It was looking like I was going to have to punt the Find again, with nothing much to show for this week, but I went out late Thursday night and found something better than what I had lined up. It’s not fascinating or exciting, but it’s the kind of thing that makes a nature photographer (zoologist/biologist/naturalist/creepy hermit) go, “Aha! Now I know what to be looking for.”
Be warned, however, some of these images are graphic.
Gruesome thing to find in the headlamp, no? Especially deep (well, not that deep) in the woods at night. Yet it’s only resin, an indication that the damage to the bark of this bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) was recent. And, fairly, extensive, since it reached roughly a meter off the ground.
I was out there alone, so I had to put my own hand into the shot, and couldn’t pose next to it for relative scale. What this indicates though is how big the critter that did it would have to be, which makes this likely from either a nutria, beaver, or bear. Chiplike teeth marks on other trunks nearby (there were several showing this damage) largely ruled out bear, and with seeing the nutria so recently (actually, daily now) and not far from this – fifty meters or less – one would be inclined to favor those as the culprit. There were two bits that were contra-indicators, though. The first was, this is quite close to the beaver lodge and alongside the creek that they favor, and second, I heard the distinct ka-thunk! of one diving only a few minutes before this, right near the lodge – nutria will splash, but they don’t slap the water with a flat tail to make that sound.
I’d been out a few times before and hadn’t seen nor heard any signs of the beavers at all, even when I felt that if they’d had young, those would have been out of the lodge by now. And there were signs that they’d had young, since I found scraps of cow lilies on the crossover paths from our pond to the creek, and the only reason for them to be carrying food back at this time of year would be to feed young. Since it had been so quiet with no further signs, however (even the cow lilies have bounced back almost entirely,) I had callously discarded them as a potential photo subject in favor of other things, though I’d wondered if they had moved on or even run afoul of some predator. These pics makes it clear that there is still notable activity, so I have to go back to plans of staking them out, or at least checking a lot more often.
Funny, too, I might have missed this entirely by day, since I would have been relying on the indirect light filtering through the dense canopy, which would not have illuminated this as distinctly as the headlamp aiming right where I was facing. But yeah, I need to be getting my butt up before sunrise and checking out the area more often to see what I can see – I’m not a morning person, as you might have guessed from all of the night pics, so switching over takes a little effort, which I’ll be happy to expend if enough people encourage me. Not that I’m hinting or anything.
For giggles, though, I’ll include what was slotted to be the Estate Find, should I not have found anything else last night. Otherwise it would just go in a separate post anyway.
I’m still checking out the sun when I think of it, and this past Wednesday, some significant activity had sprung up when all had been quiet before. According to two apps on my smutphone, though, this hasn’t so far resulted in any increase in potential auroral activity, not that I would likely see anything at this latitude, anyway. Compare this to August 4th, however:
Barely anything registering there at all, though one day in between there was so little I could pick out only two faint specks.
So, this post could have been worse – at least the bark pics were actually on Walkabout Estates Plus, and not 151 million kilometers above it…