It wouldn’t be half so horrible if they’d learned what we two-legged mammals teach our young’ns: “Finish the one you have before you take another.”

They are eating the living part of the tree. And they are only eating birch trees. I get it that beaver think birch is especially tasty. The Girl Scout Mint Cookie of the tree world, apparently. But this is so so disturbing.

That’s me near the entrance to Ghost Bay, inspecting the damage.

I do not find this even one bit of engineering clever.

We lost count of the number of birch trees toppled and munched all around the perimeter of Ghost Bay. And, as you can see by the lodge, the beaver aren’t even using much of the downed timber to reinforce their home.

These critters have made a royal mess of a place that means a lot to all of us on the lake. In the past, when I caught a glimpse of them swimming, I’d feel quite privileged to share the lake with them. For now, I’m just overcome by the wastefulness of their feeding habits.

Every living thing finds a way to make its house a home, but this group of hornets chose an eccentric building site. They constructed their home at the intersection of Sorenson Road and County Road 628. Literally.

I’m pretty sure this is a bald-faced hornet nest. The nest is basically paper. The queen’s daughter-workers chew wood fiber, mix it with the starch in their spit, and that’s how the nest is formed. One hornet mouthful at a time.

If you don’t mess with baldfaced hornets, they don’t mess with you. But if you do manage to disturb them, apparently there is almost no end to the number of times one of these hornets can sting you. And there can be several hundred hornets that call one nest a home.

The hornets freeze and die as cold temperatures move in. Nests are not re-used. The new queens hibernate outside the nest, waiting for the warmer weather to return. You can read more about Dolichovespula Maculata here.

If any readers are wasp/hornet knowledgeable, please let me know if you think I’ve identified this creature wrong. It is some other form of hornet?  Or maybe a paper wasp? The shape of the nest and the swirl construction made me decide otherwise.

You have to look closely. It’s not a log. It’s not a a dog. It’s a white-tail deer, taking a swim late in October, when Long Lake was already very cold. An internet search (do deer swim) reveals what apparently everyone but me already knew, confirmed by many youtube videos. Yes, deer swim. They are quite expert at a “dog paddle” stroke. Hard to imagine how those long spindly legs work for swimming, but deer have been clocked swimming ten miles per hour. Apparently they typically take to the water to escape predators. Some believe they set out in search of better grazing, but I’m skeptical of that.

Meet the lowly meadow vole. Microtus Pennsylvanicus. (And I have no idea what Pennsylvania has to do with it.) The meadow vole can birth up to fifteen litters a year. Litters average about seven pups. Female offspring are ready to birth their own litters in three weeks. (That “three” is not a typo.) A mother meadow vole has a postpartum estrus cycle that allows her to mate right after giving birth. With all the voles running around, I assume finding an interested male vole is probably not a problem. In captivity, voles can live for up to two years. In the wild, Wiki reports on studies estimating that 88% die within 30 days of being born.

With apologies to the tender-hearted, fortunately meadow voles are just about everybody’s favorite munchie. Snakes, birds of prey, dogs, coyotes, basically everything that lives (except squeamish us) eats voles whenever the opportunity arises. Otherwise, we’d be up to our eyeballs in meadow voles.

We have no idea why the meadow vole Steve photographed above was running in circles under our winter-ready row boat for about two hours on a cool sunny mid-October day. Maybe his behavior also shows why the most prolific mammal on the planet isn’t quite ready for prime time.

That’s me paddling with five, yes five, loons.

We had no loon chicks hatch on the lake this summer. Early rumor was one hatched, but we think not. We know at least one pair was nesting on Belly Button Island when a major tornado-like blow blew through. Shortly after, the nest was abandoned. It is so cool to watch the chicks grow to the point where they are ready to head south in early October, but it was not to be.

Instead, our lake seemed to be a loon party lake of some sort. We saw gatherings of 5 or 6 loons several times. They fished, chortled to one another, and sometimes did the vulture pose thing. But mostly they quietly swam around the lake, sticking pretty close together.

At the moment, we have one somewhat confused adolescent loon still living on Long Lake. He appeared about six weeks ago and still hasn’t left. We’ve seen the adolescent fly around so he shouldn’t be with us much longer now. He’s been flying north, but hopefully he gets it that those are just his practice flights. We wish him a safe passage. South.

Porcupine: “This is a DEELICIOUS downed branch I’ve happened upon here in the middle of the path.”

“Yipes. Trapped like a rat, whatever a rat is. I don’t know what that big ugly thing is but I better boogie to cover.”

“I’ve now assumed the standard porcupine defense of hiding my head behind something while brandishing my impressive array of painful quills. Hopefully the big ugly thing believes that old wive’s tale, whatever a wive is, whatever a tale is, that I can shoot these quills of mine at will.”

“Can’t resist sneakin’ a peek to see how much I’ve terrified my wannabe attacker.”

