Relocation: Not A Happy Ending?

Guardian

heidi08 kits July 5, 2010

Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

Last night Worth A Dam kept an eye on our beavers while all the world was watching brightly colored explosions and some of its inhabitants were making rather noisy explosions of their own. After the first big bang at the bridge the bi-yearling seemed to make a decision that he wasn’t going over that dam until things got quieter. He carried large branches into the lodge so the kits would feed inside and we didn’t see much of them for the duration of the night. At one point he sat motionless in the water, watching the bank to see if there was trouble. Whale-watchers call that behavior ‘logging’ but we had never seen it in our beavers. Clearly he knew tonight was different.

Necropsy results received from UC Davis via Lindsay last night indicate the following conditions present in Mom beaver:

1. Meningoencephalitis, (inflammation of the layers protecting the brain and the brain), associated with amoeba or protozoans
2. Pneumonia
3. Malocclusion and secondary gingivitis, (due to the broken upper tooth)
4. Conjunctivitis grossly, but only mild to moderate.inflammation on histology

Conversations with our vet friends have suggested that the infections could all have been triggered by the broken tooth and spread from there. We will keep asking and trying to understand the sequence. For now it means that she was dealing with a host of problems, and we are again awed that she was able to bring three healthy kits into the world.

When we left last night at 11 things had calmed down and the steady stream of cars had cleared from downtown. Two cautious kits made their silent paddle around the pond to get branches on their own. All the appreciative people, all the families with children, all the defiant teens and all the angry drunks went homeward. We wished the beavers a happy independence day and left them to their privacy.

If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

Lewis Carrol

I haven’t posted about the trauma in the gulf lately not because it isn’t ongoing, and not because it isn’t continually horrific beyond anything we can possibly imagine but because we’ve had a singular focus lately for obvious reasons. This video caught my attention today and just had to be posted. Dr. Pincetich used to work for SPAWN. I tracked him down last year and we exhanged information about the positive relationship between beavers and salmon. He even invited me to come to a watershed training he was doing at Samuel Taylor and say a few words about beavers. SPAWN will be at the beaver festival this year, but Dr. Pincetich has moved onto to studying turtles. Wow, some timing. He has pretty alarming things to say about Corexit. I particularly like his language about ‘turning a two dimensional problem into a three dimensional problem.’

Helping Hand

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, kits July 4, 2010

Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

How old are our three kits? The truth is we can’t be sure. The first was seen on June 9th and we assumed it was about 4 weeks old. Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife thinks more like 6, since kits don’t come out of the lodge on their own until they can dive, and they can’t do that until 6 weeks. Our kits were so small this year, and mom was in such poor health, that we think they might have emerged early to feed. That places them somewhere around 9-10 weeks old. Kits stop nursing around 8 weeks, and their digestion is ready for the big job of feeding entirely on leaves and bark.

Worth A Dam made the decision to keep easy food available for our three when mom’s health began to decline. Since her death we have been dropping cottonwood and willow at the dam site to allow them easy access to branches. This lets them feed and fatten naturally, while practicing chewing and tugging and figuring out just how to swim with three feet of willowy goodness in your paws. Our decision to supplemental feed has been reported on the news and in the press. It is not a secret and it should not be controversial. Here is an example of how supplemental feeding works when humans aren’t involved.

I took this photo in October of 2007. It shows one of our 4 first kits feeding on a felled willow tree in the annex behind the lodge. This is beaver-generated supplmental feeding. Dad brought down this tree so that four youngsters would have easy eating close to home, and could practice chewing and dragging branches on their own. The kits initial feeding consisted of branches brought by the parents into the lodge, branches carefully laid in the water, or low hanging willow and blackberry the kits could snatch for themselves. We have seen all three kits taking food from the banks as well.

This year Worth A Dam made the decision to paint the trees around the lodge with sand to make them less attractive food. Our concern was that the lodge remain shaded and protected from human interference. It has worked in keeping trees but it means there are fewer “training trees” for dad to take down in the immediate area. We will continue to supply branches for another two weeks at least. When the kits get a little bigger I’m sure Dad will try out the lovely new willow we planted in the annex. Have you looked at it lately? It’s huge!

Identification

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, kits July 2, 2010

One of the parts I most enjoyed about Hope Ryden’s Lily Pond was her fastidious observation of beaver differences that allowed to tell individual members of the colony apart. She described things like different fur color, toenail color and behavior. We have never been half that skilled with our beavers, and one of the reasons mom was always so popular is that she came to us with a unique signature tail that made her recognizable — eventually. (It was December of 2007 before I really ‘saw’ the marking in her tail. Moses was showing footage of her and dad almost mating and you could tell ‘who was who’ by ahem what they were doing.) That was the introduction to mom’s unique tail, which was later confirmed when her breast feeding kits produced visible teats.

