Cabin Night and Day, Part 2

While the beaver dam failed earlier in the summer and we haven’t seen the builders since then, the pond that is left behind, two or three feet deep and twenty feet wide at the widest point, is adequate to attract a wide range of wildlife.

There has long been a deer run through that part of the hollow. During last fall as the pond was filling, and this spring when the pond was at its fullest, the trail was overgrown and hard to see through the brush. Now that the ground is above water the trail is again wearing in through the underbrush, and I have seen a couple of fawns and a doe wandering through there.

From that point in the hollow, they often forage through our yard – ransacking the hostas (variegated only – they don’t seem to like the solid green varieties) at first, and when the apples start to fall in a few weeks, we’ll see more of them. Once our nesting hawks were big enough to test their wings, they moved over to the tall dead trees that hang over the old pond to roost. And on the pond itself, we often catch site of ripples breaking the surface – maybe, hopefully, a few trout naturalizing into this part of the stream.

While breakfasting on the brick terrace on Saturday morning, I saw a blue heron wading through there, hunting frogs and minnows. It mainly worked the banks of the pond but at times it ventured further into the stream.

On Sunday, again at breakfast, and during my second cup of coffee – so I was awake enough to know this wasn’t a hallucination – I saw a familiar, lumbering black shape walking along the stream bank. A few weeks ago I saw a young black bear walking down our road (here’s a link to the post and photo: http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2009/07/nine-secrets-to-longer-life.html ).

That morning the bear I glimpsed caught me by surprise and it was moving too fast along the bank for me to take a photo, but judging from a distance, it was about the same size and shape as the bear I saw a few weeks ago, so I am assuming it’s the same one.

We’ve got a regular – hide the trash!