Watershed Highways…

heidi08 Environmental March 2, 2009

Every now and then in my beaver forays I encounter the character of the stalwart outdoorsman who has used Alhambra Creek for fishing, or for catching crawdads, or to launch his Kayak, and feels fairly familiar with the landscape. Some of these greet our keystone species discussion with suspicion.

“I know this creek. There are no (fill in the blank: beaver, otter, muskrat, mink) on this creek”

This always surprises me because it seems to suggest creeks have the static populations of prisons with familiar residents that you know by name like a predictable 70’s sitcom. It ignores the fact that creeks are really water highways, and animals use them to pass from one destination to another. Beavers alone have been known to go some 30 miles to find good habitat for dispersal, with females going farther distances to locate better feeding. Who would expect to know everything that passes through a corridor?

I wonder if the same man would stand on the freeway and say,

“I know 680. There are no porsche on 680.”

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=tzKTwJEjpac]

Family Reunion

heidi08 Recent Sightings February 28, 2009

Last night’s trip to the dam was nearly a huge disappointment. Since they had been coming out earlier to do repairs we went eagerly at 7:00 to see what could be seen. For what seemed like an eternity we saw only intoxicated Bertola’s diners coming out and talking loudly about urgent things. A muskrat slinked by, followed by an actual rat, but no signs of beavers until 8:00 pm.

Then a single cheerful kit emerged. He nibbled on a few treats, then set himself to work with mud repairing the dam. We had the light so you could see him underwater carrying mudballs atop his front paws and under his chin. (If you want to see how this is done check out the virtual tour footage at 1:40 from Moses which shows mom carrying mud in this way to the lodge.) After a few deep dives he began to get the idea of a beaver “shortcut”.

He started taking mud off the other side of the dam, and carrying it to the gap side! Then of course he started moving sticks. You just know he was saying to himself, “I don’t know why you guys are going all the way over there to get materials, there’s a big pile right here!”

We were still chuckling about that when suddenly it was like a champagne cork popped and all the beavers poured out of the lodge. Honestly, we haven’t seen such a beaver explosion since late summer. There were so many doing so much it was hard to count who was who. All three kits, and then a very large adult slipping over the dam, and then a pretty large adult right near us. At first I thought it was a yearling, but when it turned around we recognized her tail.

Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

MOM! Ahhhh beautiful tail notch of our matriarch! If the beaver near us was mom, the larger one that slinked over the dam could only be Dad. Mom sat there right beside us with a sea of beaver activity all around and munched on her treat as if the last six months had not even happened. It was astounding. Of course she has been seen from time to time, but not by us since October and Sheetpile madness. Last night both eyes looked perfectly healthy, and she looked perfectly astute, digging in between the sticks to find the tasty bits. I wished I could ask her, how have you been? Is the new lodge working out? I’m sorry about your kit. Do you hate that sheetpile as much as we do? I thought of this scene

Then, on through the afternoon, hour after hour…
Till he found them at last! On the three millionth flower!
“My friends!” cried the elephant. “Tell me! Do tell!
Are you safe? Are you sound? Are you whole? Are you well?”

Horton Hears a Who: Dr. Seuss

She did not answer, but she looked all of those things. Two of the kits came to whine about whatever she was doing, and then she did something that made our eyes glow.She walked to the bank and reached up to get a mouthful/armful of hay and swam with it back to the lodge.

Beaver bedding!

Now I have read that beavers bring leaves and grass into the lodge for bedding, and that they actually change it more often than humans did in the middle ages. Still this motion seemed so determined it was impossible not to think of nesting behavior. We felt fairly certain that mom beaver was pregnant. The footage we saw last year of them mating was early January, so mom might be a month along. Beaver gestation is 105-107 days, so May is about right although we don’t seem to spot offspring until June.

It’s a funny thing. We were so happy to see mom again that we floated home, but she seemed to take the great pleasure of seeing us again entirely in stride.

Tree Trimming

heidi08 Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers February 27, 2009

I got an email from beaver friend GH yesterday saying that our beavers had done a little nibbling behind starbucks. Would the city be upset and should the remaining trees be wrapped? We went down this morning to have a look. A tree was felled and mostly chewed on the patch beside the Sharkey building. Another up above ward street. Ahhh the chitter chatter of little teeth in the night.

