Month: May 2012

Beaver Friends at the Washington Post

heidi08 Beavers May 23, 2012

Late Update: Mother duck seen with 8 babies, only one blonde, and without helpful male in attendance. (sigh)

Beaver or muskrat? Here’s how to tell

“It’s a beaver!” “No, it’s a muskrat!”

Such exclamations are often heard at Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, where both of these semi-aquatic rodents live. Even adults confuse the two, because beavers and muskrats are easiest to identify by their tails, but those aren’t always visible when these cute brown furry cousins are swimming. Beaver tails are wide, flat and paddle-shaped, while muskrats have long, skinny tails with flat sides. You can usually see a muskrat’s whole body when it is swimming. With beavers, you often see only their large wedge-shaped heads.

Finally something I want to read in the Washington Post! Ann Siegal’s lovely article about how to tell the difference between beavers and muskrat! It teaches all the tools you’d expect, while encouraging children to be outdoors, use critical thinking, and pay attention to the natural world. Ann is obviously a friend in spirit! So of course I wrote her last night and sent her the film we use to teach the difference!

Ann wrote back that she’s a huge fan of beavers and in fact missed an anniversary dinner reservation with her husband because they stopped to watch them. (Of course, since beavers mate for life, I can’t imagine anything better to do to celebrate an anniversary!) She said that she’d found the video online and wondered where it was filmed and also said she wished that she was close enough to come to the beaver festival!

Well, since there’s a festival in Colorado and Utah this year and we recently heard a plan to start one from a beaver friend in Maine maybe if you can’t come to a beaver festival Ann, one can come to you! Ann has clearly thought about this issue a lot. She sent me beautiful beaver photos this morning that I had to ask permission to share. While I’m waiting for an answer go read the whole article, its delightful.

Ahhh, but now it gets confusing. You spot a cute furry brown critter coming out of a definite beaver lodge. It must be a beaver, right? Not necessarily. Muskrats often move into beaver lodges, even while the beavers are there. Kevin Munroe, park manager at Huntley Meadows, said, “Muskrats may provide another set of eyes looking out for predators.” (Locally, minks, otters, foxes or hawks pose danger to muskrats and baby beavers. Adult beavers here don’t have to deal with their usual predators — bears or wolves.)

Oh and guess what her last email said about lovely inexpensive beaver earrings made in California by ‘a company called WildBryde“. I told her that we were good friends with Mike Warner, and that he made our beaver charms for the past two years! Smallllllllllll world.

Tell Mike I’ve been a HUGE Wild Bryde fan and customer for years…have at least a dozen pair of earrings here now, but the beavers are my favorite. Wore them while doing the story and got LOTS of compliments.

Here is a Beaver Photo Feast by Ann Siegal of the Washington Post. (All images copyright to Ann) Enjoy!

Rhymes with “Hidden”

heidi08 Beavers, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, History November 5, 2024

So this was a research-y weekend with tales of Russian sea captains, HBC fur traders and early Mendocino names to sort through. Tappe and Grinnell of course said that beavers were not native over 1000 feet elevation in California or in any coastal streams. Which pretty much means they were in the Delta. Period. If we’re going to be able to argue that protecting beaver in our coastal streams is good for salmon populations we have to prove they belong there first.

After Kate’s proud discovery in the Russian River I wanted to contribute, so I heaved and ho’d for the weekend searching around the state by river, by tribe, by historic name. I came up with a lovely creation myth recorded by [of course] Kroeber from the eastern Pomo (Clear Lake) about a flood that changed the rules so that “beaver and otter could marry”. I thought it was adorable but Rick said it wasn’t coastal enough and to keep looking.

The beaver family and the otter family were not destroyed. These families were named that way, because they could turn into these animals when they desired. They could not turn into any other kind of animals. They survived because they could live amidst the waters. From that time on the beavers could marry into the otter family, or the otter could marry into the falcon family, but one family could not intermarry with each other. That is the way in which the second people started.

There was the diary of John Work first explorer of the Hudson Bay Company to the California Coast. He went to Eureka, Mendocino, and Russian River looking for beavers. Either the natives were lying to him or he wasn’t looking very hard, but he trotted back whining about only having killed a few beavers. Okay, no beaver myths, no beaver skins documented. Where to look next?

What’s that old saying? One man’s trash is another man’s treasure?