Mom must be weary of the mothering gig.

Some time this past winter or early spring, a big blow must have come through Ghost Bay. Three good-sized cedars tipped over. Cedars mostly sit on the very edges of the Bay, giving the deer some good winter salads. Deer stand on the ice and trim the overhanging cedar branches as neatly as a professional landscaper might. But cedar roots here do not run deep. And as the cedars grow taller their foothold gets more and more precarious. Every tree in the Bay is precious and we are saddened to see this trio give up the ghost.

Meanwhile on the lake bottom, in the shallow edges of the Bay, life is winning. When this photo was taken, the blue gills were guarding their nests from marauding who knows what.  When I quietly pass by in my kayak, they seem to stare me down. This nest wasn’t being guarded when Steve snapped a photo. If you are wondering about all the debris, the bluegills are not “feathering” their nest with clean pebbles or sticks.  The fish disturb the silt in the hollowed-out nest and then the bottom comes into clear view. We think the bluegill are good recyclers too, because these seem to be the same hollow places the bass used as nests.

It is summer now. Lots of creepy crawly stuff is enjoying the exposed cedar root slabs.  And baby bluegill are all through the grasses of Ghost Bay.

Dragonflies. Anisoptera.  Belonging to the order Odonata (“toothed”).

All dragonflies have two sets of wings, great big eyes (they are visual hunters), and a long skinny body with 10 segments. A big bug with teeth, sort of. Powerful mandibles for sure. A carnivorous big bug with a voracious appetite for mosquitoes that earns its nickname: “Mosquito Hawk.” There are 8 families of dragonfly and at least 124 genera in those families…and still counting. Read lots more about dragonflies here. I’ve not done much oding, so it’s pretty reckless of me to hazard a guess, but I thought at first this might be Didymops Transversa. The wings sure look like a match, with the placement of those dark “reinforced” sections.  And the body coloration looks close.

But, I have it on good authority that I’m wrong. Dragonfly Woman, an aquatic entomologist from Arizona, says she doesn’t necessarily know tons about identifying Michigan dragonflies, but she was pretty sure this guy was a member of the Aeshna genus–likely one of the mosaic darners. Wow, and me a sock knitter and all!  The good people hanging out at BugGuide agree.  A comment from one knowledgeable BugGuide participant says it’s definitely a female Aeshna.  I didn’t ask how he knows it’s a girl (probably more girls than guys darn, do you think?)  He thinks it might be a Canada Darner, but would want to have a closer look at the pattern on the side of her thorax to know that for sure.  Wow.  Again.

Shortly before we found this guy, Steve watched a dragonfly that looked like this one hatch out on the lawn from its superugly nymph stage. The nymphs crawl out of the water, crack out of their drab gray-brown carapace and unfold into something like this.  This visitor to our deck sat for at least half an hour drying his wings, we assume.  Or catching his breath.  Or doing the dragonfly equivalent of trying to figure out how all his new “stuff” is supposed to work.

Dragonflies will live for 6-8 weeks  Mate, eat and die.  This somewhat drab-colored dragonfly is not quite the match for the beauty that hatched out on our lawn a few years ago: 2009 Long Lake Dragonfly. But still a darned cool bug specimen. And so well-mannered as compared to the ants that have decided they own the deck this year.

These are the biggest of the beaver lodges on Long Lake. They are located about midway through the narrows, on the east side. Quite the engineering feat. This Spring we saw a beaver swim into the first lodge.  Last Spring my peaceful kayaking thoughts were disturbed by the loud slap of a beaver sounding the intruder (me) alarm.

Beavers, a/k/a Castor Canadensis, are the largest rodents in North America. They live in family groups of about eight, and will typically include a sibling group of 2 year olds, as well as the new litter of kits.

These critters are said to be able to topple a tree in a matter of hours or flood an area overnight. What they are up to with all this lumberjack stuff is creating a pond environment that will support their semi-aquatic lifestyle. The shape of their lodges changes to adjust to the flow of the water. In faster water, beavers build a curved lodge to encourage stability. But in slow water they build the lodge more straight.

In addition to felling trees to build their lodges, beavers eat the underbark of trees. I’m thinking that’s why that rather large beaver-gnawed branch in the photo is looking so naked. With all this gnawing going on, the fact that their teeth grow continuously throughout their lives is useful. According to Wikipedia, beavers also love to eat water-lilies. We have quite a few of those in some sections of the lake. In the first bay beyond the narrows in the north part of the lake, where the peninsula juts out, there is a nice crop of water-lilies every year.  We often watch a beaver swimming away from there headed back to the narrows just as night falls. With a full tummy, I’m guessing.

I am hoping, however, never to come out to our front lawn in the morning and find one of our trees looking like this last photo. And when I paddle past the big lodge now, I keep alert near this tall tree.