TEXAS LEARNING CURVE

heidi08 Beavers, kits, stupid solutions August 1, 2019

We already know about the beavers in McKinney, but I thought this local news story was too endearing not to share. Let’s hope someone gets smarter soon! Although I’m not holding my breath.

Ooh snakes! So glad the news team is on the case with several pairs of clothes.

Well the kits in Napa have enjoyed adult supervision since their arrival but last night was graduation. They’re on their own now baby, (meaning of course they they can play and feed without a chaperone in the mornings and evenings) and Rusty Cohn was on hand of course to capture their emancipation.

Sneaking up: Rusty Cohn

THE SUNFLOWER STATE SMILES ON BEAVERS?

heidi08 Beaver ecological impact, kits July 17, 2019

Brandi McCoy is a Private Lands Conservationist in Northeast Kansas

You know where we haven’t read a good beaver benefits article from ever? Kansas. I mean now that Iowa has stepped up to the plate and even Tennessee has earned an honorable mention, what has the sunflower state ever done for us lately?

Nature’s Engineers

One of our best engineers can work through the night, requires no machinery, and doesn’t even expect a paycheck. He’s also many a farmer’s nightmare, but many a rancher’s blessing. He’s the beaver. For some people, the beaver is bad news for their ponds, crop ground, culverts, and trees, but he is also one of the most underappreciated and important creatures we have for improving water quality and riparian habitat.

Beavers are a keystone species, meaning, a small number of beavers have a huge, long-lasting impact on large numbers of wildlife. Believe it or not, beavers benefit people in several ways; their dams reduce soil erosion by decreasing the velocity of stream flow. Beaver dams raise the water table and can turn an intermittent stream into perennial flow which is crucial if you’re facing a drought. Their dams reduce peak flows to help reduce the effects of flooding. Their dams improve the quality of our water by trapping sediment and breaking down toxins which is not only healthier for us, but less costly for water treatments. Beaver dams increase ground water recharge which is critical in replenishing alluvial aquifers. Beaver dams increase the complexity of a riparian habitat to increase the diversity of aquatic species. Best of all, these benefits don’t cost a dime so long as the beaver isn’t in the wrong place. So how do we reap the benefits in the places we want them?

Did I just read that right? Am I still in Kansas Toto? Is this just another fever dream I will wake up from in a few lines? Oh Ben’s wonderful book is there NO END to the wonders you will reap?

Fortunately, there are things that can be done to help prevent beaver activity where it is not wanted. Particularly around culverts where beavers like to stuff twigs into, a device called a beaver deceiver can be used. Beaver deceivers are combination panels that keep the beaver from crawling or swimming through and force the beaver to place his dam further away from the culvert.

And on that sunny day when the beaver GOOD NEWS finally reached Kansas of all places, we stood in wonderous awe and watched.

I don’t know about you but I think a victory in a flyover state deserves a proper celebration. Something furry and familiar. Something that for decades we have been seeing every July but have sorely missed this past year.

Something wonderful that Rusty Cohn discovered in Napa.

Seems that the Napa beaver parents have been feeling a bit more protective of their new charge with all the hubub and building going on. They both appeared and made sure the coast was clear before they allowed newbie to swim about on his own. Beavers are such good parents!

These parents swam about and checked the pond before they even let Junior swim on his own.

Can you say over protective much? You can tell the little one had HAD ENOUGH ALREADY because he made sure to let his parents know how he felt about their caution. He’s having NONE of it, thank you.

What wonderful photos! I know it’s very early, and the creek sides are crowded with crabby homeless, but wow we sure love living vicariously through you. Thank you so much!

Oh and by the way, never ever sleep in again all summer!

‘TIS THE SEASON

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, kits, What's killing beavers now? June 16, 2019

June of course is Kit time. Not when they’re born around here but when they’re usually seen for the first time. For 11 years I watched new kits fumble around the creek every summer, I suffer withdrawal pangs every day that I don’t get to see a beaver kit in 2019, but John Hutters in the Netherlands posted this photo on facebook yesterday that soothed my soul for a while.

It may well be the sweetest parent/kit shot I have ever seen, but I’m open to competition.

Look at that tail! Just look at it and tell ME that isn’t a social greeting! I adore this picture. John also has a sweet new film of mother and kit grooming but it isn’t on youtube yet so unshareable here. Something to look forward to, I promise.

Meanwhile our friend Emily Fairfax has started teaching at Cal State Channel Islands, where she is working on accessible ways to process data so that she can teach her students to be the most convincing scientists they can be, This meant she was excited about the beaver depredation spreadsheet we got from CDFW. And she tossed together this lovely interactive.

If you hover over a region it will tell you the name of the county and how many permits were issued. Pretty snazzy huh? Not quite the right parameters for this website but darn cool to see live. Just look at that dark slash across placer county which stands like an open wound killing the most beavers of any place in the state.
Still.
Sigh.

