Three times, now, I’ve seen a muskrat bringing home a water chestnut
plant!
I’ve zoomed in on my picture, so it is a bit fuzzy, but if you look
carefully, you will see there is brown under that plant! Now if we can just convince them that the
spring plants are tender and delicious…
They were busy this morning – back and forth, back and forth, but I
only saw the one bringing home anything.
Wonder if they chew it up and carry it in their mouths? Looking at them swim, it looks like they have
something, but it turns out to be just the water roiling up in front of
them. Mostly they go one at a time. Today, one went out and was over there a LONG
time messing in what is left of the water chestnuts. A second one went over and very shortly both
came back. Hmmm. ("Junior, you get home right this very minute!!") This picture shows both of them.
Lots of hawk calling today; there were more than one of them
around. I was looking for the hawk on
the north side of the pond when one called from right behind me! But up close, this does not look like a
red-tail! Any thoughts? Immature?
As you know, and as you can see in the opening picture of the video below, we have had a very green pond; the water chestnuts have been a REAL problem this year. By
May, it wasn't much fun paddling, and in June, I couldn't get through
them without a great deal of work! Thankfully, by this time of year (autumn), the paddling is good again because the plants are starting to die off and drop to the bottom of the pond (and of course, the muskrats have been busy!). However, any seeds that were on the plants have fallen off and been nicely planted to grow next year.
Ann Kirk organized a community pull to start working on the problem. (Follow the link for the Town Crier article and pictures of the event.) We had over three dozen people helping out and many boats out on the water. But, alas, all our work barely made a dent.
The harvester that was contracted for Carding Mill Pond wasn't needed there, so was brought in to Stearns Mill Pond. It accomplished a lot at the dam end of the pond,
but couldn’t get very far down here in the center and at the up stream end – too shallow.
The plan for next year is to try to raise the dam for a while so the harvester can get further in and then do the community pull after the harvester finishes so that we can clear out the invasive weeds that the machine can't get. Here is a short video of the harvester at work. Pretty cool! (Thanks, Ann!)
July 12, 2012
So, what have you seen and experienced on our pond? Leave a comment about your experiences.
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Please leave a comment about things you have seen and noticed.