Colors and Sounds of Spring

Spring has been slow in coming this year - with many days below average temps. Now on - May 12 - it's warmed up a it, but a cold front is coming in tomorrow so it will be back to somewhat chilly temperatures.
The end of April, we had a bat on our bathroom window screen. It didn't move for several days and I thought it was dead. It was a small brown bat, a endangered species due to white nose disease. But on the fourth or fifth day, I can't remember exactly, it had vanished. After consulting with Vermont fish & game, I found out it had probably be in torpor, a period of reduced energy output when the beaver goes into kind of a temporary hibernation on cold nights to save energy. I hope the little bat made it to wherever it flew next and does not die of the white fungus.
Last week we saw an eagle flying from our property! Saturday and Sunday I saw a solitary sandpiper and some turtles, soaking up the sun on a log in the Beaver Pond.
After not having seen any beavers since Easter, we saw a medium sized beaver swimming in Beatitude Pond. He has made a small shelter. Also saw the muskrat a couple of times.
Any many hawks!

Beavers, Wood frogs, ducks and geese

Happy Easter - and also my birthday this year!

During the week (Tuesday) I heard the faint sound of a wood frog, but then we had a freak snowstorm after heavy warm rain all Tuesday (which almost flowed over the wetlands' crossing culverts!). Today while wandering about the property I can hear a deafening sound of wood frogs. Happy return for them. Since I last posted we have seen a larger beaver several times...out scouting in Beatitude Pond and nibbling on sticks here and there. Still no major construction or renovations, just yet. The beavers are probably too hungry to work just, yet...there is time for that.
River plants have started to poke up and garlic is coming up in the front garden. I also found some young onions I had overlooked in my harvest last year. I planted peas. No black flies, yet!
Other creatures we have seen this week: mallard duck couple, Canada goose couple. Today I saw a red tailed hawk flying over head, some unidentified warbler in a white pine tree, moths flying over the surface of Beatitude Pond, numerous whirly bugs in the ponds, a tick.

Positive I.d on a beaver

This afternoon I noticed a small white pine had been freshly cut and place across the downstream side of the small culvert that joins one pond to the other under our driveway. Later when Lindley and I were out he called over to me that he had spotted a small beaver and it briefly got up on a  bank and showed its characteristic curved outline and fur lined body.
I rushed inside and got some carrots and apples which we put near the shore. He had already returned into the den by the time I returned. Later maybe he will come out for a fresh snack.
So happy to see him after a long and cold winter.

Cold Winter - Bob cat sighting

This winter has been a cold one, a little above average snowfall. Icy driveway, thick ice on pond. In January I saw the bobcat for the first time, though we'd seen evidence of it in the recent past, it's paw prints crossing the beaver pond.
I heard a cracking on the ice one morning and looked up an saw its bobbing tail against the snow.
We are now looking forward to the first days of spring.

Spring returning

After a very long winter, spring is returning bit by bit and all is thawing. The creatures are also returning.
First Robins, then kingfisher, hooded mergansers, wood ducks, muskrats, and possibly a lone beaver, and the first buzz of a tree frog.

November's Brown

It is early November. A huge typhoon slammed into the Philippines yesterday, the biggest hurricane in recorded history. Last week there were snowstorms in the middle of the U.S. Weather has been somewhat tame here in NH lately, though yesterday we did have a few snow showers (nothing that stuck).
The water level is high from the beaver damming and the new home the beavers have built is quite sizable. They have also been actively cutting down some tall and sturdy trees. We have started to wrap some of the trees by the front road to prevent gnawing.
Yesterday the wood ducks flew off from Beatitude Pond when I went down to look and see why there were ripples on the surface of the water. First the females flew away, closely followed by the males.
Plants are now various shades of yellow and brown and have gone to seed.
I have planted all the garlic, hoping for a good crop come spring.

Rest well, sweet Earth.

Into Fall

I did not post at all last month. Month was busy and flew by. Now it's October and the leaves by the pond that turned red early in the chill of the night have shed many of their leaves, the bright orange and yellows remain. The growing beaver colony has been very active preparing for the winter, with even the little ones getting a gnaw in. They have built a third shelter by the lower pond about 10 feet from the crossing. One day Lindley and I heard the scratching noise of one of the beavers hollowing out the inside of the new den. What will they do with the two previous ones?

Wood ducks still visit every morning and fly off in with loud shrieking sounds if we so much as put one footfall below the halfway point of the driveway.
I saw a shiny black salamander under a log I had pulled up to inspect. I had never seen one like that better.
We had over a week of warmish dry days, but now the bitter chill of fall has settled in so walking around outside is not quite as pleasant.
Floods continue in different parts of the country, but we have been spared here in the NE. Less active hurricane season.
Snow in the Midwest already.