Category: Beaver Behavior

MEMORIALIZED BY BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Chewing January 10, 2020

So yesterday I was home alone, minding my own business, when the phone rings and it’s an NBC reporter wanting to ask about the chewed tree photos I put on FB. Turns out one of their reporters reads the site and told her to follow up. So over she comes and we waltz into an interview on camera in my living room. About whether or not I think the beavers are ‘back’, why cities get upset about them and what people can do to help. That’s all fine with me. I expect to be on permanent beaver call.

What I didn’t expect was that the camera man (child) would – after the interview and after removing the camera – set down his 4 heavy 4 foot tripod 4 feet away and it would fall with a lumbering CRASH because he hadn’t set it down properly and it would miss my very important baby toe by a fraction of a fraction of an inch.

Honestly the noise it made when tipping alone – not to mention his hunched Igor status – told me how very, very heavy that thing was. I would be have spent the afternoon in the E.R. And I suppose it would have been fitting in a way, To be injured by a cameraman while talking about beavers.

But my house was built in 1898 and has at least one very friendly spirit who makes himself known in various mostly friendly ways from time time to time – one of which being the habit of dropping things in very dramatic ways without hurting anyone. Once every single one of our plates and cups fell from the wall and the cat, who was in the tiny kitchen at the time, was mercifully spared and when we ran in alarm to check coolly picked his way across the shards.

And once a heavy tripod fell a millimeter’s distance from my bare toes and missed me by the scant thickness of a hair and I was fine. Thanks Friendly Spirit.

So the interview was on the TeeVee last night, and a kickstand of concern has been artfully laid to protect the beavers by making them visible to the people that saved them last time. She wanted to talk to the city too so I gave her Mark Ross’s cell phone; On a whim Jon went down scouting for beavers last night but he saw narry a one. I suppose we shall see what transpires. This may turn out to be nothing, but it might be a beaver shot across the bow, so to speak.

At least our beavers will get slightly better odds than these in Missouri:

Twin Lakes Memo

Beavers have chewed their way through trees at Twin Lakes Recreation Area — including some planted as memorials for loved ones. Families have paid $250 each for these trees to memorialize family members or friends and work colleagues who have died.

The affected trees lie along the southeast corner of the lake inside the recreation area. The stumps can be found just outside of a gate to a fenced-in dog area and continue further inside. Dave Dittmer, forester for the city Parks and Recreation Department, said that department crew members first reported the damage to the trees in December.

Sorry about Grandma, but PLEASE PLEASE can I have my memorial tree eaten by beavers? Can’t you just imagine my plaque next to that whittled beaver chew. Maybe with some artfully scattered woodchips?

“Here lies Heidi, she truly gave beavers all she could”

In a post on Facebook showing the damage to the trees, one user commented that beavers have been doing similar damage to trees around Cedar Lake, which is located just south of Southampton Drive a few blocks west of Providence Road.. Discussion in the comments of the same Facebook post contained some users calling for the beavers to be relocated, and others urging that the beavers be left alone.

Dittmer talked to the Conservation Department about relocating the beavers, he said. He was told it’s not possible to relocate them at this time because the beavers would starve, as they store and hide their food for the winter season.

I guess beavers don’t walk around or go to coffee houses anymore to find stories. They just scan facebook. There but for the grace of everyone in town go our beavers. Martinez has some lucky little flat-tails,that’s all I can say. Here’s a reminder from our friend Emily Fairfax why we were also lucky to have them in the first place.

MAKE WAY FOR BEAVERS!

The good news is that yesterday I found out how I will remotely present at beaverCon 2020 and I will be able to use video and audio, which means I could start pull together tools for both, I’m happy to say that the very old laptop still functions and I myself functionenough to put everything on the new laptop – so things are looking hopeful.

While I was searching through what to share I came across this national treasure of our beavers in 2017 from Moses Silva and thought you’d want to see. Turn your sound WAY up to hear my favorite part.

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Aren’t beavers the most lovely and wonderful thing you can ever hope to see? This video just about puts my entire life in prospective. And we’re not the only one who knows this. Apparently the director of Wildlife guardians, John Horning, is a big fan too.

Beckoning the Beavers — Wild Earth Guardians

I love beavers. Ever since I was a kid and watched them slap their tails defiantly, and loudly, to warn their clan of the threatening presence of large animals, I’ve thought beavers were worthy of my admiration. Then I realized they build dams too! As an aspiring dam builder myself, I figured beavers had more than a few things to teach me.

