Sandbur pond with fingers

[sandbur]

When the cat operator dug our ponds he left fingers of the vegetation sticking out into the pond. In theory it breaks the pond up so you might be able to hold several pairs of courting ducks. I am not sure if it works that well, but like the way it looks.

 

[sandbur]

High water this spring, but the fingers are still evident.

 

[sandbur]

A few years ago, when we had deer, I had a deer cam overlooking the same point as in the above picture. The area looks completely different during a dry summer!

 

[sandbur]

Looks cool Art!

Down by Cambridge MN there is a series of Ponds along side Hwy 65 that the 49er who dug them spelled out his initials as he built the Islands for the wildlife. Pretty Cool, well.......the state of MN did not think it was cool though, and he lost his job because of it. But the initial Islands still remain today!

That's a neat idea. Could spell lots of things...Hmm....

 

[sandbur]

I posted some of these pictures on the old forum, but I now have a stand overlooking the end of the pond where the does and fawns were pictured above.

I have some rootstock apple trees and now a b118 rootstock along the far edge of the pond. Easy to water-grab a bucket and carry it twenty yards from the pond.

 

[sandbur]

To the north is a 3 acre foodplot where Iwill leave the corn stand for a second year. I might run a disk thru it and seed an open area with some rye/oats. This picture was taken before the corn was planted-spring 2013.

 

[sandbur]

The pond lays in a C shape with more fingers on the other end of the pond.

 

[wklman]

Pretty cool Art. That's the one thing I wish I had on my 80. Even though I'm bordered by a small river bottom I still would like to have a pond dug out some day.

 

[wklman]

That would be a great spot for a pond stu. I was thinking if I ever get some extra money I'd just dig up the rock piles and garbage in the low spot just south of where you are thinking and have someone haul them off to make a pond. That would be another place that would be good.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Bur - I've seen a lot of your pictures here and the other forum. You should be ashamed - posting pix of such a nasty property. If you'd like to un-burden yourself from the guilt, you could sign that mess over to a shy, backward fellow from Pa. :rolleyes: :D

Seriously, I wish we had some of those sloughs, swamps and wetlands you guys have in the upper Midwest. That's great habitat. We have a pond at our camp, but that's it. Good luck with the habitat work & apple / crabapple trees. Really enjoy the pix!!!

 

[sandbur]

I always enjoy a stand by the water. Water tends to change the types of browse that is present and funnels movement.

The best thing about water is the other wildlife.

I once bow hunted this spot in /cass county for one evening and one morning. I saw 1 fisher, a pair of otter travelled under my stand, and ducks were present. I also saw five deer and passed on a spike. This was many years ago, up in zone 1.

I can now sit at this location and listen to the water run over a beaver dam.

 

[sandbur]

Bur - I've seen a lot of your pictures here and the other forum. You should be ashamed - posting pix of such a nasty property. If you'd like to un-burden yourself from the guilt, you could sign that mess over to a shy, backward fellow from Pa. :rolleyes: :D

Seriously, I wish we had some of those sloughs, swamps and wetlands you guys have in the upper Midwest. That's great habitat. We have a pond at our camp, but that's it. Good luck with the habitat work & apple / crabapple trees. Really enjoy the pix!!!

Where I live, most of the higher ground is cropland. Drain tiles are being added every day and we are losing cover. It is not good for wildlife in the long run.

I enjoy the ponds and listening to the frogs, geese, and spring peepers at this time of year.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Bur - Don't have drain tiles around here. What are they? Are they put in to DRAIN swamps and sloughs and thus eliminate habitat? If swamps are being drained, is it to increase Ag land/production?

 

[sandbur]

Bur - Don't have drain tiles around here. What are they? Are they put in to DRAIN swamps and sloughs and thus eliminate habitat? If swamps are being drained, is it to increase Ag land/production?

Yup-you have got it figured out.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

That's not good. Draining swamps/wetlands is not prudent long-run. Studies have been done in several coal states ( Pa. one of them ) that showed the best way to mitigate coal-mine acid seepage and improve ground water quality is to INSTALL new swamps. Areas that HAD natural swamps and had them drained & removed/filled in, had a real problem with mine acid polluting surface AND groundwater. After several universities and engineering firms studied ways to alleviate surface water & groundwater pollution by the mine acid, they concluded swamps were the answer. After big $$$ studies and more $$$ to BUILD new swamps, water testing proved swamps clean the water of ALL KINDS of pollutants ( mine acid, toxic chemicals, pesticides, etc. ). It has something to do with native plants that grow in wetlands filter out dangerous pollutants as part of their life processes.

I saw a documentary on T.V. where a coal mine operator was BUILDING a new swamp to clean the run-off water from his mine property. The swamp, even with the $$$ spent to install it, was the cheapest way to clean the run-off from acid. Far cheaper than the chemical treatments he had been buying. The question asked at the end of the documentary was " could swamps be the answer to groundwater pollution around the country? " Could it be the Good Lord had it right in the first place???

Like you said, all kinds of wildlife love a wetland. Glad you have some at your place.

 

[sandbur]

Pattern tiling is becoming common, where a whole field is tiled, not just the wetlands.

 

[West Branch]

Our neighbor put in a large duck pond back in the late 80s. Art, I think you would have seen it on the facebook group when I posted the link to my "interactive map."

It has filled in a lot with cattails and there haven't been as many ducks around since the flyway has shifted further west. It had been dug out with similar fingers to create more edge for nesting sites. In the late 80s to early 90s they killed a lot of ducks here.

It now needs a good burn to clean up the cattails and get wildrice going again. The pond area is about 20 acres and the total swamp area is over 30 so it would be a crazy a controlled burn to clean that up. A person probably couldn't get permits to clean it up with a excavator anymore but maybe the DNR would let it get done for wildlife purposes.

 

[sandbur]

I remember asking you about that structure on the aerial photo. could geese or swans lead to the flyway shift or is it just lack of ponds that used to be there?

My impoundments that were put in by the feds are filling up with cattails, but it makes pheasant habitat in some winters. The tree line is one of the dykes.

 

[West Branch]

The neighbor that owns the pond blames it mainly on the wet cycle in North Dakota that started in 1993 and the large increase they have out there in small ponds and lakes. It would be interesting to see how much of an investment is needed to get that pond to have productive hunting again.

Geese may be factor but there hasn't been a decrease in ponds in our area. There haven't been any wetlands drained in the area for years and there is nobody doing any tiling. The farm ground isn't good enough for farmers to make the investment. Hunting/recreational ground is still worth more than farm land in most of Carlton county, which still isn't much!

It is surprising there isn't more out there about the wet cycle but here are a couple links:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...03/publisher_ID/40/+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...2/02/12/wildlife-generally-wins-in-wet-cycle/

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Bur - just to clarify... in my post about coal mine seepage, I know you don't have coal mines there. That's what the documentary was about, but the studies showed that swamps/wetlands improve both surface and groundwater ANYWHERE - no matter what the circumstances. They're one of nature's filtering systems.