In this crazy beaver-thirsty world, it is sure nice to be reminded that there are still a few folks out there getting it right. Take the Mill Pond Preserve for instance in southern New York outside New Palz.
Beavers help shape New Paltz’s Mill Brook Preserve
Beavers serve as nature’s hydroengineers, creating ponds and lakes, diverting streams, slowing stormwater runoff and designing landscapes that welcome a myriad of waterfowl and fauna. Not the least of these is the great blue heron, which can often be seen perched in or around the beaver lodge at the Mill Brook Preserve in New Paltz.
Walking or running around this preserve – an oasis in the middle of New Paltz, sandwiched between a continuing-care center for the elderly and an elementary school, along the Mill Brook stream (Tributary 13) – provides its daily dose of beaverdom. There are new trees felled, others being stripped, dams being packed with mud, and lodges being abandoned or built. There is also a network of canals that the beaver have dug hundreds of yards into the woods, where they can drag and then float the branches and tree limbs that they’ve sawn off with their toothy grins to whatever aquarian project they are working on. There are freshly scraped and girdled tree trunks with piles of wood shavings spread about, often in a circle or semicircle, as though the creatures were attending nightly carpentry classes and donning hardhats with headlamps while the rest of the world sleeps.
Oooh I want to go. That sounds lovely.
Each day is like a beaver Advent calendar, with excitement building toward a full completed dam or the discovery of a felled tree or the rare-but-spectacular sighting of one of these creatures slinking about the pond – or, even more fantastic, slapping their paddle-shaped tails (up to nine inches long and six inches wide) against the water to let you know that they mean business.
Since beavers do most of their work at night, catching them in the industrious act of woodworking or lodge-making is no easy task. It can make one beaver-crazed, hiding out at twilight to catch a glimpse of these 25-to-65-pound mammals working their magic.
I love love LOVE the idea of the beaver advent calendar! I’m designing one right now as we speak! Just think how much fun it would be with each little window to open some species that beavers help or some way that beavers work to make things better. Ooh maybe christmas would be a complete healthy beaver pond!
Beavers are certainly waste-not/want-not creatures who will often utilize the remains of an old lodge or abandoned lodge for a new home. According to Frazier, how long they occupy a den can vary depending on how rich their surrounding habitat is. “It’s extremely variable, but on average about five years,” he said. “In a quality habitat, sites can be occupied 30 to 35 years out of a hundred.” Mostly, beavers abandon sites when food availability becomes too low or the lodge begins to rot over time.
The habitats that beavers create with their dams produce rich and viable ecosystems for muskrats, minks, otters, raccoons, wood ducks, mallards, black ducks, teals, kingfishers, great blue herons, green herons, brook trout and various frog and salamander species. They also invite a variety of flora and fauna, including cattails and water lilies.
You don’t need to tell us that! But we sure like when you do. Thank you Erin Quinn. What a magnificent read to start the weekend off right.
Watching their work, day in and day out, is mesmerizing and somewhat mystifying. They do almost all of their felling and building at night. But in the mornings things have shifted, and the mosaic they helped to paint and the frame they’ve built around it is slightly altered. The only clue could be a dam elongated, a slow leak, a fresh cut, wood shavings underfoot, or that flash of a paddle tail or those brown eyes darting just above the water and then submerging again.
If you’ll exclusive me I must go work on my advent calendar idea. I have the perfect image in mind,
