Explorers

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Educational December 3, 2010

So Jon met one of the teachers from the field trip at the beaver dam last night! She just had to see them for herself! Apparently two children from her class came down wednesday and saw two kits and an adult! They described the adult as ‘mom’ (I didn’t want to trigger the abandonment panic by telling 60 7 year olds that mom died) so the adult must have been nuzzling with a kit or letting him take a back ride. The kids were SO excited they were celebrities for the day and the class couldn’t get any work done.

Sweet!

I also wanted to pause this morning and remind you all to look at the webcam in the early hours by clicking on the green arrow in the left hand margin. Sometimes it is true you see nothing, but when the beavers happen to stroll by they are a delight to view! Eyes closed and methodically grooming, or carefully chewing the bark off of one of their stored sticks. Yesterday there was a kit on the left side and a adult coming out of the water, brushing off the glistening drops. It made me realize that having a wet beaver anywhere near a dry one must be an irritation, like when you’re laying in the sun and your brother gets out of the pool and shakes the water from his hair at you.

The dry, sleeping kit didn’t produce the squeal of a human in a similar situation, but he did wiggle his nose in irritation, and end up moving out of the way. Then the big beaver expanded into the empty space and kept grooming, eventually sitting on the little beaver’s nose which caused another upset. Beavers must be pretty good-natured to live at such close quarters with five or six family members for three months. I won’t even speculate what it be like for humans.

Hopefully we’ll get more child visitors this weekend. Don’t forget to look at the webcam!

Fall Colors

heidi08 Beaver News, Massachusetts Trapping Law, New Species December 2, 2010

The third grade classes of Las Juntas have some wonderful artists and very inquisitive, young naturalist minds! 60 children and other helping adults were divided into four groups so everyone at Worth A Dam did their job 4 times, which meant that by the end we were fairly well and truly spent. We put the lovely children’s banners above the tile bridge and they fit in perfectly, inspiring some great chalk art which spread from the ground to the benches, (I’m sure there will be some annoyed county workers with chalky bottoms for a day or two, sorry about that). There was a reporter and a photographer from the Pleasant Hill Record, so hopefully they’ll be a nice write up soon.

Here’s a sample of their work, we used one of the metal cutouts donated by Paul Craig to trace the outline of a beaver, but some children just made their own.

I especially like the Egyptian-looking ‘pink beaver’ in the middle of the collage. The children were really attentive and interested, and I was surprisingly merciful to them (and the mayor) and didn’t say that the city at first wanted to kill the beavers just that the city wanted them to go away. It must be the holiday spirit because I was also merciful to a certain sheetpile-protected property owner who was trying to walk through the sea of children and passing up the opportunity to have 60 children ‘boo’ at the same time is easily the most noble act of self control I’ve ever demonstrated.

Still, when the teacher asked if, for a followup project, she should send have the children send letters to the mayor about naming ‘beaver park’ I smiled widely. ( The holiday season only transforms a girl so much.)

Here is FRo’s picture of the afternoon visitor on the lawn! ”

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And in case you need some less child-focused intellectual stimulation for the morning, check out the article by Mike Callahan in the AWI magazine.

When Massachusetts citizens voted overwhelmingly in 1996 to outlaw steel jaw leghold traps, other body-gripping traps, and snares for capturing fur-bearing animals, critics of the law loudly proclaimed that disaster was imminent. Many claimed that the trapping restrictions would cause the state to be awash in beavers and flood waters because they mistakenly felt that trapping was the only effective beaver management tool.

Human/beaver conflicts occur across North America. To understand why, it is important to have an historical perspective. The North American beaver, Castor canadensis, has existed for millennia. Native Americans referred to beavers as “Little People” because beavers are second only to humans in their ability to modify their environment to suit their own needs. Beavers were revered by Native Americans who understood that beaver dams and the ponds they created support a vast array of wildlife.

Curiosity peaked? Go read the rest of the article. It even mentions us!

Beaver Field Trip!

heidi08 Uncategorized December 1, 2010

Update:

How tired are we? Well that was an event! 60 very enthusiastic third graders got a personal tour of the beaver dams, the tale of their history in Martinez and an introduction to how beavers build “animal neighborhoods”.

The sidewalk art was amazing, the questions and comments were delightful, the beavers were a big hit and the help was SUPER! Highlight of the day? Jon spotted an otter in the morning and a green heron in the afternoon. An unexpected surprise was a beautiful field mouse on the grass very unafraid and visible for the children, first sighting ever!

Hopefully they’ll be a nice write up in the record, there was a friendly reporter who loved the beavers and a photographer. We should have some photos soon, but if I were you I’d go see those chalk beavers now before they get smudged.