw a bushy tail waving at me, but the fisher saw me just when I saw him, and he headed off toward the ridge at a measured pace. Fortunately, he headed off toward Leslie, and she got her first good look at a fisher. It stopped a couple of times and looked back at her, then it went over the ridge. Unfortunately, there were too many trees between him and me, so I didn't get a good video. I searched for the fisher's prints in the snow and think I found them.

The snow was still hard enough so the impressions were light, and there were two squirts of pee next to the tracks, which I think came from the fisher.

Down the valley I noticed just as many fresh porcupine tracks as usual. The only innovation was that a porcupine ducked into a smaller crack in the rocks just off the trail, within sight of its usual den -- to say that the proximity of the fisher prompted the porcupine to duck into the nearest hole is probably going too far. Further along in the hike, we saw more fisher tracks and I think the fisher was more interested in mating than catching porcupines. But before we saw those other tracks, we studied the lack of otter signs -- absolutely nothing new, except the ice behind the Upper Second Swamp Pond dam has collapsed,

and it was too cold for the beavers to be stirring. Walking down to South Bay, we saw the fisher tracks, including a pair of trails, one with large prints and the other quite smaller,

likely a male and female fisher, but no telling if they were walking along together. Also they were out in the open, not staying under cover as fishers often do. Then we checked the latrine above the old South Bay dock, and once again there were fresh scats, including a fresh creamy brown one,

and once again, no signs of otters on the ice or snow. We also checked the hole on the south shore, and nothing new there.

We went to the land in the afternoon and went right down to White Swamp to check on the otters. We walked down the inlet creek - nothing new at the Deep Pond, by the way. We saw tracks to and from a hole in the dam, and there were fresh scats outside the holes I saw yesterday,

but no sign that any otters headed off across the snow. Tracks turned back to the holes.

I showed Leslie all I saw yesterday, and it looked to me that there were fresh scats and stomping around outside one of the holes along the ridge,

where, judging from the activity the otters have spent most of their time out on the ice. I stuck my camera down the holes but got no photo that made that subnivean world look interesting. Leslie continued along the ridge down to the road. I headed back the way we came. I wanted to find a hole in the ice farther out in the swamp that we saw a few weeks ago to see if otters were using that to get out on the ice. I didn't walk far and I noticed some bobbing black bodies on top of a small mound of snow in the swamp. The otters!

I soon saw there were four of them, all quite frisky, one quite large, and she scatted and rolled on her back.

Then she went over and tussled with two pups, while the third, went out to scat. Then the mother went off and nosed around on her belly, out and back, and she slipped down the hole, followed by one pup. Meanwhile two small ones kept leaping up in play. All four were erupting like black lava but these two pups were were doing some fast paced percolating. I didn't hear any noise from them. I stood up to try to get closer and the otters disappeared down a hole in the ice, the two playmates last down. The whole show lasted about 90 seconds. Click here to see the video. I approached slowly, camcorder cocked, hoping they would come back up, but they didn't. Seeing otters so black in the sun stunned snow is thrill enough, but these otters were such a throbbing mass of excitement so unexpected on a cold day at the end of winter, a gusher, I had struck oil, or they were the protean black fingers from the sun starved darkness below the ice and snow. Plus these pups were acting like it was August -- I expect them to be almost grown up and responsibly sober by this time of year. But who can blame them for playing again in the sun they see so little during the winter. How much time otters spend under ice continues to astonish me. I approached the mound of snow they disappeared into like a pilgrim approaches a shrine.

I expected to kneel over scats as usual

and interpret the prints in the snow, and I had the playground of the two otter pups to enjoy,

but there was something unexpected, some darkness left behind

-- including a dead muskrat,

quite small, and a recent kill, plus there was a pile of fur around the black bare dead grass of a muskrat mound.

I didn't touch the carcass -- I wanted to leave it as it was and see if the otters came back for it. I'll take a closer look at it tomorrow. Back at the dam, where the inlet stream enters the swamp, there was another kill, rabbit or maybe muskrat, but no otter prints near it. I'd seen enough, had much to think about and headed home.

