Wetlands
September 2019 Photos
Beaver Activity
One beaver dam was completely removed. Perhaps multiple groups of people were working to eliminate the dam.
A few weeks went by. We had lots of rain. And the beaver dam came back. It is not as high as it had been but it was back!
A friend told me a story. Some researchers placed a speaker near where beavers lived and played the sound of running water. The beavers proceeded to pile sticks on top of the speaker. Apparently, this behavior is built in to beavers. Perhaps the need to tear down beaver dams is built into some people.
I suspect that this is the beaver. The sun had gone down and the light levels were falling. Since beavers work graveyard it was time for the beaver to get to work. This beaver was heading towards the new dam. I was very lucky to be standing near the creek at just the right time.
The beaver swam a few more feet forward and then stopped for 20 seconds behind the bushes. Perhaps it smelled me. Then it dived underwater and was gone.
Wetland Plants
Northern Water Plantain (Alisma triviale ) flowers. Last month I could not find any flowers. Maybe the flower is only there at certain times of the day.
Nodding Bur-Marigold or Nodding Beggarticks (Bidens cernua). I have seen these bushy plants upstream. Now they are in the field. The names "beggarticks" and "Bur-Marigold" probably refer to the seeds that have burrs, perhaps about the size of a tick.
I had been ignoring this stuff although great portions of the field are covered with it. It is Water Pennywort (Hydrocotyle ranunculoides), a new plant for me. The name Pennywort comes from Europe where there is a different plant with that name that looks similar. Wikipedia says that the Old English word for "wort" was wyrt, from Proto-Indo-European origins that connect it to root. It was often used in the names of herbs and plants that had medicinal uses.
This plant has flowers, which I have not seen. We notice showy flowers that attract insects or birds. Pennywort has very small flowers that hide under the leaves.
This month's photo of Lady's Thumb (Persicaria maculosa ).
This is a small buttercup. Mostly we see seeds here but there are a couple flowers. It may be Cursed Crowfoot (Ranunculus sceleratus).
Rosehips.
These lichen are growing on our rock wall. I had been looking for these and not finding them. But after the rain, there they were. Since lichen grow slowly they must have been there all the time. Water can change the color. The green that we see is from algae. The structure comes from a fungus. This is where the pixies live.
Common cattail (Typha latifolia), a native plant. I had been enjoying a patch of cattails from my deck until they were mowed down in the middle of September. The people who do the mowing seem to lack direction. The cattails grow in very wet places. Now the places where the cattails were are just muddy areas. Actually, wetlands are not usually mowed. Having them mowed is probably money not well spent.
This tree near the creek has reddish berries about the size of cherries. The more I looked at the berries the more they looked like very small apples. I tried one and it did taste like an apple. It might be an Oregon crabapple (Malus fusca). I need to investigate further. The tree trunk is shown below.
Wetland Animals
A Woollybear caterpillar (Pyrrharctia isabella). This caterpillar can freeze solid in Arctic regions and survive to become a moth in the spring.
The rain has made these guys happy. They are having a field day on all those vegetative scraps that get tossed over the wall.
Having climbed the rock wall to remove blackberries I was in a good position to photograph the deer that was walking past. The deer was interested in me, watching me get my camera from my backpack and then watching as I made clicking noises. Later, while working on another patch of blackberries the deer came bounding past. Perhaps something else spooked it.
Non-Native Plants
This was growing near the sometimes-there beaver dam. Such a striking plant, I thought it would be easy to identify. No so. I did lots of searching to find the identity. It is a rock-garden plant from Asia. It is called Orange Stonecrop (Aizopsis kamtschatica). It probably was discarded from someone's garden but that does not explain how it got to the other side of the creek. Last time I went to check on the missing beaver dam this plant was gone.
When I find blackberries I wonder if my efforts at removing them has made a difference. The photo on the left is from October of 2018, before I started eliminating blackberries. The photo on the right was taken in September of 2019. These photos do show a dramatic reduction in blackberries in our rock wall.
Continue to October, 2019