This is filmmaker Marcy Cravat, who’s working currently on a new documentary about soil. She is particularly interested in the way beaver ponds capture carbon and how important they are to dealing with climate change.
Marcy and her husband paid a visit last night to the worlds easiest to see beavers. And the beavers did not disappoint. We saw four, with only one coming from above the primary dam. The others all in the bank hole near the footbridge. During the day Jon very heroically kayaked the pond and cleaned every bit of trash out of that creek, although he was most annoyed when high tide brought a floating soda can downstream right back to center of the dam.
Marcy was treated to several lovely beaver moments, and only 1 tail slap. Including the smallest family member working on the dam with excellent developing skills. I think she left with enough beaver sightings to have her interests thoroughly peaked.
No kits yet in Napa either, although there have been nice photos from the folk who are waiting for them. Rusty Cohn sent this turtle train a couple days ago,
Turtles in Tulocay beaver pond: Rusty Cohn
And Robin watched this beaver last night and wanted to know if we were dealing with an elder?
White-whiskered beaver in Tulocay pond, Napa: Robin Ellison
We are still trying to track down that lovely plant the beaver is enjoying sticking out of the water. The closest we’ve come is Ludwigia, which is a very common invasive aquatic plant in the napa river watershed. I’m not so sure. Because our beavers almost never eat anything people wish they would. So I’m still holding out for more information. Robin’s white whiskered beaver reminded me of this film though, from so long ago, which was fun to revisit.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to be as cute as orphanly possible so that we can raise enough money to keep you around. Yes, it’s sad that your mother and father died. And that beavers in general have such human-fraught lives every day. And it’s even sad that wildlife groups have to pretend that beaver ‘orphans’ are natural and happen by chance. It’s all sad.
Work that.
It’s obviously THAT TIME AGAIN when news stations implore for help with raising baby beavers who were mysteriously ‘orphaned’ by their parents. (Gosh, beaver parents must be irresponsible, because they seem to ‘capriciously abandon’ kits a lot.) I’m sure the responsible media wouldn’t mention if parents were ruthlessly and indifferently killed every time someone’s subdivision or highway was inconvenienced, right?
Here’s a slightly more cheery seasonal sighting. This young disperser thinks that walking on the shore would be easier than swimming the rapids. Nice footage of two of Cheryl’s very favorite animals.
There was a fair amount of interest in the ‘beaver call’ video I posted a few days ago. Drs Lixing-Sun and Bekoff had never heard it before and thought the beaver was an adult and sounded distressed. Neither of which I agreed with. The more pragmatic Skunk Whisperer from Oklahoma had the interesting observation that the beaver was actually IMITATING the human. Whoa. Then a favorite rehabber with massive ground experience with actual beavers sent me this story. She said I could share it but not her name because of the unusual (but totally understandable) care conditions.
That was very neat! The yearling sure seemed to be responding to the human’s call. Who knows what the human was saying? Whether he was mimicking the person or responding to him, it was a little yearling communicating with the person.
We once had a beaver who we hand raised. When he got critically ill (Tyzzers disease), he was sleeping with us.”Bruce” always slept right in my arms. Every morning the alarm would ring and I’d moan and reach over to hit the snooze button, One morning after about a week, the alarm rang and before I could groan Bruce began moaning. It was hysterical. Every morning after that he’d do it.
He would often mimic the tone of my voice of things I’d say frequently. One time he had an accident and when I walked in he said UH OH in the same tones my voice would say it. Of course he couldn’t enunciate it, but he got the sounds right with his whiny voice. So it would not surprise me if that beaver was imitating the person calling to him.
Hahaha! Now that I can believe. Experience trumps research! I can totally imagine that happening. And it is hysterical to think of these careful lurking trappers trying to master what they think will lure a beaver, and actually just giving the beaver something to learn to copy! Beaver mocking birds!
I discovered a new free tool on the internet playground yesterday. In case you want to play too it’s called FLAMING TEXT and here’s the link. You enter in the word you want and then ‘shop’ for all kinds of logos, backgrounds and fonts. Then tweak it to your satisfaction by adding or removing colors, glows, etc. I have only made it through ten pages of options and there are several. It would be a great pass-time if you were recovering from knee surgery or waiting for Godot.
Which means it is very, very dangerous.I made the above graphic yesterday to match our logo and make letterhead, because I spent the day imploring folks to give to the silent auction at the beaver festival. Zoos, museums, amusement parks, cruises, excursions, you name it, I asked for it. You’ve heard of “Dialing for dollars”? Well this was Begging for Beavers. We’ll see what it generates. At least it looked looked sharp.We even got our insurance yesterday for the festival, which meant we could turn in the application for the park permit. Now we need to coordinate the exhibits so that people show up for the grand event! Of course the really fun thing would be to combine the images with graphics to make something impressive. I decided I had to try and get this message out. If I can’t send it to the governor at least I can submit it with payment in every water bill.