March 8 we got to the land in the late morning -- once again it was cold and sunny in the morning, but by the time I got onto White Swamp, the temperature was just above freezing. I walked down the inlet creek, and first stop was the holes in the ice just at the shore of the swamp, and it looked like there were fresh scats outside both holes, and checking my photos from yesterday confirmed that. But there didn't seem to be any movement away from the holes. I walked out to check on the dead muskrat and all was the same. I flipped it over and saw fresh blood

and on closer examination saw that its neck had been cut, and at least one bit of innards brought out, but it certainly didn't look disgorged.

The body of the muskrat, in its slightly truncated state, was not much bigger than my glove, so there was not much to eat here, but this is the end of the winter when any morsel must be dear. I suppose it is safe to say that an otter killed the muskrat, but that it didn't get much of a meal out of it. Strange that no scavenger came by -- we've seen eagles around here and then the crows and ravens are legion. But I've often seen muskrat carcasses left untouched. I also examined the black heap of muck, where a bit of fur was nestled, more closely. As far as I could tell there were no more muskrat parts in the wet, muddy and densely packed grasses. And it didn't seem like the otters had been out of the hole since I left, no fresh scats and and no fresh slides or prints. My next project was to find if the otters had come out of other holes deeper into the swamp. I went about a hundred yards or so angling toward the east shore and found another hole with squirts of otter scat and spurts of tracks.

I took a photo to show how far this was from the inlet creek.

Of course, these distances present no challenge to otters going above the ice, but evidently the otters come to this hole all that distance under the ice. I am pretty sure that the central portion of the swamp is deeper and around this area there are three beaver lodges, active enough to attract the attention of a trapper. The closer lodge was quite snowed over, with no signs of trapping or otters. The largest lodge did not have this snow for protection. It looked like the trapper's rigging was still frozen under thick ice. Hopefully, he took the traps off the wires. And there was no sign that otters had been there. No holes, no scats. The beaver lodge closest to the inlet, say a quarter mile or more away, had a hole at the base, but I don't think at otter made it, because there were no otter scats on the lodge.

I hope the beavers themselves made the hole. So it seems the otters were not attracted to the beaver lodges. I also checked every muskrat mound I could and there were no signs the otters had popped out of them. I got excited as I approached one near the last beaver lodge I checked. I could see tracks on it, but that proved to be the scuffing of a fox or coyote.

So these otters are not checking every muskrat mound, and seem to confine their activity close to the shore of the swamp. I also looked for otter slides. I had seen one heading out in this direction, but none materialized on this inspection. I went to the double holes below the ridge,

and I am pretty sure there were fresh scats just above the snow of one of the holes.

We ate lunch in the cabin, and then after a short nap, I set off to complete the other side of the otter story and continue back tracking the otter that went up and down the ridges hurrying to get back to White Swamp. On my way to the end of our land, I flushed a grouse from off one of the cedars in the gap between the ridge just up from the cabin. The grouse didn't fly far and began strutting on the snow. I waited to see if it might come closer, but the click of the camera sent in flying off. As I continued on, I flushed two more grouse, quite possibly the same one. However, grouse seem to roost all over the land. I found this array of poop under a small cedar on my way through the thickets to the old apple tree.

In that same valley, a little beyond our fence line, I picked up the old otter slides and assumed they had come down the ridge and that I was backing tracking the otter to where it could have come up from one of the sources of Mullet Creek, that empties into the St. Lawrence across the river from our island home, or from one of the valleys that curves around back to White Swamp.

My guess was that it took the latter route, but then I tracked the otter up a steep ridge and was embarrassed to find my own foot prints when I got on top of the ridge. I had been following the otter's trail, not back tracking it. At least this was a pretty ridge to walk under, and in places the masses of sandstone were two toned.

So I turned around and back tracked the otter back onto our land -- I had taken another path a few feet away down the valley.

