August 2006
August 13 I got a chance to tour South Bay in the kayak this afternoon, and once again there was a brisk west wind pushing me down to the willow latrine. I always use the binoculars to scan for otters, and, as usual, not even the lily pads arched up by the wind looked like otters. I've just barely kept an otter narrative alive this summer and certainly feel far from being in the zone. But there are beaver signs all over the bay. I could see that more willow branches had been nipped off and one half eaten stick floating in front of the runway up to the lodge under the willow. I think, even with a west wind, the water level is going down so that the lodge still seems to be growing may only reflect that lower water level. A small bird danced out on the willow trunk, too fast for me to identify it, but I think it might have been a goldfinch fledge. As I fought the waves around the point I noticed a new raft of cattails had washed in. I tugged at one cattail and couldn't budge the raft. There was a larger raft of cut grasses pulsing along the shore and two song sparrows, mother and fledge, I think, were dancing on it after bugs, that is, mother was feeding the fledge. I also saw a phoebe zooming down from a cattail stalk catching bugs like a kingbird. As I rounded the point I saw what I think is a dead cormorant chick -- sure it was a cormorant and it looked pretty small. The belly had been eaten open. I'm almost tempted to go back tomorrow with a camera just to get a photo of it. Coming up to the rock on the south shore of the north cove, I flushed a kingfisher and a heron. Then I looked and sniffed for otter scats, but nothing new. As I floated along the cattail marsh I was entertained first by two barn swallows meeting high in the air and sharing food, certainly the most dramatic baby-feeding I've seen this summer. Then two osprey patrolled the skies crying to each other. They looked young to me since that didn't have a fish clutched in their claws. I also kept an eye out for bryozoa but the only colonial effusions were the balls of algae grass. And the beavers -- just in front of the area of the marsh where I saw a beaver in the evening a few weeks ago, most of the lily pads were over half eaten. Not so many lily rhizomes floating in the water. I continued to the back of the cove and then paddled back up the bay -- nothing new at the old dock, but I saw where the beavers took more alder, and another eating platform on the shore. Willow, alder, and lily pads, each taken in a different area of the bay. I paddled back to the rock on the south shore, and climbed out of the kayak to check the latrines just up from the marsh. The mint latrine still looked as dramatic as the first time I saw it and perhaps because of that it struck me that the otters must have visited again. But looking at the photos I last took, there doesn't seem to be any new wrinkles -- save that it still smells of mint freshly brewed. On my way to the rocks deeper in the marsh, I flushed what I think was a fawn along the edge of the marsh. So maybe the fawn that was born out on this little island is still here -- or left and came back. I am pretty certain there were no new scats on the rock latrines. So once again, not sure that the otters using the marsh, I have to check the ponds again, which is fine with me. I miss them.
August 14 a warm, humid morning, then it clouded over and the wind picked up cooling the afternoon enough so that I could don long pants and head through the meadow toward the cutting grasses below the Big Pond dam. I was in no hurry and didn't get twenty yards before I made my first stop to admire the teasel beside the ditch draining the golf course.
There were only a few flowers left, but it is the architecture, not the color, that makes this plant striking. Some of the elecampane were nine feet tall. I mistook them for sunflowers grown from store bought seeds. The apple tree was full of apples one half ripe and tasty. Thanks to deer paths and deer beds it was not difficult getting through the meadow. The ridge was rather dry but in the thickets in the low parts of the plateau everything was thick, and in places stickers chin high forced detours. Those stickers seemed to concentrate the deer and once I found their well worn path it was easy going. Once I left the tough going, I flushed two deer who were lounging under a shady tree. Some of the stickers were bearable since they bore berries.
And then on a small plant I saw what are more like nuts than berries.
I noticed two clumps of hair that looked like the remains of coyote scat, but I don't recall seeing anything like it before. Do coyotes get hairballs?
As I walked along I collected a small deer antler and the jawbone of a fawn. Both showed signs of age. The bone was bleached and fragile and the antler had a patina of mould and had one small bite taken out of it.
Strange how antlers retain some vitality, while bones look so ghostly. I took the photo of them at my usual perch on the north ridge where I listen for birds. None today. They were all down around the swamp darting through the vegetation heavy with seed. As I came up to my perch on the south end of the Big Pond dam, I saw ducks seemingly glued to the skin of plants and muck floating on the pond.
