Today I walked the creek from the road to the lake shore. The walk can be broken into three sections: road to Starvation Trail bridge, that bridge to the western bridge over the creek, and from that bridge to the lake shore. Counts of trees with beaver sign are as follows: bark (floem) damage only, including girdling; core wood (xylem) chewing; and downed trees. So, road to bridge: 64/11/32; bridge to bridge: 10/2/2: bridge to shore: 2/4/3. In the last section, all the beaver sign is within 150 yards of the shore. Also in that general area is a large number of beaver-chewed tree stumps. Similar sign is found in other near shore areas between the swamps. Altogether,130 trees show beaver sign of some type today. Should anyone be interested in where this activity is, just ask and I will e-mail a Google Earth .kml file showing the locations.
This tree was standing on the 8th. I found it down on the 14th. It doesn't yet know it's dead -- the new leaves appear to be thriving. Interestingly, it seems to have grown out of the root mass of another tree downed many, many years ago by beaver (seen just to the right of today's stump.
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