Then as I back tracked the slide into the thickets that let to what we call the Turtle Bog, I lost the tracks. At first I thought they merged with a porcupine trail, but when that ended, the otter slides didn't materialize. I checked the ridge that forms the valley and carefully went through the jungle of juniper bushes. I picked up one possible trail but quickly lost it. I looped further out and saw nothing. I had already walked around the bog in the other direction. Well, losing a trail in some strange territory is understandable, but on your own land, not far from where, with luck, I'll be taking naps next to basking Blanding's turtles in just a few months, was embarrassing. But there was nothing I could so about it. And with rain and heat on the way the slides in the snow will be gone. Now that I've seen the mother and pups together, I think what happened is that she left them, curling up onto our land, and then as she headed down the valley forming the far border of our land and then beyond, she heard cries from the pups back on the swamp, and then she dashed up and down the ridges, and hurried to the big holes in the bank they've called home for a month or so (There were no signs of otters there when we walked along there a few weeks ago.) I've noticed before that the break up of the family can go by fits and starts. Leslie had been skeptical of this scenario but she likes the idea now. I reminded her of how we can hear cows from far fields during the noisy summer. How much easier for an otter mother to hear her pups in the still winter.

Facing a thaw, when we got back to island, I headed off to the Lost Swamp Pond, still expecting to find that otters moved in. But as always, there were stories to follow as I walked down the valley to the Big Pond. I saw orange pee not far from the leaning tree I've accused porcupines of peeing down from.

The trail led back to that leaning tree, and up on the tree I saw fresh porcupine work, next best thing to seeing the actual animal. There were no signs of otters at the Lost Swamp Pond nor on the Upper Second Swamp Pond dam. As I stood on the ice next to the lodge of the latter pond, I heard a beaver swim under me. There was open water where the creek runs down from the Lost Swamp Pond dam (and the leak from that dam has slowed considerably,) and I've seen beavers climb out on the ice from there, but nothing came up. It was getting late and I wanted to see the beavers at Meander Pond, but my sense of duty to otters prompted me to check the Second Swamp Pond lodges - nothing. Then I went over to the East Trail Pond aiming only to use that as a short-cut. And I was flabbergasted to see what looked like otter slides going from the dam about thirty yards to a small hole in the ice, but no sign that the animals went into it, because two trails went back to the dam. I took photos, and not seeing any scats or obvious slides out or into the pond, I assumed that these slides were just something I took for granted when I tracked the two otters through here back on the fourth.

But checking the old photos now, I realize that these are fresh trails. And the photo I took on the pond, shows the trail crossing my old boot prints.

But I wanted to see beavers, and having a few strings untied vis-a-vis otters was nothing new. When I got to Meander Pond, I saw that two beavers were out, and, further up on the ridge, one was already sniffing the air. Fortunately I had a good look at the other one who was just up from the pond reaching under the trunk of one of the downed red oaks tearing off and eating bark. Finally, after several minutes, the alarmed beaver turned and went back to the thick end of that red oak up on the ridge and first ripped bark off the side of the trunk and then started reaching up on the trunk, tearing off bark and eating it.

When its back was turned I eased forward. Seeing two beavers here is nothing new, but I soon saw ripples in the pool of open water. A smaller beaver got out, then immediately plunged back in and swam under water. But it soon returned, as well as another small beaver,

and here was a sign of spring -- four hungry beavers. They all seemed aware of my presence, frequently sniffing the air. Indeed, a little one reared up from the pool right next to its mother, and sniffed with its head bobbing up in patterns of three sniffs, going up higher with each sniff. Then the father, I think, went warily up the slope toward the red oak log, but paused to sniff me in his fashion, head cocked to my side, paws up at the chest, and the same three sniff pattern but without the head jerking up too high. Then it backed down when there was a brief shower of sleet. I took advantage of that noise to creep even closer. Then the beavers confined themselves to the pool, and for a period the little ones gnawed on some wood. The mother got out on the ice, away from me, and ate a bit out of one of the piles of black vegetation on the ice. The father pulled up vegetation from the bottom and ate that. Then it went over to the log the yearlings were gnawing, and the two little ones went down and joined their mother. Perhaps they groomed her a little, but not much. I must say, she seemed most out of sorts by my presence but eventually turned her back on me and walked up on the ice for a brief circle of sniffing. There was a bit of humming when they swam passed each other, but nothing major. A little after 6 pm, I turned and walked away as quietly as I could. Before I got out of sight, I looked back and saw one of the adults walking up the path toward the red oak log. They knew I was gone, and resumed some real eating. It was too dark to really see if there was fresh scat at the South Bay dock latrine, so I poked every scat with a stick, and save for the brown one from yesterday, all seemed hard.

Previous week

Check out my other web pages: otters; beavers; minks; muskrats;porcupines;Leslie's art