In fact, when the question of what is my favorite spirit animal arises, my response is almost always: beavers. They bring joy and gusto to their daily work and are quite content in mud and water. What’s not to admire?

Preaching to the choir here, sir.

So, when the opportunity came up in late September to be a beaver for a day with WildEarth Guardians’ restoration crew, I jumped at it—especially since I could bring along my energetic, six-year-old twin boys.

The job of building these beaver dam analogues, or BDAs as they are known, was made easier by the placement of two dozen wooden posts that had been driven into the ground in a cross-crossed pattern across the stream. These posts, placed days earlier by Reid and his crew, provided the necessary foundation for each dam to rise

And so a beaver clan, a crew of five or six people, was deployed to each of the six dam sites. For my boys—as it seemed for everyone—the excitement of the reality of dam-building overrode the hesitation that often comes with trying something new. In partnership with the other adults, the boys wove the willow back and forth between the poles and watched as others did the same.

Without it really being emphasized we had already embodied one of the critical qualities of beavers: collaboration amongst a family unit to accomplish a grand task.

Oh my goodness. I love his enthusiasm. And I love the idea of children weaving branches in a BDA. Hmm beaver festival idea? It gets even better.

Absent cows, there would be willows along the stream. And almost everywhere there are willows, beavers thrive. And where beavers thrive there is ecological dynamism, and the land sings, with the literal songs of flycatchers and frogs and with the slithering of snakes and the pattering of shrews and mice. And in the stream itself, native trout grow fatter and more abundant in the cooler, deeper waters that beaver dams create.

Here in New Mexico, there is a long list of endangered species that have been imperiled in the absence of beavers and that would benefit from their return. The New Mexico meadow jumping mouse, the Rio Grande cutthroat trout, the Southwest willow flycatcher are just a few.

Ahhh that does a heart good to read. You know WildEarth Guardians has the right idea.

The next morning after packing up, we were about to get in the car when my boys proclaimed that we could not leave without one more inspection of “our” beaver dam. Much to their satisfaction, not only was the dam still intact, but the water level had risen noticeably since the previous afternoon. As their energy lingered, the boys hummed, gently sang, and chattered to themselves and to each other in contemplative satisfaction with their work. One walked back and forth across the dam while the other waded in and out of the now waist-deep water. Without further words, we headed back up stream and up the hill to our car. But before moving on, one of my boys said, “Dad, we need to come back and build more beaver dams!”

“Yes, we do,” I said. “Yes, we do.”

Yes. And you need to MAKE WAY FOR BEAVERS so they can build and maintain their own dams without your help. Step aside and let the experts take over. This work is more tricky than it looks. Just check out this video Robin of Napa shared on facebook. Experts are really picky about getting just the right materials.

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DEGREES OF BEAVER FREEDOM

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver Grooming, Beavers January 4, 2020

I think I mentioned before that I was horrific at math and oddly skilled at statistics. I’m sure there’s some kind of left brain/right brain distinction to explain some of it but for what ever reason one made sense and the other made me panic. No matter who taught it, No matter how much I tried.

One of my favorite concepts used in statistics was always “Degrees of Freedom“, Usually calculated as N=1, it basically it refers to how many chances you might have to achieve those same exact results given the number of times you tried or how many people you tried with. As the degrees of freedom go up the odds of it happening again also go up so the rarity of the results go down. As the degrees of freedom go down, the odds of it happening just like this ever again go down and it becomes very ulikely. Until there is zero chance.

I mention this because in the back of my mind I tend to think of the days before the annual Worth A Dam ravioli feed as Degrees of Freedom. As in “There are this many chances to get it wrong or forget a detail or have to take someone to the ER and still achieve the desired result.” The closer we get to day, the room for error gets lower and lower. As of this morning there is one day left before our 5 course dinner for 13 people. That means one day to get the house set up and make sauces ready and dip the cookies in chocolate. If we were visited by unexpected relatives today, or broke someones toe or had a power outage – tomorrow would become nearly impossible.

In other words, we are down to 1 Degree of Freedom.

Today is a day for Chinese takeout from the cartons in the living room so we don’t mess up the silverware or the table setting. And it’s a great day to read this cozy column by Patti Smith from Vermont which we always enjoy.

Remember when last we heard from Patti she was mourning the death of her beloved beaver Willow, who after a very long life had been unable to escape a bear.

The View from Heifer Hill: Finding an old friend on the river of life

During the last week of December, I skied down to look for the beaver that recently moved into the brook below my house. Beavers do not relocate in December unless calamity strikes. I suspected that a raging torrent from rain and snowmelt had destroyed this beaver’s dam and washed its food cache downstream. While this new location offers good foraging, the rocky stream bottom provides little mud for sealing a dam. Without a deep pond, ice can seal the entrance to a beaver’s lodge, trapping the beaver inside.