Above them a flock of blackbirds crashed into the plumes of tall grass.
However, only one bird sat in this granary when I took the photo. As I moved along the dam, the ducks finally flew off.
The grass at the south end of the dam was matted down, but there was no scat, no beaver work, only a heron feather. And I think ducks are raising the mud. The pond is getting shallower. The whirligig beetles moved a few feet out from their usual spot. The iris seeds are huge now.
Getting across the dam was slow going until I hit a huge deer trail. Unless a boy scout troup had been through, there must be several deer bedding here. But all around the meadow was seamless, and colorful.
However, I saw several plants heavy with blooms while at the same time dying underneath.
As I walked along I saw a hummingbird moth resting on a head of golden rod, such a combination of beauty and power.
A few ducks flew off when I got down to the Lost Swamp Pond, and also a handsome osprey. I had seen a couple flying high over the Big Pond, but here they were low. One stayed high in one of the dead trees behind the dam, or so I thought, until I woke up from a brief nap and saw that it had a fish dangling from its claws.
I always video osprey pecking at a fish. They approach the chore of eating a bullhead quite differently than an otter would. The otter takes the hindmost parts and leaves the head. The oprey pecks at the head. Of course, clutching a fish in its talons as it flies around seems to be a status symbol for osprey. They don't want to eat a fish in a hurry; even their pecking at it seems as much dancing as it is dining. I took that nap because not much was happening in the pond. I saw two muskats, one going into burrows toward the east end of the pond and another small one coming out from the west end burrows and grazing in the middle of the pond. Then I checked for otter scats and found none. Obviously there is no male otter keeping up a claim to this territory. I hope that doesn't keep the mother and her pup or pups away. A kingfisher is still working the pond and I think it got one shiner. It made another bellyflop and came up empty beaked. There was no obvious signs of beaver work on any trees. The old maple that fell with many leafy branches is now minus only one branch from beaver browsing. But there were other diverting images -- a plant growing out of a dead birch stump out in the pond.
The pond itself looks relatively clear of grasses, but obviously the beavers are getting enough. After not seeing any otter scat, I did see a pile of poop completely made up of berries.
I assume a deer left that. The beavers or muskrats are still taking dogbane into the pond. I suppose they must eat some too. There were no signs of beaver work down at the Upper Second Swamp Pond. I took a photo to show how low the pond is getting.
Now, on another cool day I'll have to see how the dry spell has changed what I call Paradise pond, that collection of channels the beavers moved up to. I scanned the Second Pond for any news, but it looked much the same as last time I looked. So I headed home for dinner. That nap giving me time to dream of otters in Audubon Pond but cheating me of time to go see if they were actually there. I went home over the rock ridges so familiar to me that I never pause to take a photo, but today I noticed that the thick mosses on the ridge were levating
-- perhaps in a search for water. Rain is on the way, enough to bring those pods back down to earth?
August 15 had a chance for a short paddle on South Bay, once again with a stiff breeze at my back. I checked the usual spots. A beaver took a larger bit of branch off the willow on the north shore of the south cove -- no otter signs. Nor were there otter signs over on the rock on the south shore of the north cove. So I decided to hop out of the kayak and check the inner latrines. Nothing new there, which was disappointing. So the question arises: are the otters ranging much farther than I can fathom or are they living in the marsh more intensely than I can discover? I can answer the second part. I paddled up the marsh toward the point and when I nosed into their old latrine something scampered away from it back into the marsh -- not an otter. I climbed out and in the rock a little behind the cattails I saw a trail into the marsh, no otter scats, only one raccoon poop. I was barefoot and walked along the edge of the marsh checking other old latrines. The circle of flattened cattails where I found otter scats in the late spring was all over grown and there were no otter signs on the islands that form the point, only goose poop. But on the way back to the kayak in the wet areas I saw some deer poop -- perhaps from the fawn that I suspect is still here. So I fear the otters have left the marsh. Otherwise, three opsrey put on a great show. The winds seems to have blown most of the herons away or at least into lowering their profile.
