With the warm weather of the past week, I predicted that the beavers would be able to make it downstream to their food cache (if you have not read of their plight,
here is the first post). I headed out on skis (just the second time this year) at 8 p.m. to see how they fared.
Sure enough, there is just a thin skim of ice over the hole inside the cache.
This cache is made up of saplings the beavers harvested in the fall, mostly beech with some striped maple, yellow birch, and alder. There is a small amount of spruce, fir, and hemlock mixed in. Typically, the food cache is underwater all winter, just outside the entrance to the beavers' lodge. They swim out under the ice when they are hungry, grab a branch and haul it into their lodge to eat.
Willow soon appeared in an opening in the stream. She had a little trouble finding the apple tossed into the brook beside her, but eventually succeeded and then plunged under ice and swam away.
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| Willow pops up through the tunnel under the food cache, with snow stuck to her nose. |
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| Apple? |
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| Apple? |
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