I was completely shocked and amazed by my discovery this morning during a walk at Ellington Agricultural Center in south Nashville, Tennessee. I had absolutely no idea any beavers made their home so close to a Nashville residential area, and in a relatively small creek at that.

I live very near the Ellington Agricultural Center, and I recently learned about the 1.6-mile hiking trail there called Roger’s Walk. This was a wonderful discovery for me, as it is within walking distance of my new home in the Crieve Hall area of Nashville, Tennessee; even my recent car troubles cannot stand in the way of my near-daily hikes!

This morning I was disappointed to find the creek at a higher-than-usual level, preventing me from taking a convenient short cut through a field beside Darlington Drive. The trick is, I must cross the creek in order to make the shortcut worthwhile, and the water was simply too high – even after I spent 20 minutes tossing large rocks into the stream, trying to make it passable. No dice.

So I walked around to the official entrance and doubled back toward the creek. I looked upstream, thinking there might be a way to cross — something I could use next time, to make the shortcut work. Instead, I noticed a large dam across the creek (pictured), and it appeared that the water level difference in front of vs. behind the dam was significant – more than a foot. My first thought was that I had discovered a beaver dam in this small creek! Could it really be? After all, it might be nothing more than a natural accumulation of sticks and debris from the rising and falling of the creek. I wanted to find out for sure.

I approached the dam and saw that the water level difference in front of and behind the dam was indeed extreme: closer to two feet.

To confirm that this was indeed the work of one or more beavers, I looked for – and found — numerous gnawed bush stumps, tree stumps, and wood chips (pictured), along with rings of stripped bark around some of the larger trees. This could only be the work of beavers. However, I could not locate a beaver lodge. I noticed some large holes along the banks of the flooded section of the creek; as there are probably muskrats here too, I am not sure where the beavers actually live.

About the Pictures/Photographs

Most of the images in this blog are selected at random from carefully-prepared, themed image folders. For example, this last photo showing beaver evidence (gnawed trees/bushes) comes from an image folder containing several photos of the same theme. If you reload the web page (by clicking your browser’s refresh button), a new image will be selected from the same image folder at random. If you like, you can reload the page several times to see all the available photos as they randomly rotate. This is true for all photos in this post (as well as a large percentage of photos in this blog), EXCEPT for the first photo of the beaver dam.

1. The top picture (picture #1) shows the beaver dam.
2. Picture 2 shows convincing proof of beaver activity: gnawed bush and tree stumps.
3. Picture 3 shows a section of the creek behind the dam: the flooded area where the beaver presumably makes its home. The creek is much deeper for about fifty yards.
4. The 4th photo is another beaver dam pic.
5. The 5th photo shows more beaver evidence in the form of gnawed trees and shrubs.

More soon!

This is my second post having to do with the giant Alligator Snapping Turtle – a primitive reptile that I believe calls Radnor Lake home. (NOTE: The top photo shows a common snapping turtle with his meaty legs outstretched as it suns itself on a log. Alligator snappers have not yet been confirmed at Radnor Lake.)

I was amazed to hear how old these creatures can get in the wild. According to a reptile keeper interviewed on today’s episode of Dirty Jobs, sometimes large alligator snapper specimens are found with wounds that turn out to be caused by the Civil War-era musket! Likewise, specimens killed and harvested have been found with musket balls still inside them.

It takes twelve years for alligator snapping turtles to reach maturity.

Quote: It is thought that alligator snapping turtles can live to be one hundred and fifty years old if they are left in the wild. Captive alligator snapping turtles usually live between twenty and seventy years.

The alligator snapping turtle, Macroclemys temminckii, is confined to the Gulf of Mexico drainages of the United States and is widespread in the lower Mississippi Valley. Its range extends from Georgia and northwestern Florida to eastern Texas and can be found as far north as southeast Kansas, southeast Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. Distribution in Alabama is nearly statewide. There have been no documented reports of its occurrence in the Tennessee River system in Alabama, but collections have been made from Bear Creek in Mississippi, a tributary of the Tennessee River.

More about Alligator Snappers

Pet Turtle Care
Southeastern Outdoors Forum: Alligator Snapping Turtle Rehabilitated and Released
Fact Sheet – Smithsonian National Zoological Park

Nichols, M., J. Pruitt, D. Munsey, G. Good, B. Meyer, K. Urban, K. Francl and P. DiLaura. 1999. “Macrochelys temminckii” (On-line), Animal Diversity Web.

Pictures – Animal Diversity Web
National Geographic – Alligator Snapper
Brookfield Zoo
Tortoise.org Archives

Having rings of chigger bites around my sockline from previous Radnor hikes, I wised up today and purchased some insect repellent containing DEET and applied it before hitting the trails. It was sauna hot as I set out. Before I’d gone 50 yards I realized I’d left the iPod behind…oh well, so I’d be a prisoner of my neurotic thought processes for the next hour and a half.

I went clockwise, which is the more difficult direction due to the steeper climbs on each side: Ganier Ridge on the north side and South Cove on the other.

The personal wildlife record broken on this hike was fawn proximity: I got within three and a half or four feet of a fawn, and it did not even move away from me. Have people been feeding these animals or what??! Given another chance, perhaps I’d hang out and see if I could actually touch it — or. as Kelly suggested, I should have held out my hand as if it held a deer treat, and gauge the fawn’s reaction.

For the second day in a row, there was a hawk very close to the trail. This is something I had not seen in the Radnor woods until yesterday, and here it is again. Now I need to identify the species of hawk.

From the start, it was obvious that the “optimal deer sighting times are dawn and dusk” wisdom nugget does not always hold true: it was the heat of the day and16 deer were spotted. My 2007 record is 17 deer, and that did occur at or near dusk. The most interesting of these deer sightings was seeing two families at once, and very close to the trail to boot. There were two sets of one doe and two fawns, with one fawn in particular feeding on honeysuckle shrubs about ten feet from me for an extended period of time. I found myself hoping that Kelly had hiked this way with his camera.

While hawk sightings are common in the Nashville area (esp. red-tailed hawks), I had never seen one perched so close to the lake trail. I first noticed it peripherally when I saw it fly from one branch to another, and at first thought it was an owl.

• three owls hanging around in one area, flying from branch to branch in spite of our presence
• 17 deer on one hike
• two great blue herons at once
• fawns galore
• beaver
• pair of pileated woodpeckers

I met Kelly on the South Cove trail at 8:15 or so (we agreed that, whenever we meet to hike and I have gotten there early and started hiking already, we would always meet on the south side) and we continued counterclockwise at a respectable pace.  It was not the optimal time to see a lot of wildlife, since it was well past dawn (dawn and dusk being the richest sighting times, generally speaking) and the park was full of hikers and walkers.

We did see three or four deer, but the real prize came about halfway down the lake on the north side: two large 8 to 10-point bucks, grazing on shoots together.  Not only were these the largest bucks with the biggest racks we had ever seen, but the fact that the two bucks — which normally seem to be solitary — were hanging out together.

Fortunately, Kelly brought his camera for the purpose of getting another good panoramic shot of the lake, so he was able to photograph these two bucks extensively, all the while bitching about his “lame camera.” <grin>