I don’t think there’s an alarm call. These are scrubby arroyo willow that will coppice and sprout new growth. It was felled onto the bank so it didn’t even block flow. We are currently working with the city engineer on a new tree planting plan for this spring. Stop by and check out how those discerning beavers nibbled around Arroyo and ignored the black willow. Research says the are supposed to eat both, but the beavers are clearly unfamiliar with the data, because they consistently avoid one and chomp the other.

This morning we saw a very hard-working kit “mudding” the dam. He would dive underwater, and carry a mudball with a visible murky trail, and then add it to the dam. He was looking much more adept and clearly enjoying himself. The Mr. and Mrs. Mallard who have adopted the viewing platform waddled close to see if we had any bread to share, and a beautiful egret flew by overhead.

Not bad for sheetpile creek.

By the way, did you see the moon last night? An amazing sliver crescent with a ghostly backdrop of earthshine behind it. It looked for all the world that we were living on a planet in a vast solar system. Who knew?

Big Sky Beavers

heidi08 Beaver News, Video February 25, 2009

Yesterday our own wildlife VP, Cheryl Reynolds, sent me the link to this Terra episode on beavers. Click on the title to go watch the trailer or the entire thing, its ten minutes of nice photography and basic beaver benefit 101.

TERRA 213: Leave It to Beavers

9:51mins | 2006-05-01 | Produced by: Grue, Amanda

Beavers are often thought of as cute and perhaps even comical little critters. But have you ever stopped to think about their amazing engineering skill? What if we told you that beavers were helping the environment long before it became fashionable? Join filmmaker Amanda Grue as she shows us just how cool Beavers actually are!

Of course I marched straight out to research the researcher, who was not familiar to me. Dr. Eby Assisstant Professor of Aquatic Vertibrate Ecology at the University of Montana. I was very pleased with her willingness to examine beaver impact and consider their role in helping the environment, but I was surprised the newer research about impact on birds was not mentioned. Similarly unmentioned was the use of flow devices to control problematic behavior, which may be a director, rather than a researcher, omission. Finally I went looking for more information on her position on native fish and beavers, because I wasn’t sure how she accounted for the fact that we used to have a lot more of both. I found this paper which I’m still working through.

I will say I was especially intrigued by her interest in researching the social attitudes and impact of beavers…. Lisa! Have we ever got a story for you…

Closed for Renovation…

heidi08 Beavers February 19, 2009

Last night we looked at the cloudless sky and scurried down to the creek to see how the beavers were getting on. All the dams had broader gaps than usual and running water pouring over the top. At the first dam we noticed a kit proudly carrying a little stick like the Olympic torch and poking it into the soil near the breach. He’d pause to eat a snack or two, then swim back to the grindstone, tucking little bits at a time. Bob Arenbeck, who might know beavers better than anyone (because, as he says, he “watches them rather than studying them”), wrote me once that part of the reason why colonies get so much accomplished is that beavers find work irresistible. One will start chewing on a tree or laying mud, and another will join in just because its “there”.

Very soon a yearling came along to join the work party. He carried a long branch which slid intertwined with the new sticks with surprisingly little effort. The massive lego was snapped into place with a series of bites and back he went for another. His mood was more focused than the kit’s and there was no stopping for a tasty morsel.

At the east end of the dam there is a gnarled tree root left over from the sheet-pile palooza, and underneath it is a little crawl space where the beavers also brought repairs. I guess the dam continues through it and there was some more patchwork to be done. A mud ball was next. It is always fun to spot one coming; the dark sphere in the water and a murky trail as it moves closer.

Laying mud is delicate work, and mature beavers seem to be fairly secretive when they do it. Check out the virtual tour video to see mom carrying mud onto the top of the lodge. She does it by walking on her hind legs with the mud braced between her chin and forearms. We didn’t see anything so grand, but our hard working yearling carried the mud ball into the hole and placed it exactly right, then gave us a indignant tail slap when our excited “did you see that???” got too noisy.

The kit was interested in the mud ball, and dove several times to get one of his own, but usually came back empty handed. Older brother was more focused, and brought another branch to snap into place. There was clearly a lot of work to be done, and he disliked our being there. High-water leaves no time for company. We got two more tail slaps before we convinced ourselves to leave.

Every now and then I am reminded how extremely exciting it is to have beavers right here in downtown Martinez. Last night we saw them repairing the primary dam and patching up the edges around Skip’s flow device. How cool is that? How do they know what to do? How can they be so adept in the middle of the night in the middle of the current in the middle of a recession? Honestly sometimes they just gobsmack me.

Which is good, because, frankly, raising beavers is a lot of work…