California has but few characteristic archaeological remains such as are found in the mounds of the Mississippi valley or the ancient pueblos and cliff-dweller ruins of the South. In the shellmounds along this section of the Pacific coast it possesses, however, valuable relics of very ancient date. These are almost the only witnesses of a primitive stage of culture which once obtained among the early inhabitants of this region. One of the largest and best preserved shellmounds was selected as the object of the present investigation, The mound selected is situated on the eastern side of the Bay of San Francisco at Shellmound Station near Emeryville, and is commonly known as the Emeryville mound. At present it forms a conspicuous feature of the recreation grounds known as Shellmound Park (pI. 1).

The occupants of the mound at Emeryville at all periods were huntsmen to a great degree, besides being fishermen; those of the mound at West Berkeley seem to have depended largely upon fishing; hence the stone sinkers were far more numerous in that mound than at Emeryville.

So far the fauna of only the lowest strata up to 3 feet above the base have been studied. The following species obtained in this horizon were determined by Dr. W. J. Sinclair.

Deer, Cervus sp.

Elk; Cervus canadensis.

Sea-otter, Enhydrus lutris.

Beaver, Castor canadensis

Ding Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner! Beaver in Emmeryville! Beaver in Berkeley! Beaver in middens stretching as far north along the coast as the Russian River! A finding which was notable enough even at the TIME (1909) to merit this defensive footnote:

21 Extinct in California and in fact south of Washington; J. Wyman found the remains of elk, wild turkey, and large auk in the shellmounds of New England. The elk, though still in existence, is no longer to be found·east of the Allegheny Mountains; the wild turkey is still in existence, but is not to be found in New England, while the auk lives only in the Arctic regions, or at least not farther south than the northern part of Newfoundland (Amer. Naturalist, I, p. 572).

Thanks to the Ohlone we have our beaver evidence. Seems early Californians didn’t care enough about the animal or the early humans to pay attention to either.

SEA BEAVER!

heidi08 History May 20, 2012

As if the world of beaver research wasn’t confusing enough! What with beaver photos actually being nutria photos, and nutria being the spanish word for otter, and now the discovery of the very, very desirable SEA BEAVER. The illustration is from AUDUBON. (I guess there just so far an interest in birds can take you!)Just look at how happy Captain Cook was to find sea beaver in his third voyage along the pacific which dealt a blow to the Russians.

The object of this excitement was a playful marine mammal with a lustrous coat–the sea beaver. Its pelt was first encountered by Cook at Nootka Sound. The Nootkas also swapped fish, whale oil, venison, and even wild garlic.But the Englishmen preferred furs. Midshipman Edward Riou of the Discovery wrote: “The Natives continue their Visits bringing with them apparently every thing they are in possession of, but nothing is so well received by us as skins,particularly those of the sea beaver, the fur of which is very soft and delicate…The Englishmen literally bought the Nootkas’ clothing off their backs! Ledyard summarized the trading:We purchased while here about 1500 beaver.

1500 beaver. Meaning otter. Meaning modern man just taught the natives the disgusting value of taking far, far, more than you can use. And incidentally meaning if you were trying to establish for your dissertation that the Nootkas used beaver skins as part of their clothing you would be stitch out of luck, because to the fur crazy minds of the time, (with dollar signs where their eyes should be), BEAVER didn’t mean beaver with a flat tail, building dams and chopping trees with its teeth. It meant “Wow, that’s nice looking fur that could make me a lot of money, lets kill it.” So there was River beaver, Sea beaver, and heck in the 1930’s they even referred to Space beaver!

Which is why, if you are finished with the papers firmly establishing beavers in the sierras and starting to work on the paper that shows beavers in California’s coastal streams, you’d be so happy with this find from Kate Lundquist of the OAEC who has been painstakingly hobnobbing with scholars to learn about the history of the Russian River:

The juiciest find I have gotten thus far is from archaeologist Glenn Farris. In 2006, he translated, annotated and published Cyrille Laplace’s account of his visit to Bodega Bay and Ft. Ross in 1839. Laplace was a French rear admiral who circumnavigated the globe from 1837-1840. On his tour of the Russian Ranchos, he states: “It was thus that we came at last, after several hours en route, to the second farm that we were to see, but not before we had stopped a moment by a little river on the banks of which my traveling companion pointed out to me the former habitations of beaver, probably destroyed by the Indians in order to catch the rich prize that lay within.

You see, young Jedi, beavers make lodges but otters don’t. So if Mr. Laplace saw a lodge that had been ripped apart by indians, that means it was a real BEAVER lodge on the Russian River about 150 years ago. Castor Canadensis in the wine country like we always knew was true.