August 16 I set off for a quick afternoon hike to Audubon Pond to check all the latrines on the way and to, I feared, confirm that the otters were gone. However I found several relatively fresh scats in the grass just above the old dock at the end of South Bay.
They were soft and still a bit moist.
And the dirt on the dock looked more rolled on than it usually does.
I'll have to study photos of that platform. So the otters are still here, or back after a brief absence. That energized my hike and rather than going back to the human trail I followed an animal trail along the shore which led me to some alder that the beavers nipped,
and a platform on the shore where they munched.
Further along I saw a thick willow trunk where it looks like the beavers visit once a year and make a similar cut for dinner
-- must say I've never see something like this before. I checked all the other otter latrines, and found nothing new there, but the scats I did see cannot be denied, and they argue for the otter family living intensely in the marsh and not travelling far. But I should check the East Trail Pond, their ancestral August home, though now the pond is probably almost dry. As I walked along the west shore of Audubon Pond I noticed a thick stand of asters in the shade of a small grove of trees, not where they usually are.
When I got up close I saw that while other asters out in the sun are just reaching their stride, these were over the hill, so to speak.
While there was no beaver scat behind the bank lodge in Audubon Pond, the beavers have made a path to the large ash they cut down behind it and they took three or four large branches
- where they took them I can't tell. This was the only beaver work I saw around the pond -- curious that they (and there are probably only a few beavers here) are living in two lodges. I'll have to spend an evening here. Going back along the South Bay trail I startled two fawns, who seperated,
and then reunited as I moved on. Not quite close enough to dote on their beauty. Walking back down South Bay I saw more fresh beaver work on one of the willows leaning out over the bay. In the background is the marsh where the beavers might be living.
I sat down just above the old dock trying to conjure up an otter and, if not that, at least a muskrat. Earlier in the summer I saw them diving out in the middle of the pond and going once into the marsh, but, unlike last year, I haven't seen them swimming along the north shore. Then I thought I saw one in the distance but when I trained the spyglass on it, I saw that a turtle was trying to mount another large turtle and when it stretched, dare I say he stretched up his neck, from a distance, it was not unlike a muskrat tail! Meanwhile, at the land, we put the first window on the house. When I unwrapped it, I found a wee tree frog catching a vinyl nap.
August 20 We took Ottoleo back to college, via a night with his grandparents and a night in a motel, and so we returned in good time for an afternoon hike on a cool cloudy day. I could think of nothing more appropriate than repeating the hike I took on the 16th to see if the otters repeated their visit to the old dock latrine. Though there has not been much activity there lately, I still slow down when I walk along the small causeway over the creek going into the south cove of South Bay. Today, I saw something, a beautiful doe dining on the vines entangling the old trees just up from the water. We played peek-a-boo through the bushes and then she went back to her vines. As I approached the old dock at the end of the north cove of the bay, I saw a small muskrat swimming in a huck-a-buck fashion collecting wee things to eat and taking them, or at least, diving into the marsh. And the otters did return to the old dock latrine leaving at least four scats, all appearing rather soft.
Again they were on the slope of the hill
and it struck me that there was more digging in the dirt around the dock.
I sat for several minutes to enjoy the still water after a summer of so much wind. When the slumbering wind did turn over a bit, I was bathed in the redolent odor of otter scat, my element it seems. I thought I did see something in the grasses out on the bay, but more likely that muskrat than an otter. The redwing blackbirds no longer dance on the lily pads. A sandpiper has taken their place. Everytime I sit here, I notice too late that an osprey is perched on a tree nearby. Once again it flew off before I noticed and photographed it. I continued along the animal trail next to the water and saw that the beavers have revisited the alder clump they've been pruning.
As I perused the docking rock latrine for new activity, seeing a trail but no scats, it started raining, rather a downpour. After five minutes a maple offered no protection and after twenty minutes a pine no longer served. When the rain let up, I went up to Audubon Pond and got under the roof covering the bench and wrung out my teeshirt. I noticed a monarch butterfly found refuge there too.
Looking for otter signs after a downpour and during a drizzle is more or less pointless, and I certainly saw no hint that an otter had been around. Unfortunately this rain was not followed by warming sun. A north wind kicked up. So I had to hurry home to a hot bath, and plot my campaign to see the otters.
by Bob Arnebeck
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