Category: Dispersal

You Otter See this Beaver

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Dispersal, Environmental January 21, 2014

The beaver was snapped chomping on this tree by Tom Buckley with a hidden infra-red trail camera

Look who’s visiting the River Otter in Devon. (No, for once that isn’t a typo, he’s not vising ‘A’ river otter. He’s visiting THE river named ‘otter’ in Devon England.)

Mystery of the beaver making himself a new home in the River Otter

You might expect to see an otter on the Devon river which bears the animal’s name, but not a beaver which has been extinct in this country for hundreds of years.

Now one has been spotted on the River Otter by an environmental scientist – and it’s thought to be the only beaver living wild in England.

But how did it get there? And is it alone, or have a family of beavers moved in to a quiet part of the river in South East Devon?

These are some of the questions which retired scientist Tom Buckley and local farmer David Lawrence have been trying to answer since they established that at least one beaver is now living in a part of the river near Ottery St Mary.

Regular readers of this website, (who apparently do not include any scientists in the United Kingdom will remember on January 9th I posted the update from the Devon Beaver Project, which is located in Cornwall about 25 miles away as the beaver swims from where this story takes place. The Otter River flows all the way to the ocean, and a beaver could make an easy transit from Exeter. Shh don’t tell them. It works better as a mystery. At least they’re interested and curious, which is more than I can say for lots of cities.

I first noticed a tree that had been damaged because I walk around that area every day – then I saw a few trees had been nibbled,” Mr Buckley went on. “For me it posed the question: could it have been a beaver, or was it some kids messing about?

“When I looked more closely it was clear the damage to the trees had been done by a beaver…”

After that Mr Buckley began mounting his special “trail-camera” – which automatically takes photographs when triggered by some substantial movement – at various locations around a small island in the river.

“What happens on David Lawrence’s land near Ottery St Mary is that the river divides to leave a bit of an island in the middle – and that’s the main area where we are seeing them. It’s where most of the trees have been laid down, not necessarily forming a dam, but it may be that this is the early stages.

Oh that is one happy beaver! An entire island to avoid humans and the only one of his kind to chew those trees in 400 years! He must be feeling a cross between Rip Van Winkle, and a kid locked up in a candy shop that is closed for the night! The story was picked up this morning by the BBC. Lucky him! For now, anyway.

Mr Buckley added: “It’s all very interesting – it’s early days yet but, as long as lots of people don’t go there and frighten the beaver away, he should be happy enough.

“What’s going to be really interesting is how it gets on with the other animals, like the otters which we see on the river.”

Take it from Martinez, the otters will be THRILLED that the beaver is there, digging holes and improving the bugs so that the fish are fatter and more plentiful. The beaver won’t mind the company. He has had 400 years all to himself.

Moses’ otter footage

And to get us all in the mood for the beaver festival which is a mere 7 months away, I’m going to start a new series highlighting something that was donated to us or the silent auction. This painting donated by the artist Lynn Bywaters of Connecticut arrived yesterday. One look should get everyone in the mood to bid early and often!

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Martinez anymore…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Dispersal December 28, 2013

Screen shot 2013-12-28 at 7.17.54 AM — “With five toes and webbing on his hind feet, this beaver makes quick work of the branch”

This is a great picture from the Hays daily news in Kansas. Love the toes! But honestly doesn’t their caption make it sound like they eat with them?

In Broad Daylght

They nearly were hunted to extinction, only to be brought back from the precipice.Today, beavers are hunted once again, typically by trappers who captured and killed more than 9,000 a year ago.It’s just not often you see one during the day, and so amenable to posing for photographs while munching on small twigs and limbs.

Not just once, but twice, after it was discovered a camera setting was askew and a fast return to the beaver’s site was in order.That’s when a passerby said the lone beaver was one of a group of three he had spotted in the area near the boat ramp at Webster Reservoir. It was the smallest of the three, he said.

It wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere, providing a good look at all it had to offer. It rarely even paused from stripping away the bark on the limbs from a series of trees that recently had been felled by the beaver and its family.

Beavers are the largest rodent in North America, typically weighing somewhere between 40 and 60 pounds.They nearly were hunted out of existence in quest for the animal’s dense fur, used to make the felt hats fashionable at the time in Europe.

The beaver ideally is suited for water. Its webbed hind feet are ideal for swimming, and it can close off its ears and nose underwater. It has a membrane on its eyes, allowing it to see while swimming underwater.

Beavers typically are nocturnal, making the daytime sighting unusual.

Uh-oh. It’s dispersal ignorance season again! Brace yourselves for three months of bewildered articles when beavers are spotted wandering on the road. I must have written an editor in every state about the entirely predictable phenomena now. I have tried and tried again to explain it’s occurrennce and at this time I can only conclude beaver behavior is cloaked in a shroud of willful human ignorance.