Paper three here we come!

Wood Duck Diligance

heidi08 Educational, Environmental, New Species May 19, 2012

Life is just ‘ducky’ in Yooper backyards

By Karen Wils , Daily Press Escabana MI

I think almost every landowner has tried to entice the woods ducks on the property by putting up nesting boxes along their waterways. The flashy little wood duck is a handsome red-eyed, copper and green-feathered fellow. Wood ducks are designed to nest in the cavities of hollow, old trees near lakes and rivers. When humans make their homes near the water, they often remove all the dead or dying trees, leaving no good places for the woodies to nest.

Ahh those flashy wood ducks. People put up boxes hoping they’ll move in but they stubbornly insist upon the real thing. Dead tree real estate with a view of the water. Funny thing – you know what raises the water table, covers some tree roots, and makes some nice dead trees near the water? I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a B?

That’s why many wildlife groups make and distribute the wooden nesting boxes. My family and I have hung a few nesting boxes near the river and along the beaver pond. Even though I see wood ducks swimming betwixt and between the beavers and have watched the wood ducks eating acorns, never have I seen them using a nesting box.

Well okay, maybe beavers do leave dead trees that create ideal wood duck nesting habitat. But only in the back woods, right? Far away from everything. I mean we’d never get wood ducks in the city, right?

: Wood ducks Mom and babies in Civic Park Walnut Creek 2012 – Brian Murphy

Brian is a good beaver friend and has been at every festival. He helped our boyscout Mitchell put in our duck boxes and works very hard to put wood duck boxes on urban creeks from Walnut Creek to Concord and San Ramon. Looks like the Bay Area needs more beavers!

(Just sayin’.)

Speaking of remarkable baby ducks, Jon stopped off this morning to watch a beaver mudding the primary dam and saw all 11 ducklings in the Annex. Also both mom and dad standing guard. So far so good!

Castor Cornwall!

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, City Reports, Creative Solutions May 18, 2012

Victory in Cornwall! Last night in Ontario this woman and a few hundred supporters pushed the city council into agreeing to remove the remaining trap for the Guindon beavers and look into humane solutions. It’s a pretty lovely accomplishment and those of you who supported the Martinez Beavers should recognize just how much enthusiasm and energy it takes to stop that particular train.

Rebecca Sorrell launched her campaign against the practice a couple of weeks ago, collecting hundreds of names on a petition and marching to city hall with signs and supporters on Monday.

But it was a meeting with parks and recreation general manager Stephen Alexander on Wednesday that brought progress. “The meeting went really well,” said Sorrell. “The traps have been removed from Guindon Park.”

I have been hearing a bit about this case for a while, and its our featured “who’s killing beavers now” which, I’m happy to say, will no longer be featured. (Another year of pushing and we’ll be ready for a “who’s saving beavers now” segment!) The funny thing is that I was browsing through the incredible comment section of our own famous beaver-saving meeting (November 7, 2007) and found these remarks recently. They didn’t even register at the time and I didn’t know the woman who spoke them, (although I now can give credit for them to Linda Aguirre, who ended up helping us keep watch during the sheetpile debacle.)

The beavers have succeeded where city council and their politically correct friends could not: They brought people downtown. What a magnificent gift to have been given. We could use our beavers to promote downtown activities We could advertise our city as the beaver capital of CA. We could use these lovely creatures as an example of how we can co-habit with nature. We could host a beaver festival, promoting beaver and nature-related arts and crafts, windows on the lifestyle of the beavers and other wildlife, and yes even TShirts depicting our furry friends. You get the idea, capitalize on the beavers being here to make Martinez a destination, a concept that this city council claims to support. Yes we could do these things, if the beaver stay.

The majority of people want the beavers to stay, yet the council wants them to go, if you the council insists that the beavers must go, then maybe come next election I and others will insist that you go to.

Now for anyone following along from out of town THAT was the story. Not the beavers. Never the beavers. But the massive civic response they provoked. Congratulations Cornwall, and welcome to the beaver-saving club! I’ll write Mr. Alexander today.

This morning there were no beavers in sight but the creek held ample compensations. 11 newly hatched residents, with both mom AND dad in protective watch. Near as I can tell the three blondies are just color variations. (Or maybe there’s some kind of cuckoo duck who lays her eggs in unsuspecting neighbor nests and hopes for the best?) We’ll, let’s keep count and see if having an intact family unit makes things safer and if yellows really DO have more fun?