With mom gone and Dad and the two year old nearly the same size, our job is much harder. I thought I would write down some of the clues we use to tell them apart. Appearance is a big one. Our two-year old is a sleek, handsome beaver who looks ready to take on the world. I describe him as “GQ” beaver, although there is no way to infer gender. Dad is more ‘Marlboro Man”. Different facial coloring gives him a ‘weathered’ look, as if he has been around the block a few times and seen it all before. Here’s identical footage of each coming back over the beaver dam. The one on the bottom is Dad.

Another clue I am more confident with is behavior. Dad is a stealthy, canny and often sneaky beaver. He usually emerges from the lodge with only a string of bubbles that reach all the way to the dam and then slips over the gap without any noise at all. He does not usually approach areas where people are and can give a tail slap just because he dislikes being watched from the bridge. The two year old was starting to act more like dad up until the kits adoption further confounding the difficulties, but now GQ beaver is very visible, swimming close to inspect for any threat and keeping an eye on where the kits get to. Dad is actually more visible too, stopping to pick up a branch for the kits and take it back to the lodge. Behavior is a clue, but its a changeable clue.

Telling the kits apart? Now that’s another job entirely. We have a crack team of beaver-identification-ologists working on it around the clock and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Out of the playpen…

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, kits July 1, 2010

Last night there was the usual gathering of beaver supporters and interested folk at the dam. Familiar faces came because their hearts were saddened by the news of mom’s death, and had their hearts expanded by the cheerful antics of three healthy beaver kits. The bi-yearling came and did his parental circle of the dam, going over to do some mudding on the downstream side before returning to bring branches into the lodge. A turtle sat on his customary place on the flow pipe and a green heron fed from the filter upstream.

We were feeling pretty calm and settled with things when the yearling did a pass with a kit and seemed eager to go over the dam. After hesitating two or three times, he allowed the kit to ride on his shoulders and just SWOOPED him over the gap into the second pond. Kit Overboard! The wide world opened up for our hero. Suddenly the boundaries of their little world had dissolved. That kit paddled around the second pond a bit, sat on the pipe of the flow device and then decided that was quite enough exploration for one day, thank you very much.

His artless return is captured on the footage below. Clearly his sudden spasm of terror in midreturn is the best proof I have ever seen of beaver imagination. Nothing was chasing him. No loud noise caused his alarm. He just suddenly realized where the @#*%$ he was and it scared the beaver stuffing out of him.

Of course, once he had made the trip to the great beyond, his brother wanted to try it to. No longer was the primary dam a guardrail to keep all the baby chicks in the nest. Now it was a bridge to freedom. Like teenagers with new drivers licenses they popped over the dam just to show they could while the rest of us sat like the parents of teenagers with new drivers licenses and tried not to panic.

It’s a big world, and they need to explore it. (Sniff.)

Am I my beaver’s keeper?

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Environmental, kits June 29, 2010

Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

Taken before mom’s death, but during her illness, this photo shows our two larger kits exploring the dam and foraging for food. It is an adorable glimpse of their “buddy system” as they venture farther a field (and closer to Cheryl’s camera) than they have ever gone. Since mom’s death and their “adoption” by the bi-yearling, they are much more cautious because they have the luxury of caution. They’re also waking up later which means their tummies are fuller and they are probably being fed in the lodge. We saw the first kit at 6 on Saturday night, but not until 8 on Sunday.

These two seem to come in tandem and are nearly the same size. A smaller kit usually comes on its own and is much less skilled at swimming and breaking off branches, let alone diving. That’s the one that rode on mom’s back on the June 13th movie. The bi-yearling was present last night, bringing branches in the lodge before going for his “alone time” over the dam. Jon followed him to see what he was doing but he slipped off into the scrape near the secondary dam. It is likely that he is marking the territory to keep other beavers away and checking for trouble. He’s not gone long enough to be feeding and there’s plenty to eat closer to home in the annex.

Dad hasn’t been seen the last few nights, and I got an email from Sarah Summerville of the Unexpected Wildlife Refuge that might explain that.

In Dorothy Richards’ (and our Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci’s) book Beaversprite, she documented seeing “grief” in her beavers at the loss of a mate or kitten. It sounds like the kittens are reverting to younger behavior, and the yearling is probably like a new mother, too overwhelmed and busy to grieve. How is dad doing? Is he business as usual, or is he absent? She documented the grieving parents staying in the lodge and not eating for several days.

I can’t imagine beaver couples are passionate about their mates, but they are certainly used to them and spend hours side by side in the lodge or working on the dam and that loss could certainly be felt. We’ll keep watch and see what’s up with dad. At the moment I’d like another adult in the pond to keep an eye on the kits when the bi-yearling goes foraging. We are reluctant to leave until he comes back after his little “alone time”, but we can’t be beaver-sitters forever.

I draw the line at working on the dam. They’re just going to have to do that themselves.