June 6th is my final beaver talk for a while and will be at the San Pedro Valley Park visitor’s center in Pacifica, ending one of the busiest 6 months of beaver-speaking I’ve known. It started with the SF waterboard in Oakland, then the State of the Beaver in Oregon, then the salmonid federation in Santa Rosa, then Trout Unlimited in Coloma, then SARSAS in Auburn and Safari West in Santa Rosa. Now there’s just one left and then I can focus on the festival.
SPV is a county park in the peninsula hills described as “A vast area embracing the middle and south forks of San Pedro Creek, which are Steelhead spawning grounds, this park is nestled amongst the Santa Cruz Mountain range and the foothills of Pacifica. ” They also happen to be interested in having beaver, and originally contacted me thinking relocation might be an option. I explained that the only way to get beaver in California right now is to let them come to you and they invited me to come talk about benefits and solutions. They did an awfully nice blurb on their newsletter. I especially like “repatriated”.They might not have all that long to wait. We have a beaver sighting 5 miles east at the water treatment facility, and a beaver killed on the highway 5 miles south. Since several forks of the San Pedro Creek flow through the park, the odds are good beavers will find their way eventually. Since it’s a new crowd I thought I’d work on some new graphics, which is always fun. This should remind me not to leave anything out when I discuss their physical adaptions! And this could be a good prompt for discussing beaver chewing of trees and why not to panic.
But the last was the most fun to do. And really will be the most powerful. Because, in the end, it isn’t science that saves beavers. Even though it should. People don’t change their minds because of data. We all learned first hand in Martinez, it’s not brains that convince. It’s hearts.
SASKATOON – A beaver caused a large grass fire Saturday, according to the Saskatoon Fire Department. The blaze was located near Valley Road, south of the city near The Berry Barn. The fire department says the animal chew ed down a poplar tree which fell on a power line.
Those beaver arsonists are the worst! Smoking in bed, starting fires with their appetizer course, with zero regard for personal property. They obviously don’t know how hard it is to put up those power lines in the first place.
Now, let’s share in the wondrous developments at the Napa beaver pond, where Rusty has been patiently waiting for a glimpse of the new kits. Of course while he’s waiting there’s lots to see. Check out this weekends bounty.
Green Heron at Tulocay Beaver pond – Rusty Cohn
Muskrat at Tulocay Beaver pond – Rusty Cohn
Otter at Tulocay Beaver pond – Rusty Cohn
He even got video of two otters at the sight having a little tussle. Megan of ROEP thinks it mighthave something to do with mating. How exciting!
Now for this truly stunning photograph brought to my attention by someone I can’t yet bring to your attention. Isn’t this BEAUTIFUL?
This is the kind of photo that every wildlife watcher dreams of getting. That perfect moment when opportunity crosses your path and everything goes right. He writes that it’s a mother carrying her kit, which is a fair assumption. But we in Martinez know it might not be true. The most stunning footage I ever got was dad carrying both kits. And we only know that because of mom’s beautiful tail clue.
And finally the best for last. Now pull up a chair and gather close because this is really important. First, a little background. In the films about Grey Owl they describe him doing a special call to bring the beavers. The way a duck call brings ducks. Which I would have ignored as silly if I hadn’t also read in a book about someone who hand-reared kits in Canada who said that their brother was a trapper and he taught her to call beavers. She noted that it was so powerful she would never teach anyone else because she didn’t want trappers to use it. So I was curious.
And then there’s Bernie Krause’s amazing recording of the beaver after the dam and his family was blown up. It sounds very much like he is mourning. But I after I heard it I always wondered if he was calling to find them. (Which is what we would do if our homes were blown up and we weren’t sure if our family members were inside.) I discussed this idea with him, but he was fairly disinterested. But then yesterday – out of NOWHERE – I stumbled on this.
I know that readers of this site mostly don’t click on the videos. Life is busy and who has time? Believe me when I say you want to see this. (I was so scared it would end badly I practically watched it with my eyes closed the first time. But nothing bad happens, trust me.) And this is really, really worth your time.
(I trust if you know any trappers, you won’t show it to them.) And honestly, don’t practice this call on our beavers because they’ve been through enough. But isn’t that amazing? Do you realize what this means? It means parents call kits. And beavers call each other. I am sure this is a youngish beaver, looking for his family. What surprised me was not only that it existed, but how very different the sound is from a kit whining. Almost like loud nasal mooing. Also I could hear the similarity in the young beaver answers, and hear how similar it is to our kits whining. It made me think that beaver kits are imitating adult speech – just like children!
Honestly, this is a big deal. Such a big deal that I got an email last night from Bernie Krause himself.
This is filmmaker Marcy Cravat, who’s working currently on a new documentary about soil. She is particularly interested in the way beaver ponds capture carbon and how important they are to dealing with climate change.
