THE WORTH A DAM STORY

Spring at the Dam Site

heidi08 New Species April 14, 2009

The fourth (almost) dam to be exact. Jon spied 7 mallard ducklings yesterday and this specimen, a western Grebe.

This isn’t our photo, but that’s our fella. We’ll get the photographers out soon. I’m happy to see the ducklings again this year, and wondered when they’d appear. One of the treats last year was seeing how much more protected family numbers were by the beaver dams. Instead of seeing a progressive attrition (one day 8 baby ducks, then five, then three) we saw family ranks that kept their numbers until maturity. The dams make a more protected habitat, and this year the would have been 4 times as protected, although the city interfered with the progress by removing vegetation and installing sheetpile. The beavers did what they could to mitigate.

Still, baby ducks are always a good thing.

Branta Canadensis Meets Castor Canadensis

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, New Species April 13, 2009

Our very own Cheryl Reynolds attended Saturday’s Pollinator Class at Mt. View Sanitation and was able to meet naturalist Jeff Alvarez, who will be helping us with our interpretive signs. He is very knowledgeable about and interested in beavers. They talked about the many ways beavers impact habitat, and the lodges being useful to all sorts of surprising species. Remember that lodges are lined with mud and highly insulated. During the day they are full of toasty cuddling beavers, and that makes the outside of the lodge warmer than the surrounding area. We saw this in person when we measured with the non-contact thermometer during the sheetpile installation. This is why lodges are so appealing to reptiles, why we used to see the pond turtles sleeping on the old lodge, and why the variety of snakes around and atop a lodge are greater than a similar area without a lodge.

It’s also why this Canadian goose, and many many others, decides to make her nest atop it. The eggs are warmed on both sides, and mom has an excellent vantage point.

For other photographs of geese nesting on lodges, go here.

Don’t miss this

heidi08 New Species April 8, 2009

Click on photo to visit nest site and stay tuned for some great avian parenting.

Just when they had it so nice again…

heidi08 New Species April 8, 2009

Yesterday’s deluge brought alot of water in a very short time. Jon went down twice to check on our three strong dams and how they were holding up. Water was flowing freely over the top but things damaged looked minor. I’m sure by this morning the cumulative wear has been substantial. Yesterday the primary dam was newly mudded and looking pristine. What I call the “annex” (to the rear of the Escobar bridge) was holding water deep enough to cover some tulles. I watched not one but two green herons hunting in the creek, this one along the shore were a foolishly leaping frog met his doom.

I was at work during yesterdays downpour. I heard approaching thunder and saw a horizontal streak of lighting errupt very near my office. My friend from Florida wouldn’t have allowed me to stay in the building, but I thought it was thrilling. I’m less thrilled about another round of paintstaking repairs for our beavers. But they apparently don’t mind.

Robin hour

heidi08 New Species April 7, 2009

Does a cheerful Robin sleep outside your bedroom? Odds are there’s one not too far from where you live. One year we had the dubious fortune of having one sleep every night right by the bedroom window. The sleeping wasn’t a problem. The waking, was another thing entirely.

Robins have some of the most accomplished song around, and they can project mightily. They manage this because of their highly complex syrinx muscles. A syrinx is the vocal organ of the bird, just like the larynx is for the human. Instead of being located in the throat it is shaped like an upside down hollow Y just at the entrance to the lungs. As macabre as it sounds, this was part of our daily knowledge, when we were harvesting our own chickens, because the body would still make noise after the head was removed. Now the concept is almost completely foreign.

The complexity of the pairs of muscles entering the syrinx determine how intricate the song of the bird is going to be. The simple ‘coo coo’ of a dove, for example, means he was blessed with very few muscles, while the momentous joy of a robin shows one of the most advanced. And he knows it, and thinks you should know it too.A syrinx is a much more advanced organ that the one we have. With separate lungs controlling each half, it can produce sound continuously and some of the most advanced species can create double sounds at the same time.

Before spring the Robins begin the morning assault. Believe me I know. When it was still daylight savings you might hear them starting from 4 in the morning. The poet in me would say they were “greeting the dawn” but there wasn’t much dawn to speak of at that hour. I think they were greeting the end of my sleep.

One dark morning I had a plane to catch and had to wake up at 3 in the morning. After making sure I had everything packed and ready to go, I crept out to the tree where the robin slept for some petty revenge. Hadn’t he woken me every morning for the last four weeks? Fair’s fair. It was his turn. Everything was silent. I tightened my feeble larynx the best I could and began my assault. CHIRP CHIRP SING CHRIP WARBLE!!! How did he like it?

The robin fluttered awake with no alarm whatsoever, and immediately began his morning chorus an hour early. Apparently morning starts for Robins whenever they’re awake. They don’t have a snooze button and they’re always happy to start the day.