#55: Egg Hunt 2: Enter the Beaver

Oops, I did it again.


My first foray into the world of amphibian egg mass counting is here.

In this edition, I ventured out with a smaller crew to the wetlands surrounding Rock Creek behind Portland Community College's Rock Creek (hey!) campus.

After some time spent fruitlessly thrashing about basically this meadow covered with two feet of water, we set out towards those woods in the background.

Through the woods, in waders. Cautioned not to touch any blackberries or sharp sticks, so as not to put a leak in the waders. Yah sure no trouble.

Then we came to it. Dark water stretching back out of sight through the woods. Piles of beaver-chewed twigs, sticks and logs piled and floating everywhere. My orders? Simple: "Go in there, stick to the edge, and check all of the grasses and branches for eggs. Stay away from the middle. Don't go in the middle." Too deep. But...how can you tell where the middle starts?

Meh, off I go. The main challenge was figuring out how to duck under tree branches without dipping the chest of my waders under and flooding myself up.

About 50 yards back and around a bend, it opened out a little such that I could take liberties like standing up straight.

And my goodness, fucking beautiful.

Finally, back about where this tree barred the way forward, we spied our first egg mass of the day. This isn't necessarily bad news; we found a lot of evidence of eggs that had already hatched out. Spring's coming early: the eggs hatch when water temperatures rise to an optimum, which warmer rainstorms have already brought on this year.

I'm told this beaver pond just goes on and on and on beyond that tree. Our supervising scientician said if we wanted to just keep on exploring, we could. Tempting, oh so tempting. But this was just one stop on another busy weekend: miles to go before we rest. It was time to pack it in. Sorry, we did not get to actually see the beavers.

Getting to and from the water took a small hike through a stand of fir. I was surprised to see trilliums starting to pop off already. Like I said: spring's coming early.