Just remember this is Kansas and I’m thinking we’re lucky the entire article isn’t about the price for pelts.

Beavers Far and Wee

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Dispersal September 26, 2013

Cheryl got a call a Tuesday about Sonoma Wildlife receiving a beaver that had been huddled in someone’s back yard for a couple days. She drove up to see it yesterday with some beaver treats and background because this is the first beaver they’ve ever had. 31 lbs, which really seems disperser size for our beavers, but its not really the right time of year to be without a home. A physical yesterday revealed it’s a male with bite and scratch wounds on his back. He’s going into surgery today. Cheryl has been invited to help with the release when he’s on his feet again. If you want to assist with his care and remind them that it’s a good idea to rescue beavers, please donate here. I did, and you should too. Rest assured that all our beavers are on sight and no one is missing. Plus when you watch this video you will be certain it’s not ours.

From a very young age, Martinez beavers know how to hold on to an apple.

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Liz Wickard talks with children and their parents about beavers during a Nature at Night hike Sept. 20 at the Morrison Nature Center in Aurora. The Nature at Night series is a free environmental education series held once a month. (Seth McConnell, YourHub)

Aurora nature program explores animals, insects

Kaleb Cano, 10, raised his hand straight in the air when the instructor asked for a volunteer to demonstrate what it’s like to be a beaver. He jumped up, stood in front of the room and beamed with his arms outstretched. Liz Wickard, a naturalist at the Morrison Nature Center in Aurora, plopped a thick, brown pelt over Cano.

“This heavy fur keeps him warm. It’s like the underwear coat,” Wickard said to a room full of giggling children on Sept. 20. “But beavers have two kinds of fur, and this fur on the outside is made of coarse, oily guard hairs.”

Well, technically the hair isn’t naturally oily. It’s painstakingly treated by the beaver every day. And really, if you wanna teach what its like to be a beaver you should let people lie about you and pollute your home and blame you for everything before shooting at you in the dark. Then have the children crawl through some body crushing traps and see how many get away.

Have I grown too cynical for this work?

“About two years ago, this dam was about 15 feet tall and 30 feet wide,” Wickard said to the group once they were outside, along the muddy banks. “But it washed out during heavy rain one summer, and no one repaired it.”

Gosh an educational beaver dam that’s suddenly untended for no reason whatsoever. Call me jaded, but I just had to go looking to see what happened to the beavers on Sand Creek two years ago.

These endearments are directed not at me, but at the beaver, which must endure a few more minutes of this alarming final stage of their 200-mile journey to a new home. Tippie trapped this family in a desolate stretch of Sand Creek in Aurora a couple of days ago and has been chatting with them regularly ever since.

This is from the Westword article on Sherri Tippie in 2011. So somebody paid for these animals to be trapped and relocated, which is marginally better than being killed but still an easy answer to the mystery of why the dam’s not maintained. Maybe the Morrison Center itself paid for them to be trapped? Or it was the nearby golf course or Sheriff’s office or some combination. At any rate the story of their removal ran in the most famous 5 page article about beavers in the history of the Colorado Area, so I’m going to expect them to know dam well why the dam isn’t maintained. And be straight about the dangers beavers face.

And, for goodness sake, stop dressing children up in coats and flippers and use your grant money to explain to children and parents that beavers build a neighborhood and this is why they are WORTH A DAM.

Art In the Beaver Park!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Dispersal, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, kits, Who's Killing Beavers Now? July 20, 2013

Do you remember this magical night? His artwork ran in Bay Nature and was featured in our 2010 silent auction. This is Jack Laws sketching our famous Martinez beavers from the bank in 2010. He is a much sought after speaker and teacher and the creator of several wildlife identification books. Well, he’s coming back this week and he’s bringing friends!

The beavers of central Martinez are raising a family! Come see those cute little kits and sketch the whole dam family. Bring your plate and spoon and something to share for a dinner potluck. If you just got off work and did not have time to prepare something, come anyway. The best beaver watching starts at 6:30. Before prime beaver time starts, I will do a little beaver sketching demonstration.

Meet at the little community park at the corner of Alhambra Avenue and Marina Vista Avenue. If you are using a GPS, try 460 Alhambra Avenue. I am bringing the whole family so we will need to leave around 7:30 to put the girls to bed but the beavers will be doing their thing until it is too dark to sketch.

Looking forward to lots and lots of these.

You can bet Worth A Dam will be there, making sure everyone knows what they’re seeing from their front seat at beaver central! Thanks Jack!

Now here’s an update on our famous San Jose beaver rescue. I can’t embed the video but click on the photo and you won’t be disappointed. I promise.

And just because we need to remember that even when there are really, really good things both North and South of us, there is still PLENTY of Beaver Stupid out there.