I had tried hollering on several occasions to entice this beaver to appear. Since that technique hadn’t worked, I decided that on this visit I would use the stealth approach — sitting quietly and waiting for the beaver to reveal itself. Once I settled myself by the brook, I noticed that the beaver had been building a lodge directly across from my seat. After a few minutes, I heard the gurgle that announced the emergence of the occupant. The beaver that surfaced paddled quickly over and swam back and forth a few times before lunging up the icy bank and onto the snow beside me. I was so pleased to see the notch in the tail that identified this beaver as Dew.

I first met Dew eight or nine years ago. The uncertainty stems from not knowing if she is Dewberry, born in 2010, or Sundew, born the following year. Either way, I met her shortly after she was born to that champion of beaver survivors, Willow. “Survivor” might seem a strange thing to call a beaver who was just eaten by a bear, but she lived to near the maximum lifespan for a beaver (about 20 years). I have not yet determined her exact age, but the teeth I recovered will allow me to.

Isn’t it wonderful that after losing her friends and matriarch of so many years she would run into one of her children who just moved in after losing her old house in storm? Mother nature can be pretty dam sweet sometimes. When she’s not busy doing the other thing.

Dew is the only one of her offspring known to survive, aside from the yearling Gentian. I concluded last month’s column with the hope that Gentian would inherit her mother’s penchant for longevity. Given that I could not find any of her siblings, I didn’t hold out a great deal of hope. Yet here was Dew — approaching her ninth or tenth year! Dew, who seems to have survived her first mate, Ilex, and is now wintering alone in this unlikely location. Given her heritage, I give her much higher odds of surviving this challenging winter than other beavers. I have seen her mother survive as bad.

Patti is such a delightful mix of science, heresy and affection. She pretty much breaks all the rules about not naming or feeding the animals you’re studying. But she also seems to learn more about their lives than anyone who follows the rules ever will. Ever time we get to visit Patti in Vermont my heart swells with the deepest fondness and I am reminded of my own days watching beavers.

Patti is a kindred spirit.

On New Year’s Eve, I took a few friends out to visit her. Along the way, a dark shape was spotted hustling away into the shadows. When I hailed the beast, it stopped, then turned and came toward us. There was Quirinus, one of the porcupines I have been studying. He paused on his travels to eat an apple with us.

The forest, glazed in a mix of ice and snow, shone bright in moonlight. Once we settled by the brook, Dew arrived and began opening up channels in the slushy ice. She took an apple and swam to her lodge to eat it before reappearing and clambering up on the opposite bank. There she spent 15 minutes in elaborate ablutions, scrubbing and combing every bit of her corpulent physique. One of my friends had a blazing headlamp that lit up the scene like stage lights. Dew seemed to be preening for her audience. Why not? Beavers are social animals, and she had been on her own for at least several weeks.

I am so glad that she gets to spend quality time with the beaver after losing his or her mother. I remain completely mystified about how she tells them apart. We only ever had a few beavers whose identities I could spot on sight. Mom with her chinked tail. Dad with his size. GQ with his good loos. Mom II with her red fur. That’s about it.

Maybe you do better? I have a touch of prosopagnosia. I can barely tell humans apart.

When Dew finally swam off, we headed upstream a bit and built a fire. There in the snowy forest, we enjoyed the rising sparks, and a very localized rain shower caused by the melting ice on branch overhead. I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful transition from one year to the next. I was warmed by the fire and by knowing that a new beaver ambassador would carry on the work of my old friend Willow. May the new year bring such joy to you.

And to you Patti!

And may the new year bring joy to any and all reading this site. Wish us luck dipping the tails today. I would invite you all for dinner but consider yourself lucky to escape it. We are not at all generous hosts who do this out of the goodness of our hearts and a love to entertain. We actually do this to compensate for demanding terribly exhausting days of service at the beaver festival and the willingness to resist saying “NO” when being asked for the millionth time. You know what they say, To those whom much has been given, much will be asked.

It’s one free dinner that actually costs the attendees a lot. It dam well better be delicious!

New Years Ravioli Feast-20

HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN, HOW HIGH IS THE MOON?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior December 8, 2019

Sometimes headline is all you need to make you very, very happy. Like this one for instance.

How Dangerous Is the Beaver?

Even if that was all there was, Just an inflammatory headline and a great photo, it would be enough to amuse me with endless Monty Python scenarios. Imagine how lucky I felt when the article continued?

