Tag: Bob Arnebeck

Beaver Orange is the New Black

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Environmental, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's saving beavers now? December 8, 2016

Beaver appears to be causing flooding to land on, near prison

A beaver appears to be causing some flooding issues to land on and near the Hutchinson Correctional Facility, but it looks like there isn’t much anyone can do about it.

Jeff Nichols, City of Hutchinson public works maintenance/flood control superintendent, said a beaver dam has caused water to back up along the Cow Creek in this area in years past and it wouldn’t be atypical for it to happen again.

In the past couple of days the high water has been on the west and east side of K-61 between Avenue G and Blanchard.

Nichols said the creek crosses multiple private properties and it is the owners’ responsibility to maintain it – including beaver dams.

Craig Curtis, Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism regional wildlife supervisor, said based on Kansas law you can get rid of the beaver, but you legally can’t get rid of the dam.

Curtis said the landowner can reach out to the department for information on a water level control device that can be put inside the dam to keep the water an at acceptable level.

Hutchinson correctional facility is in Kansas, where you are apparently allowed to kill beavers as long as you don’t destroy dams. Not sure about the logic in that – I’m sure it’s flood related but I would think that if beavers aren’t around anymore to tend the dam it will eventually break and cause flooding anyway?

I’m pleased at least to see that Kansas knows about flow devices. What do you want to bet that paper would describe the expensive and unreliable Clemson and not Mike or Skip’s Designs?

A pleasant winter trip to the pond from Larry Weber of Minnesota makes me wish that we had snow. Sure feels cold enough anyway.

Northland Nature: A recent visit to a beaver pond reveals.

With all these changes — cold, snow and the beginning of the freeze up — it was time to visit to a beaver pond.

snowbeaver — John Warner photograph, Montana

Each November, I like to wander through the woods and adjacent field to a favorite beaver pond. This year, I was able to observe a few others as well. I like to see if the beavers are still present and how well prepared they are for the coming winter season. Three beaver lodges that I went to in past weeks revealed newly cut branches on the top with saplings in the nearby water to serve as food. None were large, but each showed activity. Often in the previous weeks of AutWin, I was able to watch the beavers as they swam by.

As I went towards the large beaver pond, I walked in the new snow cover. AutWin may be over, but now the next chapter in the seasonal changes begins. Though I cannot see many of the low plants that I saw in the woods last week, I could see the animal tracks that tell of their activity during these recent days and nights. Even before I left the yard, I found footprints of deer, squirrel, deer mice and shrew. Within the woods, I noted where a ruffed grouse and fox have passed and a runway of snowshoe hare. Out in the field, I found the tunnel openings in the snow made from underneath by the local field mice. These vole holes are always very common early in the snow season. Arriving at the beaver pond, I saw a few coyotes had left their tracks as they moved along the shore. A more adventurous raccoon tried walking on the new slushy ice. And out in the center of the pond, I saw what I came here to observe: the beaver lodge.

The structure is large and solid. Looking it over, I saw the aquatic dwelling site has many recent cut branches on it; the beavers have worked much in previous weeks to reinforce the strength of their home. Nearby in the water are many branches and twigs sticking up above ner photogfraph, Montanathe pond’s surface. This large gathering of woody material tells of a well-stocked cache of food that allows the beavers to have meals all winter. Though the cache is wet and cold, it does give enough substance and nutrition for these large water rodents. The entire pond was covered with ice, except for a small open space near the lodge. Here the beavers are able exit from their unique house if they desire to do so. (I have previously found their tracks on the nearby shore, but not this time.)

From the size of the lodge and cache, it looks like a whole family will be wintering here. I have visited this beaver pond every November for years and nearly always I find what I saw that day. They appear to be doing fine. It was a good walk and visit to the beaver pond and I wish them well for the coming winter.

I love to think about beavers planning ahead for the snow. It never ceases to amaze me that they make a food cache and share with family members. My dream is to someday see the cracks they make in the ice before it freezes up so they can have access as long as possible. I wish I could see how they do it, Do you think they use their heads or strong backs? Beavers in snow work so much harder than ours. But it never troubles them. It’s not like you ever see a mass migration of beaver retirees moving to the warmer temperatures so they can take it easy in their golden years.

Of course this beautiful glimpse of beaver under the ice is from our good friend Bob Arnebeck. Thanks Bob.

Beavers and Birds

heidi08 Beavers and Birds, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental, Who's saving beavers now? September 6, 2015

So after yesterday’s unplacid Placer research I started to think about how I could do more outreach there and start educating the people about the reasons not to kill beavers. (Because obviously CDFW was going to be zero help). I presented on fish twice last year in the area (trout and salmon) and thought there might be another toehold we were overlooking. What about Audubon? The regional chapter is the Sierra Foothill Audubon Society which includes Placer, Nevada and Yuba counties. What if I could talk to them directly about the relationship between birds and beavers? They publish a newsletter every other month, what if there was a beaver and bird column as well? That would be a good way to at least start the conversation. And get folks thinking that every time they remove a beaver they are harming a bird.