But onward. We must fight for better things. Even if the freekin’ city won’t hang our lampost banners and the printer isn’t printing our brochure yet. Never you mind. The show, as they say, will go on. Here’s the lovely brochure for your perusal anyway. Use the +/- to zoom in and view it closer.

Brochure For Printer

FALLING FOR BEAVERS

heidi08 kits November 21, 2018

Brace yourselves. I’m about to show you something really, really adorable. Something that even if I hadn’t devoted the last 11 years of my life to beavers might make me stop dead in my tracks and say “My god, I love this animal! How can I help?” I realize that just because you visit this website doesn’t mean you read every word or watch every video. We all have important things to do every day. BUT WATCH THIS. This is the best, most engaging beaver video I have ever seen and its only 20 seconds long. Watch it with the sound turned up, watch it again to make sure you saw it, and then when you’re done laughing we’ll talk about it later.

First of all, if your sound was turned up you know that that kit fell into water, so he wasn’t hurt and it’s okay for us to talk about this cheerfully. This was posted on November 7 by the Pacific Southwest Fish and Wildlife Facebook page. So thanks for this.

Struck so profoundly by the fall, it took me a while to notice that in the beginning of the film he’s climbing his way to the chewed space in the tree carrying mud and sticks to lay on the notch. Like that little kit Art filmed this year he clearly thinks he’s helping build the ‘dam”. Then he climbs into the notch (dam) and reaches around to the side with his foot to feel his way.

But because it’s not actually a dam there’s a huge drop off which he won’t go down. He reaches around a little to find his way, and by using his foot to reach he loses that anchor for balance (claws are holding on the tree supporting him) and thus falls off sideways.

Here it is again for the play by play. You can actually slow it down if you click on the cog and set the speed to .5.

What we know is that this kit watched the parent work here for hours, and was irresistibly drawn to the site to help. He just wasn’t sure how. Think about your own children, they watch you do the same tasks for them every day over and over (pouring cereal, packing lunches, squeezing toothpaste on the brush, washing their hair in the bath) that when they decide to help they sometimes get mixed up in the details.

Pouring cheerios in their lunchbox or squeezing toothpaste on their hair. It happens.

If you aren’t sure whether you believe me, let’s rewatch the video from Art Wolinsky earlier this year. This kind of mistaken help must happen all the time in the beaver kingdom. We just never realized it before.

For beavers, work is irresistible. They just can’t wait to help. There are lots of things to learn and lots of wires. Sometimes they get crossed. Which makes beavers the very coolest animal. Ever.

Also, just in case this went without saying, beavers fall exactly like muppets.

THE SWEETEST THING

heidi08 kits September 30, 2018

Art Wolinsky is a retired science teacher in New Hampshire with all the best audio visual toys. Years ago he worked with Mike Callahan to install some culvert protection on the dam near his condominium. He has watched his beaver family grow and change over the years, and become a regional expert in the field, frequently giving lectures on the topic of coexistence. Yesterday he posted the most adorable beaver video that I have ever seen, and that’s saying truly something – because I’ve seen a lot of adorable beaver videos.

Look closely at the video and feel free to watch it again. That young beaver sees the tree damage, and knows his family has been hard at work. He wants to help. So he does the only thing he knows how.

He tries to dam the tree!

And if this doesn’t completely melt your heart and make you care about beavers forever, you are, in fact, a heartless bastard and I can’t possibly help you. To me this demonstrates a) How beaver building isn’t all instinct. B) How much social modelling is involved in learning for beavers. and C) How beavers truly feel about work.

He wants to help because that’s what beavers do. Even though nobody tells him to or is waiting in the wings with a cookie. No adult is in the frame, he isn’t pleasing anyone.

He just wants to help because work itself is irresistible.

Back when I was a day care teacher (during the punic wars) there was a backyard sand box for kids to play in that needed new sand. The landscape company agreed to give us a truckload of it for free but the told us we’d have to get it into the back ourselves. Not a problem. 60 kids with buckets and pails running up and down the stairs to move the sand into the back and it would happen soon enough.

Half way through the job I noticed that one soulfully quirky young boy had made many trips but seemingly without a pail. I could just feel something wasn’t right and asked what he was using to carry sand. He reached in his pocket and proudly showed a flowered plastic teacup from the practical life section. That five year old had been running back and forth down the stairs through the building and into the backyard with about a tablespoon of sand each time.

I put Art’s precious video on youtube just so you could watch in slow motion. Click on the cog and choose the “speed” option. .5 gives you a nice slow watch of this beavers effort. At slower speed I definitely get the feeling that when he tries to place the materials the second time he realizes something isn’t right.

He kind of just slinks away after that. As I’m sure we all would.