My new phenology spot is a large wetland area along Sucker Brook in Castleton, VT that’s been formed by beaver damming. The spot is near my house roughly an hour and a half south of Burlington and UVM. The beavers have created multiple dams across the small valley that slow down and backup the stream, forming three separate ponds and many interconnected water channels flowing in between them, all of which have fully frozen over. The area is a great place to find tracks, and although many of them were old or dulled by the wind, I was able to identify multiple different species that had been using the frozen waterways.
Aerial map taken from Google Earth of the wetland between Wallace Ledge and Pencil Mill Road along with the surrounding forest and Sucker Brook flowing out South. In the summer the various beaver channels running throughout the area are visible as they slowly connect back together to reform Sucker Brook, which eventually flows into Lake Bomoseen.
The beavers’ lodge is located on the edge of a pond in the middle of the wetland behind their main dam.
Although the tracks are relatively old and windswept, I think they were left from a group of eastern coyotes. I also didn’t see any scat, but I often hear their calls at night close by and I’m pretty sure they’re not dear tracks.
On the edge of the wetland within the trees there was a large area scattered with turkey tacks and scratchings left from their search for food under the snow.
Next to the wetland in the forest there were many holes and consequent dirt piles left by squirrels digging for their caches. In the bottom of one of them I could see the indentation of an acorn left in the frozen ground.
In the middle of the wetland along the beavers’ main dam some animal I couldn’t identify had taken advantage of a snow covered beaver trail cutting through the underbrush.