Leave It To Beaver(s)!

It took three years, one month, two weeks, and five days, but they're back! Dispersing young from the Upper Pond had disappointed us over the last three years by just moving on, but May 15, 2019 was to be different. I was on my way to tend to a trail issue that evening and walking above Preston Pond on the western ridge. The leaves weren't out yet so I had a clear view of the entire lake when motion in the marsh at the north end caught my eye. The binocs revealed a beaver moving down the feeder stream from the Upper Pond in what seemed a near panic. It entered Preston Pond and swam straight and fast as though its life were at stake. Finally, across from the ledges on the east shore, it slowed and submerged. It was odd behavior for a beaver. I guessed I had chanced upon the moment a second-year had been chased from its natal pond - in this case, the Upper Pond, whose colony, unlike Preston Pond's, survived the trapping in 2016.

Sure enough, when I arrived at the Upper Pond a few minutes later, at least one of the adults was still in a highly agitated state, slapping and swimming back and forth very energetically. I had things to do before dark so I moved on but just in case the dispersing youngster was considering staying, I avoided Preston Pond when returning. Over the next few days, I documented his work (I say "his" since according to Cree and Innu I've talked to up north, typically, it is the young males who establish a residence and the females look for a male with a good set up) on the dam and noted that he had made castor mounds at points around the pond and there were numerous feeding sites along the west shore where the forage was dense. His dam building skills were pathetic but improved quite quickly. The lake level rose to the point that the old submerged dam was again mostly submerged and Bonnie and I could access the main lake with our canoes, but we avoided the pond a bit not wanting to spook him off. We saw him from time to time though and he was probably used to people from growing up on the Upper Pond which is immediately next to a hiking and VAST trail, so after a couple of weeks, we guardedly celebrated having a beaver back in the lake.

Then, on or about June 6, his castor mounds worked. A neighbor informed us that he and his wife had seen two beavers on the pond. We took the canoe out that evening. There were no dispersing young adults upstream of Preston Pond other than his sibling so possibly a dispersing female from the pond across the Stage Rd from us caught the scent. We spotted them almost immediately and watched the pair of them canoodling together up at the northern end near the collapsed west shore lodge. We now can again enjoy an evening paddle around the pond. We always see them and while they still give us a slap or two, they seem to becoming used to us. They aren't to the point that the former beavers were (swimming along with the canoe and playing with one of our dogs; those photos and videos are farther back in this blog), but these two have decided, as untold numbers of beavers have in the thousands of years before them, that Preston Pond is the place to live.

This young bear was between the house and the SE corner of Preston Pond on July 3, 2019. I stayed with it for several minutes to make sure it stayed away from the house. After a while it wandered back up toward the pond and then, with me shadowing it between it and the house, it headed down into the outlet stream gully. I don't know if it was still with its mom or newly on its own. We did have a large bear that could have been its mom right behind the house (30') this morning (July 24; no photos) at 6:45 am, but that doesn't mean the youngster was still with her (or that it was the mom or even female - I didn't ask). Female territories often overlap with a matriarch more or less in charge, so whether the youngster was newly independent or not, if the young bear was a female (which its small size might indicate), our 250-300 lbs. visitor this morning - it looked bigger but I know they usually do so I'm trying to be realistic - could be its mother; or not. In any event, the big bear this morning was moving parallel to the house (though very close on the wood line) and headed for the pond. Our dogs made an impressive ruckus that moved it deeper into the woods and I followed up with a 30-30 round fired well behind it into a tree stump to emphasize the need to stay away from houses.

We're Back: Golden Eagle over Preston Pond (and more to come).

I started this post last October and never posted it. Picking up where I left off:

Well, we have been inactive on this blog since the debacle in which the 2015/2017 Select Board allowed the Preston Pond beaver colony to be exterminated and refused to act to prevent future repetitions of the fiasco.

However, Sunday (October 28, 2018; and the passage of time) gave us a good reason to get back to it. A Golden Eagle over Preston Pond!

I reported a Bald Eagle earlier this year on the pond on Front Porch Forum. It was the first I'd ever seen actually on Preston Pond, however, Bald Eagles are not rare here and actually nest in Missisquoi. Golden Eagles are rare in Vermont. Happily, I've seen many Goldens in travels out west, northern Canada, and Alaska including one just last month while canoeing across the Ungava Peninsula between Hudson and Ungava bays, so I'm easily familiar with distinguishing them from immature Bald Eagles and Turkey Vultures.

This one was soaring over the north end of Preston Pond at 3:00 pm Sunday, October 28. When I first spotted it, it was about 500 ft up and sidling and spiraling down. It was a heavily overcast day and with the low, late afternoon light created very poor lighting conditions for telephoto shots. However, as the bird descended, I picked out some telltale field marks of a Golden; slight V to the wings (less than a vulture but more than the board straight posture of a Bald), slight crook to the wings, primaries spread into fingers, relatively small head and long tail. In my shots, the golden nape showed clearly enough to be determinative. The photo has been confirmed by a host of experts.