Beaver Update

I contacted Eric Orff, a wildlife biologist who is retired from NH Fish and Game, about the dead beaver that I posted about yesterday. Eric is a well-known authority on beaver, among other wildlife, so I knew he would set me straight.

Here is what he said about the dead beaver with lots of notches in its tail,

"That is just usual beaver on beaver chewing. Pretty common. Plus lots of scars likely under the fur if it were skinned out. Being a beaver is a hard lot. Beaver are very territorial and with the high beaver population there is a lot of fighting among beavers. There is little unoccupied territory for a young beaver to move into. Since April is the big dispersal month, death from territorial fights is not uncommon." 

Eric recommends having a few beaver trapped each year to maintain a healthy, and not overpopulated beaver population. Eric also posts a blog at New Hampshire Nature Notes.

Beaver have huge incisors that they use to gnaw down huge trees. Clearly they also use those massive teeth to bite each other. If you look at the photo that I posted yesterday you can now envision two big teeth marks among the smaller ones. This beaver was in some serious fights.

Beaver Tails

Once in awhile I see a dead beaver on the road, the result of a roadkill. The poor beaver was probably dispersing to a new territory in spring, as the two year olds do. They leave their birth wetland and lodge to find their own drainage after spending two years with their parents and their one-year old siblings. Beavers, like most animals, do not like to crawl through dark culverts to move upstream or downstream. Instead, they waddle onto a road at night and attempt the crossing.

Last weekend I found a dead beaver in its own wetland. That was a first. I noticed something floating at the   dam on a large beaver pond along the Sweet Trail in Durham. A boardwalk parallels the downstream side of a long, impressive beaver dam. The beaver dam is at such a height that I was nearly at eye level with the ponded water. I looked over and saw something furry floating in the water--the dead beaver.

My young niece was with me so together we poked the beaver with a stick. The beaver was bloated, but otherwise looked healthy. It even had a small bunch of green vegetation clutched in its teeth. The day was windy and I think the waves pushed the beaver toward the dam. It could have died anywhere in the wetland. But why did it die.

Here is a photo of the beaver. Note the notches in the tail. I wonder if those were caused by a snapping turtle. They seem unusual, although I think had nothing to do with its death.

My niece was intrigued by the flat, leathery tail. For the rest of the walk she talked about the beaver and other dead animals we've found together--a skunk, a raccoon--and what one could do with a beaver tail. Her young, creative mind was so absorbed with our beaver find, that she forgot about the hike itself and in no time we were back to the car.

Gardening Season Underway

Gardening season is well under way here in southeastern New Hampshire. The ground is dry, too dry for early April. Red flag warnings from NOAA continue due to dry air and high winds. I planted sugar snap peas today, although I could have planted them two weeks ago given the warm soil and lack of snow cover. As the perennials emerge or sprout new shoots I notice that many took a beating this winter. The thyme and lavender died back and other perennials did not fare well. The lack of snow cover was a problem.

Over at New Roots Farm this week I transplanted plugs of lavender, marjoram, and chocolate mint into bigger cells. My hands smelled lovely after handling the aromatic seedlings all morning. Farmer Renee's kale and swiss chard seedlings are nearly ready to be planted outdoors. She expects the first tomato from her grafted plants to be ripe in early June.

A walk in the woods in recent days offered a glimpse of a few spring ephemerals. Trailing arbutus is in full bloom and full fragrance. You have to kneel down to smell the dainty white flowers amidst the creeping mat of oval, leathery green leaves. It is worth the effort.

New leaves of the Canada mayflower are unfurling on the forest floor.

Birds trickled in this past week including a few great blue herons that returned to local marshes. The phoebes went suddenly quiet with the return of cooler temperatures. Chipping sparrows arrived back at their usual spot along our road. A friend saw an osprey, but I am still looking for my first sighting of the year.

The expansion of the vegetable garden is advancing slowly. I am digging the lawn up with just a shovel. Each dug spadeful requires a shake of the sod to loosen soil, squishing of grubs that fall out,  and a gentle returning of any worms to the garden. Less lawn and more vegetables is worth the effort.  

Electricity

Our electric company - Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH) -- included an interesting chart with our most recent billing. A few years ago the NH Legislature passed a law requiring electric suppliers to disclose all energy sources and their air emissions characteristics. Here is the chart for our electricity supply, which comes from the New England power grid via PSNH (click on chart to enlarge) -- it is a little light so perhaps hard to read.

A couple key points from the chart:

• The percentage of renewables in the mix is 19% for PSNH and 12% region-wide. Hydropower (9%) and wood (5.7%) are the biggest sources. Solar is less than 1%; other minor sources include landfill gas, wind, municipal waste, and biomass.
• The non-renewables mix at 80% for PSNH includes: coal (60.9%), gas (11.8%), nuclear (5.9%), oil (<1%), jet (<1%).
• The air emissions -- carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide -- for the PSNH mix are much worse than for the New England mix, presumably because of the high proportion of coal (60%) in the PSNH mix versus 11.8% coal in the regional mix.
• Although the New England mix has less renewable sources in the mix (12%), the air emissions from the mix is far better, with a greater reliance on nuclear and gas and much less on coal.

The main conclusion that I draw from this information is that most of our electricity comes from air polluting fossil fuels. Unless we become self-sufficient and get off the grid, we are part of this polluting industry. And as far as I can tell, PSNH is our only choice for electricity supply. Our best contribution is to be as energy efficient as possible and reduce our use of electricity where possible. We try.