With their oversized front teeth, beady little eyes and funny flat tails, beavers look less like crazed killers and more like the goofballs of the woods. Yet with their distinctive orange-colored incisors, these furry wonders can slash through a finger-sized tree branch with just a single chomp. So that begs the question: Are beavers dangerous to humans?

Oh my goodness. Get me the popcorn. This is going to be good.

It turns out that yes, in certain circumstances, beavers might harm people and pets.

Of course they go on to describe Belarus because they’ll never live that down. But I was especially pleased to see this:

Do Beavers Help or Hurt the Environment?

The results are often a win-win for both beavers and other creatures. “Beavers are tremendously beneficial to the environment. They are North American ‘keystone species‘ meaning their presence on the landscape increases biodiversity,” says Callahan. “Beavers build dams to turn streams into ponds. The new habitats created support innumerable plant, insect, fish and animal species, including salmon and other endangered species.”

He also says that beaver ponds also help fight climate change and wildfires, store precious water and recharge ground water aquifers, improve water quality by removing pollutants from the water, and fix eroded stream channels and restore healthy watersheds. “And beavers perform all these valuable ecosystem services for free!” he adds.

Hurray! Mike! Well done and what a great place to find a friendly face. Gee how do you get interviewed for “How stuff Works?”. What do they even say when they call? I’m a reporter from google? Or maybe they just email? I wanna play!

I actually love how the article ends, too.

Well that was more fun than I ever expected. And it ended up in the right place which I never get tired of.

I just have to do one Monty Python, because its necessary.

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Just one more perfect headline to share before I go. This one from the Ellwood City Ledger in Pittsburg. And this one is for the scrapbook.

Impeachment rally planned for Beaver the day before House vote is expected

Gosh. I know rule of law is pretty important to beavers. But I never expected this.

SACRAMENTO AUDUBON LEARNS ABOUT BEAVERS

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Educational December 5, 2019

Well, well, well The coolest thing about sitting in this prominently placed “Spiders Web” designed for catching beaver news is that the most amazing things come your way. First this announcement from Sacramento Audubon about their upcoming beaver presentation. You’ll never guess who’s sharing the gospel.

Thursday, Jan. 16, 2020
Effie Yeaw Nature Center
Assembly Room, 7PM
Come early to wander the grounds and bird or visit.

Topic: The Return of California’s Golden Beaver

Speakers: Greg and Alex Kerekez

Sacramento natives, Greg and Alexandria Kerekez spent the past 10 years in Silicon Valley helping to conserve threatened habitat and wildlife populations with documentary photography, education, and citizen science techniques. Their work aims to connect people to their environment and conserve California’s amazing ecologic diversity.

This January, they’ll present their experiences documenting The Return of California’s Golden Beaver. Historically, Beavers were almost extinct in California by the Gold Rush era. Today, they are returning to their ancient habitats, but not without controversy. Explore how these water saving critters benefit the environment and what we can do to support their restoration of California’s Ecosystems, and find a common ground.

In 2017, Greg and Alex returned to their hometown, Rancho Cordova, to start Rancho Roots Permaculture Farm. With their farming practices, they hope to provide examples of how to grow food sustainably. Creating bridges amongst neighbors using a combination of trade and market gardening is at the heart of their small business.

Now I know you might be saying to your self huh, who the heck are Greg and Alex Kerekes? Greg worked for years and years with Bill Leikam on the urban wildlife project following the foxes in San Jose. And Alex, well ,maybe this will jot your memory.

Fantastic news. Greg and Alex have started a progressive permacultue farm in the Rancho Cordova, I’m so glad to know they’ll be smart beaver friends in the area. Good luck Greg and Alex! Convincing Sacramento on beavers is a hard sell, but if anyone can do it, you can.

Okay, the other amazing thing, and truly the most amazing thing that I have waited my entire beaver life to see, comes from a new fan of Ben’s book, Kathy Rothman of northern florida. She sought me out on facebook to say she had beavers on her land and when I heard where she lived I just HAD to ask.

Any alligators there?

One of the great mysteries of beaver life is how beavers and alligators cohabit the same ponds and swamps. Think about it. Beavers are no match for the reptile which can swim faster, walk faster and hold their breath longer. I have friends who’s family members were EATEN by an alligator.

All I can think is that if you are an alligator in Florida there are LOTS of things to choose from. And sometimes you just don’t feel like beaver. Maybe its like traffic accidents. Sometimes you just get unlucky.

Or lucky as the case may be.