Video – Page 11 – Worth A Dam

Kit-licious

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, kits, Video August 15, 2011

Lovely footage of a beaver kit surveying his territory from Aigas a family home castle turned wildlife center near Inverness in the the Scottish highlands. The programe manager who posted it, Warwick Lister-Kaye, is a member of the save the free beavers of the River Tay site on facebook. I can’t embed the clip but if you click on the footage it should take you to a place you can watch it yourself.

Aigas is one of the private estates that keeps beavers. Paul Ramsy’s house at bamff is another to the south. There are several of these large, private estates that ‘brought back beavers’ to enrich their property and appeal to tourists. The feral free beavers of the river Tay (that are ruining the pristine attention span of the Official Beaver Trial located in Knapdale to the west) squeezed out from under some of their fencing or over a rock wall to try life on their own. It’s ironic because these homes helped prepare the scottish public for acceptance of beavers, and are now indirectly being blamed for ruining the trial. Go Figure.

There are a lot of good folk involved with the effort to save the free beavers of the River Tay. If you want to follow along you can join the facebook effort here. Many of them are not just wildlife-lovers but well-educated and working in related fields – I am constantly surprised to read a bit of research-based beaver gospel coming from the congretation. They have clearly won the first round and dissuaded officials from rounding up and trapping beavers for now. It’s not clear what the future will hold.

Good Wishes

heidi08 Beavers, Video August 4, 2011

Lisa Owen Viani of the SF Estuary project sent a post card this week to wish us well for the festival. The image is from Berlin and is called “Biberherz” which you shouldn’t need an interpreter to translate.

Good wishes also from Leonard & Lois Houston, Mike Callahan, Sharon Brown, Skip Lisle, Joe Cannon and Sherri Tippie. Gary Bogue kindly gave us one last plug, and the Times pointed folks in our direction.

There were two last minute cancellations yesterday but two volunteers stepped in to fill their shoes, so things are in a good place as we head into finish-friday. This morning our beavers had good things to share and it was nice to wish them private cheer before the big event.

I always like beaver mysteries…use the bubbles in this video to see where the author will surface.

This made me laugh. I guess after a while all that mud sticks to more than just the dam.

Fancy meeting you here!

heidi08 Recent Sightings, Video July 31, 2011

This morning’s visit to the dam started with shadows, first a gray tailed phantom below the secondary dam which turned out to be a raccoon walking feeling his paws blindly downstream in search of tasty morsels. Apparently it was working rather well because he went as far as I could see in his swirling, hurple-gait. (And yes hurple is a word and it describes exactly what raccoons do since their front and back legs aren’t the same length.)

Then Reed loomed onto the scene, floating very slowly so he could keep an eye on the interloper. When the raccoon moved out of view he decided to do some work and carried a couple of loads of mud onto the dam. It must have been very low tide because when this beaver came home he had to walk up the creek in places. (:30)

Someone had definitely eaten their wheaties that morning because after this roaming beaver returned s/he went straight to work, lifting mud onto the dam and poking branches into better places. Swirls of mud hovered at the banks and scooping locations, and often only the wrinkle of water or a fizz of bubbles told you where the beaver would emerge next. There were several rounds of this;

And equal potions of this

Then working beaver dove into the bank hole by the footbridge. I noticed Reed was in the water, watching this subtly. Then working beaver re-emerged and swam towards Reed, and they circled about in an exchange that I was so happy to see I didn’t attempt to film. (I haven’t seen beavers interact since…March?) Then working beaver and Reed retired to the bank lodge. And I cheerfully came home.

Yesterday we picked up this years tshirts, designed by Amelia Hunter and lovingly printed by Courtyard Customs. I think you’re really going to like them. If you can’t come next saturday to get your own, you can always order one off zazzle and add your own name or logo!

beaver Festival IV by hdshrnkr

Nothing to see here…

heidi08 Environmental, New Species, Video July 24, 2011

Just an old ditch where the flood waters run, brought to you by the Alhambra drainage channel…trash and debris, no wildlife to speak of, certainly not a baby muskrat the size of a potato…

Or turtles lurking about…

Or beavers…or that other weird thing that doesn’t show up at .23.

No fish could live in that storm drain, or anything that eats fish.

I don’t know what you’re all looking at. Haven’t you seen a storm drain before?

Here’s another story where crazy folk insist there’s wildlife at a beaver dam.

Resident upset pond drainage will displace beaver, heron

The Toll Bar Park stormwater management pond is scheduled to be drained this week and that doesn’t sit well with neighbourhood resident Raman Katari.

The Town of Richmond Hill will assume control of the pond, but not before sediments on the bottom are removed and the pond is cleaned. Therefore, the eco-system in and around the pond will need to temporarily move, which includes, beavers, blue heron, ducks and fish.

At least ducks and herons can fly to different water options in town and the hope is the resident Toll Bar beavers will relocate further down the German Mills Creek, which feeds into the pond. Fish on the other hand, might have a bit of a problem.

“There are no fish living in there,” said Lynn Barkey, Baif development manager. “Everything else can move.”

Outstanding

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, History, Video July 18, 2011

It’s Monday, and we all probably need encouragement for the week ahead. Here’s a new treasure from a long lost sunken ship. This is the best beaver educational footage you are likely to see anywhere – even on the BBC. The only thing it doesn’t explain is why Canada pretended like they were betrayed to learn Gray Owl wasn’t native when it was already common knowledge. The adorable footage at 2:43 is so captivating I can almost feel it the sensation.

High tide this morning, and a myriad of little fish, pocking the surface of the water so it looked like it was raining even though the sky was clear. A kingfisher was so excited he made a perch on the cyclone fence near the secondary dam while the green heron settled down in the middle. A snowy egret strode back and forth near the footbridge, wiggling his toes to attact interest and spearing the unwary.

The secondary was a soup again, although the tree trunk from Saturday was firmly in place. Reed came home at 6 carrying a sapling and swam through the dam with the alarmed look of someone trying to make their bed at the same time they’re getting out of it. A few more visits and it looked a little better, but certainly nothing to boast of. The water was so clear you could see his feet under the water when he would dive to excavate more mud.

A mysterious thing happened after Reed came back, and it happened on Saturday morning too. A second beaver approached the secondary but did not cross over. At the time I described it as having “one beaver outstanding”. He or she zig zagged back across the creek, but did not come any closer. In the end they disappeared into the east bank or beyond it. On Saturday when I saw this I believed all our beavers were accounted for, Dad within sight, Reed near by and the larger yearling busily mudding the primary dam. Today I was less sure of the cast of characters but still I wondered, who is this mystery beaver? Had a beaver sneaked over or through in a way that I missed? Or was this a stranger who wasn’t yet sure of his welcome? or HER welcome?

Is a new beaver applying to join the colony?

Well, I have no answer, only questions. This mystery will require several trips to the dam and a good deal less REM sleep on my part to solve, but never mind. It’s a question worth answering.