So I went hunting for their website and read up about their leadership. It started me looking for a quote by John James Audubon about beavers, because I thought that would be a good way to fashion an approach. I was more than a little mortified to find that Mr. Audubon actually went out beaver trapping in preparation for his Viparious Quadrapeds volume. But I guess I shouldn’t have been. Everybody was doing it. (I suppose the only reason John Muir didn’t trap beavers when he grew up in Scotland was because they had been extinct 300 years, and by the time he got to Wisconsin they were already trapped out.) In 1843 John James Audubon went on a Missouri river trek with an old trapper looking to look for beaver. He was lucky enough to see footprints and hear a tail slap. But the beaver population had already been decimated by then and I was delighted to learn he caught nothing. The journal entries read like a post-apocalypse sci fi novel. Just look.

May 12 – We passed the river called the Sioux Pictout,[ a small stream formerly abounding with Beavers, Otters, Muskrats, etc., but now quite destitute of any of these creatures.

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June 3rd – We passed four rivers to-day; the Little Chayenne, the Moroe, the Grand, and the Rampart. The Moroe is a handsome stream and, I am told, has been formerly a good one for Beaver.

Beaver guru Bob Arnebeck has a charming column about it here that I was delighted to find. It concludes with this fitting failure.

Audubon closed the day’s Journal with a wish: “I hope I may have a large Beaver tomorrow.”

He didn’t. People back in the boat down river saw the beaver swim by them and away. Audubon had to be content with just taking apart the lodge. Three men climbed inside it. Audubon and Provost were too plump to even try that. Audubon “secured some large specimens of the cuttings used to build the lodge and a pocketful of chips.” He gave no report on Provost’s feelings. The Mountain Man hurried off to hunt an elk. Audubon headed back to St. Louis a few days later.

Good Riddance! I thought the whole shocking story needed a graphic.

Well okay, Mr. Audubon was going to be of no help in my quest for nice things to say about beavers and birds. But I already wrote one article for an audubon newsletter about beaver building bird habitat. Maybe that would help me establish first contact.

So I wrote the president and vice president and politely asked to start a conversation about beavers and their importance to birds. And William Hall wrote back and said he was very interested in my doing both, he’s a wildlife management graduate from Humboldt and loves beavers. He also happens to be their program chair and their grant chair. He suggested a possible June 2016 date with an article in the November issue of the Phoebe newsletter. He noted there were beavers near his home in Grass Valley and they had effectively plugged a culvert to make a pond that attracted Virginia Rail and Wood Duck. The dam was constantly being ripped out by the road manager, but he kept gamely rebuilding.

Ahh. Silly me. Sometimes in my effort to function as beaver publicist I forget that they already do a great deal of work on their own to spread the word. Good for them.

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Hank posted this lovely photo of the napatopia kits yesterday, but I noticed a notch in the tail that I hadn’t seen before. I asked about it and now Robin, Hank and Rusty are fiercely going back through prior photos to see when it appeared. It’s possible some beaver or otter took a nip, like they did all those years ago to our old mom. But it’s possible that there’s just a weird leaf or photo anomaly going on. I’ll let you know what they decide.

Here’s video of the three kits in June very kindly offering us their tails for comparison. (Warning: if your zip code is 94553 you might need a kleenex after viewing.)

Beaver Parenting 101

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, kits January 18, 2013

When I shot the footage to the right of Jr approaching mom and whining so plaintively and mom ignoring him, I was feeling so bad about mom not paying attention that I wondered about calling BPS (beaver protective services). Instead, I sent it to Bob Arnebeck (still furrowed with worry) because he has been watching beavers in New York since forever and has seen all possible beaver interactions.

Amazingly enough, he wrote back:

Now that’s a nice beaver Mom. Often they are pretty rough with a mewing kit. Thanks for sending the clip. Bob

Which just goes to show you that everything is relative, and you should always ask an expert before you panic! Here’s some footage he shot of mom not paying attention to a mewing kit.

Bank Lodge e-VENTS

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, History June 13, 2012

This fascinating picture is from the photoblog Along the Airline Trail by Stan Malcom of CT and captures the surprising and watery moment when a cozy beaver lodge stopped being a cozy beaver lodge. It makes me think of those images from Katrina of folks retreating to roof, waiting for help . This can’t be an uncommon occurrence for beavers given that they live in water and water changes with the season. As good as they are at controlling and directing water, there must be moments like these, when even beavers have to wait out the floods in relative discomfort.

