Time For Our Dragonfly Refresher Course!

heidi08 New Species June 30, 2009

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=T0Rf8dxRHHs]

There are some 5000 species of dragonflies, broadly spread around the planet. Fossilized records show a wing span of more than 2 feet! Dragonflies are hugely important as an indication of the health of a creek, and last year we noticed an encouraging expansion of them. The young are entirely water dwellers and feast on mosquito larvae (thankyou!). Adults live for only about 2 months, after they emerge from their nymph state, unfold their wings and take to the sky.

Dragon flies have better eyesight than any other insect. Their eyes are massive, and can scan both down for food and up for danger at the same time. They are predators on a mission and are excellent hunters on the aerial serengeti. An adult dragonfly can eat up to 600 insects a day. Many’s the time I’ve rescued a soggy dragonfly from the water in my canoe, and allowed his colorful body to dry out on my knee. It is in these moments that you realize what an alarmingly large BUG the dragonfly is, but I’ve been assured it can’t bite and it never has yet.

Dragonflies wings are independent of each other, which this Attenborough video shows very well. Their long legs can grasp and hold but they cannot walk. Watch a dragonfly when its resting to figure out what family it belongs to. Heavily bodied (or true dragonflies) hold them out to the sides, slender winged damsel flies fold them on their backs. Dragonflies have been studied by everyone from NASA to the Air Force who have been eager to learn how they manage speeds of 60 MPH and then come to a complete stop in mid air.

So far they’ve kept most of their secrets to themselves.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q-7k2HNJpXA]

Christmas Beaver

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers June 29, 2009

Photo: Nikolai Panteleev

Yesterday’s “welcome to canada” footage was shot by Nikolai Panteleev while driving in Quebec on Christmas Day.The poor little beaver had wandered out to traffic and was having a hard time getting back across the lanes of impatient drivers eager to get to aunt josephine’s for the holiday brunch. Nikolai pulled over and got out of his car with camera in hand. He tried to shoo the fellow across the lanes and got bit for his effort. Undaunted he returned with a snow brush and pushed him along while traffic eventually stopped to let the strange procession by.

Photo: Nikolai Panteleev

A heroic deed by beaver standards, and one that I am very grateful for.

The beaver escaped into the nearby woods and an annoying SUV that had tried to pass on the right shoulder spun out on the ice and crashed while the beaver romped away towards freedom. Sometimes Karma is kind. Nikolai was soon contacted by the Discovery Channel who wanted to purchase his footage. The video you saw yesterday was made by another filmmaker using the footage as well.The local papers (english and russian) ran stories of the event and it was a Christmas to remember.

Photo: Nikolai Panteleev

Nikolai, who by my reckoning is fluent in at least 4 languages, wrote the following account for the Discovery Channel:

HIGHWAY BEAVERY: Incident: A beaver is wandering down
the Transcanada Hwy as traffic whizzes by. Nikolai stops his car
to help the beaver out of danger. The beaver makes it across the
road. A SUV tries to pass on the icy shoulder but spins out into
a snow bank. The beaver walks away safely towards the woods.

He enjoyed visiting the website and seeing our beaver videos in which the beavers are refreshingly not in dangerous traffic. He wrote enthusiastically;

From my part, I enormously enjoyed your lovely Beaver Tango clip, made it my favorite and shared with my friends. If the mood gets lower, I would watch it for another couple of times, and then feel myself much better. I enjoyed viewing the website you mentioned and, yes, of course, I would like to contribute in different ways.

Gosh Nikolai, you already have!

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=o_VNDGGACB8]

Beaver heads back to the woods….whew….

Welcome to Canada!

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere June 29, 2009

Once I talked to a good friend who had just taken her three year old to see 101 dalmations. Knowing how frightening Disney movies could be for the very young I asked how her daughter had handled the scary parts. She incredibly thought her daughter had not been frightened at all, and pointed out that during the dramatic scenes Emily could be heard saying to herself over and over “Dalmations get home safe. Dalmations get home safe.” The child psychologist in me had a very different understanding of her daughter’s experience, but the primitive tribal woman in me loved the magical “spell casting” part of this incantation. To this day I have been known to repeat it when my luggage is lost, my car won’t start, or when things get otherwise out of hand.

I preface this video with the story in order to tell you “dalmations get home safe” so that you too can be comforted. Whatever fate befell this little beaver, he did not die crossing the snowy highway.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=sekLEG8xsOs]

I confess this video made me very anxious, and for such an enduring period of time I couldn’t post it until I had written the author and got an answer back. More on that tomorrow in Part 2 of our exciting christmas beaver story. Still, I can’t deny that it made me giggle more than once, so I thought I’d share. In fact, it has now become the thing you say to people when you are trapped in the middle of an inescapable event that is enormously dangerous but impossible to discuss. For example, a visit with your accountant, oncologist or city manager. I highly recommend you try it!

Beyond the obvious social value, it does serve as a fairly irrefutable proof that beavers disperse over land. In this case over four lanes of traffic.

Small World

heidi08 Uncategorized June 28, 2009

So my parents tell me that they were having lunch in Calistoga and my father was wearing last years Worth A Dam t-shirt when a woman stopped him and said, “Hey, I have one just like that!” They chatted for a while and my dad reminded her not to miss the festival this year (although he couldn’t remember the date). “Never mind,” she assured him. “I’ll look it up on the website”. Unable to resist the parent impulse he explained he was “Heidi’s father” and the woman nodded politely and asked, “Who’s Heidi?”

Ahhhh this is a lovely and affirming story on so many levels. It shows how beaver people can recognize each other, even in far away places. It shows how the website exists in the minds of people who might not regularly check it, but know it’s there if they ever have a question. Best of all it shows how the beavers’ safety does not rest on the shoulders of a single person or even a single organization, but rather on the backs of the many who carry their story with them.

zeitgeist

Etymology:: German, from Zeit + Geist spirit

Some kit footage you don’t want to miss!

heidi08 Video June 27, 2009

I want one!

Who are you calling stubborn?

Notice that she carries the kit the same way she carries mud onto the lodge in this video @1:43: Walking upright on her hind legs with the mud held between her chin and forearms.

Last check out Cheryl Reynolds photo this week of one of our three yearlings grooming. For my money its the finest beaver picture yet taken, and definitely a contender for next years t-shirts!