Sunday, October 19, 2014. August 24 to 30, 2003. August 24 I took a quick mid-morning hike to see if the otters had left more scat. Just before I crossed the creek draining the New Pond and most of the ponds the otters fancy, I saw two gooey scats on the old rusted discarded pipe there. And poked the muck and found that it was soft and bristling with fish scales and bones. So an otter had been around. As I continued along the shore of the pond, I found some possible fisher scat. While the channels all lo.

Saturday, January 14, 2017. April 2 to 14, 2002. In 2002 I extracted stills from the videos I took rather than use a camera. And then as I walked closer, a pair of black ducks took off. I moved out to the log on the point because I was expecting to see muskrats, and I did. One crossed far off in the pond - going rather fast for a rat. There were no new scats, nor much sign of beaver work around the dam, save for a small root a beaver had dug into. How did it know it was there - smell the sap in it? One t.

Saturday, February 20, 2016. Every year from 1974 to 1992 Leslie and I visited my retired parents in Vero Beach, Florida, during spring training. The Dodgers no longer train there but the memory lives on. Photos are great but her drawings on back of plain postcards capture how stars seemed like friends and fields of green grass felt like your back lawn.

I also have several blogs about history and nature. Two news history blogs supplement my recently published book Slave Labor in the Capital. My old blog on Washington history is now called Washington Examined. My most popular history blog is on the Yellow Fever Epidemic of the 1790s. And a blog with deeper thoughts about Beavers and their Ponds. Last and least, is my first blog, a bit of a grab bag Excrements of Curiosity. Here are some of my more popular webpages.

Monday, March 9, 2015. November 8 to 10, 2004. November 8 yesterday we made a very brief stop at the land. The Deep Pond dam still leaks and I think the beaver pushed a little more mud up on the dam. No sign of its eating anything along the dam, no characteristic nibbled sticks. I assume that as a newcomer, it might be frightened. Meanwhile up in the poplar groove above the First Pond, the large poplar that had but a few nibbles was about to be cut down. Here is a paper on beavers and white oaks, there o.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011. Otters can swim faster than beavers; otters have flesh tearing teeth. And beavers are vegetarians;. And most of the books you pick up about the two animals announce that otters are predators of beavers. No one told the beavers all that. Kept snorting at me off and on, but also groomed itself! To find sticks to nibble.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014. Otters and Beavers Share a Winter Pond. I saw their prints, slides and scats in the snow all around it. We had snowfall and, of course, it became easy.