Fishercat? Capybara? Mysterious animal attacks man’s dogs

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —An unknown creature attacked a man’s dogs in his backyard, leaving him worried the animal could return to cause more harm. The showdown between the creature and the man’s two Rottweilers was a few weeks ago, but the creature that injured the man’s dogs remains a mystery.

“It would spit at you white spit and I tried to make it where it could get out of my yard, but it was territorial. Once it was in my yard, it wasn’t leaving my yard,” said homeowner David Juvrud. Juvrud said he was forced to shoot it after the 28-pound creature got the best of his two Rottweilers, leaving one of them with injuries.

Juvrud originally thought it was a beaver because some fish from his pond have been missing since the confrontation.

Juvrud thinks beavers eat fish and the news crew doesn’t know any better. More impressively than this feat of evolution, the dangerous fish-eating beaver savagely attacked his two helpless rottweilers.

Hmm, I’m reminded of a recent high profile legal trial.

This is what happens when you grade on a curve…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Dispersal July 11, 2013

Leave it to beaver: Flat-tailed fellow can’t stay out of mischief

Let’s face it, I’m never happy about any article that starts with a photo of a dead beaver. But when you constantly handle sharp instruments you’re bound to pick up a few callouses. Still, even I was surprised by how un-outraged I was by Steve Gilliland’s column today about beaver trapping in Kansas. I guess I’m grading on an 6 year curve, but I get the impression that Steve is about four beers, a copy of three against the wilderness, and a couple of long conversations away from becoming a beaver believer of his own. Of course the chat would have to happen with the right kind of person – not me and definitely not sherri. (We care too much.) Maybe Mike Callahan or Jake Jacobsen? Someone affable who understands the trappers view of the world and could gradually introduce the idea that beavers do a lot of good. Anyway, see what you think.

Our little city owns property just outside town, known as “the city pasture.” There’s a motorcycle race track, several small picnic shelters with tables, slides and merry-go-rounds for the kids and a nice little fishing pond. One morning a couple weeks ago, the city crew stopped by and told me a beaver had taken up residence there in the pond and was chewing trees. The city manager said, “He has to go”.

That day after work, I dug out my beaver traps and equipment and the next evening headed for the pond. I soon found the first evidence, as a small tree along the bank had been toppled, but not too recently. I walked the rest of the main pond bank and found one spot in very shallow water where a den opening ran up and under the bank.

Beavers and muskrats dig dens into the bank, usually with trough-shaped runs in front of them that form and get deeper over time from their constant trips in and out. An active run will be kept smooth and slick with no moss or any obstructions in it. This den indeed had a run going from it out into the pond but was covered in moss and leaves, showing no recent use. There are two small islands in the pond, and a walk around the larger one found a spot where “the Beav” had recently chewed on a standing tree, leaving a pile of wood chips. I gathered the chips and sprinkled some lure over them, slicked up the bank to make it appear as though another beaver was there too and placed a trap in the water in front, hoping to draw the beaver to the spot again and through the trap.

Maybe I am too sympathetic to deductive reasoning of any kind, but I can’t summon up horror for this article. I like the fact that he notices things, and his observations about trough-shaped runs fits exactly with Glynnis research on insect biodiversity because of different elevations on pond bottoms from beavers. He goes on to recount accidentally trapping three snapping turtles and one catfish before finally getting his quarry, which was obviously a young disperser thinking the world was his oyster. In the mean time he has some interesting thoughts about where beavers fit in the pond. Remember he is in Kansas which is not exactly the hotbed of ecological understanding. For him to be in the outfields of reasonable as a trapper in Kansas is similar to a man being an environmental attorney for PETA in Washington State.

Five days later, I still found an empty trap. My mind is always going when I trap, processing possible scenarios that I might be missing. Guessing it might be possible for a beaver to come out the hole but slip around the trap the way it was, I shoved the trap up tight against the hole, figuring I had nothing to lose. Two days later, my reward floated on the water in the form of a 45-pound beaver. I reset the trap on the chance there might be a pair of beavers, but the very next night it harvested another big snapping turtle, so I took the trap home.

I suppose we could all take a lesson from the lowly beaver, pertaining to doing on this Earth what God put us here to do. Just like “the Beav” in “Leave It to Beaver,” that flat-tailed fellow at the park pond could have had life by the tail had he just stayed out of mischief and left the trees alone. He would have been fun to watch and who knows, he might have even gotten named. But as it is … well, continue to Explore Kansas outdoors.

I hope Mr. Gilliland takes lots of lessons from the not-at-all lowly beaver. I plan on sending a few his way. You never know, the councilman who bought the beaver-buster and his wife have written me back several times interested in flow devices and made sure their public works crew and city manager did as well.

Chip Chip Chip.