Advanced notice of the 2016 Annual General Meeting

The date for this year's Annual General Meeting has been rescheduled one week later to coincide with the water testing day that Jerome has already set up. The new date is:

                             Saturday, August 13th, 

                         time and place to be advised.

Formal notice, the proposed agenda, financial statements, etc. will be issued in early July as usual.

The meeting is considered open so all are welcome to attend.

For the Board,

Derek Johnson

Secretary

Beaver count erratum

The number of beaver taken by Matt Taylor reported in the earlier beaver post is too low. The actual total is 11.

• Rainbow Creek: 2 adults, 3 young
• Gustave dam: 1 adult, 3 young
• McDougall bog: 1 adult, 2 young

Apologies for the error.

Bryan Hollingworth

 

"Bob's for the Birds" Spring Report

The disappearance of the ice is a special event in the Lake Anne calendar.  Probably the most important event during the year.  Certainly one of the most anticipated!

This year it happened over three days.

Associated with the "Goneing" of the ice this year were:

• The arrival of a solitary loon, as well as another pair later on in the day.  The three are still here as I write.
• Six snow geese stopped over, as well as assorted Canada geese.  All moved on, but others continue to arrive sporadically.  A couple of big seagulls visited but moved on.
• Several hooded mergansers, as well as two mallards, showed up around Green Mountain.  No common mergansers yet!
• Trout are rising to feed off of Green Mountain point.
• Derek and Sylvie came up on Friday to watch two deer and five wild turkeys cross their lawn.  Pansy saw another single turkey on the Big House's driveway.  And I heard a real commotion at 7:00 AM on Saturday, between Derek's dock and the inside corner of Derek's bay, when one or more coyotes barked, periodically, at the turkeys who were in the trees.  Trying to flush them, I guess.  The brouhaha lasted a good half-hour.
• The resident broad-winged hawk made his first appearance on Saturday, his mournful "KIE" cry heard on  Anne Est, as he patrolled along the length of the road.

Lots of deer tracks and raccoon paw prints, every morning, on the road.

Great weekends in April.  Bright and sunny every weekend.

Looks good for this summer!

Bob

Beaver Activity, November 2015 through March 2016

Reported by Matt Taylor, submitted by Bryan Hollingworth.

Early winter ice conditions made it very difficult to set traps up to the end of December. There was no beaver activity in: Mary's Lake, behind Blachfords', Wood's Bay.

In Wood's Bay, the beaver dam let go sometime in the fall. If you look at the dam location from the  lake, you will notice a large flat rock on the right side. It is believed that water gets under the dam, then freezes, raising the rock, which causes the dam to fail. This has been the cause of previous dam failures and was once again this fall.

Beavers were located in the McDougall bog, but no new construction, dens or dam improvements were noticed. A large female and two smaller beavers were taken from this area.

Beavers were also located in the creek running from Dey's (Thompson's) Lake, which crosses the Gustave Road about 1 km from Mr. Joe Road on the west side. The Township of Wentworth is responsible for this dam, and I (BH) called them several times this past summer/fall to let them know that Wentworth North had put in two 24-inch culverts last year and that the outlet at the dam is one 24-inch Morency* drain, which is not adequate to handle the water flow, especially when the beavers have it blocked. The situation was checked by Wentworth's beaver guy in the fall, but the drainage pipe was entirely blocked again by December. Matt cleared out the debris, but this has to be done regularly if the drainage is to be effective and to prevent either a dam burst or the flooding of the Gustave Road. I will advise the Wentworth people of this. From this area, Matt was able to remove one large female and two smaller beavers.

Matt's contract calls for us to pay him $100 per beaver, so we are sending him a cheque for $600.

In addition:
Bob Gaudreau has seen large wolf tracks on Anne est road, so be careful when walking pets. Contact Bob for further information.

*A Morency drain is a pipe put through a dam wall with a wire cage at the inlet end to prevent the beavers from blocking it and the bog's outflow. Matt says we have clever beavers as they were able to figure out where the leak was and block off the cage.