A Red Flag Day

The National Weather Service in Gray, Maine posted a red flag warning today for our area. The combination of low relative humidity and strong winds has created a very high fire danger. The daffodils are nodding and the crocuses are closed up like champagne flutes, with the dip in temperatures and the cold winds.

One great benefit of these conditions is that the garden is dry. I am expanding the vegetable gardens again this year and the conditions are perfect for such work: cool temperatures, dry soil, and no bugs. Shovelful by shovelful I am converting more of our lawn to longer and wider garden rows. Each spade of dirt exposed a few worms (good) and some grubs (bad). The grub population seems to be down (good) given the few that I dispatched today.

I returned to New Roots Farm this morning for the start of the gardening season. Today I transplanted small tomato, eggplant, and pepper seedlings into bigger cells. It felt good to work the potting soil and lift the delicate seedlings from one growing cell into another. The greenhouse was warm; we stripped down to t-shirts, while cold winds whipped around outside. Farmer Renee thinned and transplanted tiny basil plants. I brought home a bag of the discarded thinned basil to make pesto.

Yesterday seemed like a red flag day too. Kodi and I spent some time at one of our favorite beaver wetlands in Durham. I sat near shore next to a sun-draped giant boulder that was protected from the wind. A group of tree swallows skimmed the water's surface, flying in acrobatic patterns that rivaled any airshow. I heard a kingfisher rattle from a snag in the water, before the wind whisked away its call.

The red flag warning has little bearing on the spring emergence of wild plants. The tussock sedge, Canada mayflower, and blue flag iris are sending up green shoots. For now there is enough moisture in the woods and wetlands. For the gardens we are thinking that rain barrels and soaker hoses will be a must for the 2012 growing season if the current weather trends continue. In the meantime, I have some basil pesto to tend to.

Bees and Phoebes and Spring Flowers

Last week's well-above normal temperatures sped up the spring timetable. We sat on our east-facing deck in the early evenings as birds went about their busy lives. A pair of phoebes perched in the crabapple--the crooked one that I sculpted with the pruning loppers. The tree is a perfect perch for the phoebes as it grows only 15 feet from the deck, where they nest each year.

Meanwhile on the south-facing side of the house, where the sun warms the gable ends, carpenter bees were busy all week. The overwintering adults emerged from their excavated tunnels, mated, and set about nesting and laying eggs. On the driveway below, the dead males were piling up, while the females excavated each chamber, deposited an egg, supplied it with "bee bread" (a mixture of pollen and nectar), and then plugged it with a wad of sawdust.

Carpenter bees and bumble bees resemble each other; both are native bees and important pollinators. The carpenter bee has a shiny black abdomen, while bumblebees have hairy abdomens. They differ in their habits as well. Bumblebees nest in the ground and are more social. The carpenter bee, as its name suggests, nests in wood, such as under the eaves of our house. The male carpenter bee buzzes and hovers and sounds and looks menacing as it patrols its territory, but it is harmless as it has no stinger. Here is a male carpenter bee lying dead on the driveway, with a yellow patch on its forehead; females have no color patch.

As honey bee colonies have collapsed in recent years due to various maladies, more attention is focused on our native bees--including bumblebees and carpenter bees--and their importance for pollination of vegetables, fruit trees, and flowers. As bees emerge early in spring they need a source of nectar from now till fall. One of the earliest plants available to them are the willows along with red maples. Thanks to the warm temperatures many of the willows are in full bloom, although we have none in our yard (yet). These willows were seen on one of our walkabouts with Kodi.

A local farmer has plowed his cornfield already, although planting is likely still a ways off. We saw our first road-killed snake--a small brown snake that lived in the fields along Bald Hill Road, but ventured out to the pavement to sun itself. From now until fall we will see too many that won't make it back to the field.

This morning I woke to the soothing sound of rain drops. The air and soil felt parched last week with several days in a row in the mid-80s. The rain was welcome as are the cooler temperatures for the coming week. At a glance the woodlands are already showing their late spring colors: the reds of the red maple flowers, snow white magnolia flowers, sunny yellow forsythia and spicebush in full bloom, and the soft green of woodland shrubs beginning their leaf-out.

We have to remind ourselves that it is still too early to plant in the garden, although the weeding has already begun as the unwanted plants seem to flourish everywhere that I don't want them. For a change I am glad to see the clouds, to feel the raindrops on my face and the coolness of the air.

The Woodland Trickster

Today felt like a lazy June day. A day when the temperature gets a little too warm. When a walk in the woods at mid-day makes your arms sweat just a bit, making them feel clammy in the dry warm air. As I sat by a languid river flies buzzed in the patch of sunlight on the forest floor. Surely this is not just the beginning of spring.

I shake myself free of my summer stupor. As I walk farther along I hear the trickster of woodland pools: the wood frog with its black mask and mating calls that sound so much like quacking ducks and not at all like a frog. And I know it really is still spring. Then I hear the soft trill of the pine warblers that just arrived today from their southern U.S. wintering grounds. The warbler so well-named since it spends most of its breeding season in white pines.

The lilac leaf buds suddenly burst open. Everything is happening so fast; I have to stay vigilant on my yard walkabouts so as not to miss something exciting. The tulips have shot up so fast that I expect a flower bud to appear any day. I wake each day now with great anticipation on what new things I might see or hear or smell.

Srini and I thought we should get a rain barrel to hook up to our downspout. We might need extra water this year, at this pace. March is looking like a dry month. No wonder the wood frog has evolved to breed early in spring when there is still water in their ephemeral pools. Some years the pools dry up early so they better be quick with the quack.