This makes me think of that big storm back in March of 2011 which washed out their dams and their beautiful lodge. The next morning we saw footprints in the mud where there home had been and I imagined our kits coming back and saying, where is our house? Kind of like how the inside of a tent, which could be a child’s cozy fort, disappears when the tent is collapsed and folded away.

Since our beavers lost their lodge, and the hardworking mother who always made them for them, they have become ‘bank dwellers’. Which, I’m learning, brings mysteries if its own.This illustration is from the chapter on beavers by Joseph Grinnell, published in 1937. He gets a lot of things woefully wrong in this chapter, saying California beavers don’t live above 300 meters elevation or leave footprints, but I have always thought this is an excellent drawing. Recently I got to wondering how beavers breathe in bank lodges. Island lodges have vent holes on the top so that fresh oxygen can get through. Sometimes I read descriptions of lodges in winter with steam rising from the vent, as if the beavers were inside smoking! Do bank lodges have vents? With all those hot bodies breathing into the same space, they must need fresh air from time to time!

Of course I did what I always do with these questions, and passed them around. I thought this morning I would share what wiser folks had to say about the answers. Enjoy!

Skip Lisle: Beaver Deceivers International

They make the tops of the chambers close to the surface of the ground so they “breath.” Because the ceilings are thin they are relatively easy to break through and therefore chambers often “open up” and can be viewed from above.

Owen Brown: Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife

Yes, but they are hard to find. Many lodges start out as bank burrows on a stream and then the sticks are placed on top of the vent holes on the bank. Then once the lodge is well under way they dam the stream and voila a lodge seems to have been built in the middle of a beaver pond.

When we raised 4 babies in our farm pond they built a bank burrow without me knowing since the entrance was under water. I noticed a pile of sticks on the shore and I moved them to a nicer location. The next day they had moved them back to the original location and that is how I found the vent hole. It is not very big at the surface and hard to find.

Mike Callahan: Beaver Solutions

Often the lodges are dug out under the root canopy of a bush or small tree which prevents the roof of the den from collapsing as well as allowing ventilation to occur. On rare occasions I’ll see sticks laid on the ground above the burrow as a “roof”. However, sometimes the ground seems thick where there does not seem to be a root system or roof of sticks for ventilation. On those occasions I am baffled as to how fresh air gets in.

Sherri Tippie: Wildlife 2000

Well, I’m sure they do because they’ve been doing it like that for a long time. I have seen however, I don’t know exactly how to explain it . . . . places behind the opening to a den where there are openings with sticks laced together – like an air hole. And, I’ve seen bank dens with nothing of the sort. The thing I’ve realized about beaver is, they really are all different. Some beaver do things one way,others do it differently. It really gets interesting when it comes to scent mounds. I have a slide of a scent mound that is so interesting!! I didn’t know what it was until I climbed down the bank and smelled it! It was a purple area in the sand, and it looked like a human had taken their four fingers and made a ran it criss crossed them. There were NO sticks! Just this purple place in the sand. But I would know that smell anywhere! It was really neat.

Joe Cannon: The Lands Council

Hmm. .. good question. I’ve been assuming that they don’t raise the kits in the type of bank lodge without the branch cover/ reinforcement on top (and venting). So you’re only seeing the bank holes with the Martinez beavers? I’m curious about this also.

Bob Arnebeck

Whenever I’ve explored abandoned bank lodges the extensive burrows in the bank have exhausted me — or I should say my kid, I used to push him into them with a flashlight. I’ve never pried in the winter looking for vent holes but the coyotes seem to have no trouble finding a place to dig in and I assume got a scent. In some cases the beavers seemed to be paying attention because they covered any holes that were dug. Of course in high water the entrance to burrows might be below the water but my impression is that the burrows are generally dug with part of the burrow entrance being open to the air which is why the beavers then pile on logs to hide the entrance. That said, I have seen beavers torpedo out of burrows entrances completely below the water, but that was in pretty porous bank of loose soil with several burrows with some completely open to the air. I think beavers are probably more comfortable in burrows than in lodges, at least my kid seemed to be.

Leonard Houston: Beaver Advocacy Committee

If the beavers are living in there then there is ventilation this is how the lodge or den is dried and vent holes often double as plunge holes allowing beavers to escape predators without making it back to the water

I have attached two photos one is a vent hole into a bank den as you can see it is to small for the animals to enter, the second is inside the bank den photoed by sticking the camera down the vent…….. there was two underwater entrances and a plunge hole and tunnel some 15 ft from the waters edge…..no kits were present at this site but we did have a breeding pair living here

It appears that the consensus of the experts is that bank lodges DO have vents to let in fresh air. So think of that the next time you’re watching the creek for movements!