Back in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, my father and grandfather paid off the mortgage on the farm through income from turpentine. This is a catface, where the bark was scraped off a pine tree so its sap would ooze out, to be caught in a metal cup nailed below on the tree.
The rest of the tree long ago was logged.
Behind the pine tree stump and the adjoining oak tree, you can see a beaver pond. Continue reading
Yellow Dog and Brown Dog cooling off in a beaver pond.
Gretchen is represented by her camera there on the right.
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The recent rains refilled the beaver pond. -jsq
At the far side of the pond, Yellow Dog spotted a moccasin before anybody else. The small but deadly Agkistrodon piscivorus didn’t stand a chance against the pair of experienced snake wranglers, Yellow Dog and Brown Dog.
Mocassin
For the rest of the story, see Cottonmouth moccasin v Yellow Dog and Brown Dog @ OPF 2016-11-29.
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Yellow Dog and Brown Dog convinced Gretchen Quarterman to walk a log across a beaver pond.
Here are a couple of videos and there are more pictures below. Continue reading
We like our beaver pond, but the beavers are a bit too ambitious.
Here’s how they operate.
Haemig PD (2012) Ecology of the Beaver. ECOLOGY.INFO 13,
The forest beside the stream also changes after beaver occupation. When beavers cut down trees for food and for building their dams and lodges, they select the species of trees that they prefer, and leave other tree species standing. Consequently, after many years, the forest beside a beaver pond is usually dominated by different tree species than it was before beaver occupation, and in the gaps where the beavers removed trees, bushes and saplings now grow and with them the animal species that live in the early stages of forest regeneration (Barnes and Dibble 1986; Johnston and Naiman 1990;
Pastor and Naiman 1992; Donkor et al. 2000). In addition, when the beaver pond is formed by the dam, water floods and covers the roots of trees that formerly stood along the stream bank. These flooded trees die because the standing water prevents their roots from getting air….
In Wyoming, a survey showed that owners of private lands believed that they benefited from beaver engineering because Continue reading
The pond was too dam high,
and the beavers were girdling trees far out from the usual shore,
so we set sail to pipe the beaver dam.
Dogs waiting for us to get the boat to the deep water:
Lily:
Continue readingA beaver compared to a very well-fed raccoon:
Pictures by wildlife camera for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 5 February 2008.
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![[Catface and beaver pond]](http://www.okraparadisefarms.com/pictures/2020-06-16--catface-beaver-pond/20200616_132920.jpg)
![[Dogs in water]](http://www.okraparadisefarms.com/pictures/2020-05-03--butterfly-snake-dogs-cormorant-heron-beavers-dogs-pond-longleaf-fencewire/20200503_141956.jpg)
