Out For A Swim

Beaver Flurry

heidi08 Beaver News, Educational April 10, 2009

Worth A Dam’s calendar is officially over booked. We are struggling to finish our amazing beaver habitat diorama for John Muir’s Birthday/Earthday next weekend. We were invited to attend the “Parking lot launch” for the Environmental Studies Academy students two weeks later, and we’re at the environmental fair for Wild Birds Unlimited the weekend after that. That takes us to Mother’s Day weekend and gives us two weeks off before the big train trip and beaver presentation May 27. Don’t ask about June.

In the middle of which I promised the John Muir Association I’d offer some guided beaver tours for the silent auction and have to design some certificates for them. I wanted to be dying eggs this weekend, instead I will be trying to make miniature cattails and tiny beaver chews. These pictures might be the closest I get to egg festivities, but they’re not bad. I assume you all got the identity theft warning email? If you didn’t go here: I don’t know what massive ad agency crew took these pictures but they are amazing and must represent hours and months of hard work. The email is titled “This Easter Beware of Identity Theft”.

Imagine the scope of this project: first you have to select the animals for matching and then get them to tolerate each other like old friends. I can only hope they weren’t medicated…and that the photographer was, because that must have been one stressful, animal stained photoshoot.

Anyone want to volunteer their dog or cat that looks like a beaver?

Great Dams! Shame About the Beavers….

heidi08 Environmental April 9, 2009

Matt Cawood, agricultural writer from Australia, began a series of articles on his blog for Stock and Land entitled “Beavers and the Murray.” In it he extols the book with which I hope by now you are all familiar: Eric Collier’s Three Against the Wilderness. Like others he was interested in the effectiveness of trapping small ponds of water through little dams and how it created a lusher, greener habitat that could withstand even dry periods. I was overly excited by the article, and suggested he might want to get in touch with our New Zealand friend who is talking about this very point with the local magistrate this month. He wrote back with a tone that could be politely described as gubenatorial,

I can’t imagine beavers themselves can or should play any role in Australia’s environment. It’s the principle of slowing water’s flow through the landscape that is interesting.

To paraphrase the Monks…Great Dams! Shame about the Beavers….

Okay so today is part II of his series in which he reveals that his secret to water holding isn’t beavers, its a series of low leaky weirs that hold the water back and an abundance of reeds that help them do so. The water is slowed and filtered, and the water table rises and in the hard rains the land is able to keep some of the aquatic wealth that otherwise pours uselessly out to the sea. He wonders what would the effect have been if such dams had been built on miles of wetlands 20 years ago?

Pointedly, he does not wonder if beavers have any role to play in Australia’s water problems. He also doesn’t wonder about any costs for building or maintaining these “leaky weirs” and whether it would be problematic for human hands to do so over miles of creek bed across the entire country. Another commenter wrote that beavers were reintroduced in South America and look at all the trouble they’ve caused. I guess that means that Australian farmers never prune their trees to make them grow back, because the failure to coppice is what makes the fate of South American trees different, not the lack of eager beaver predators.

Obviously his basic point is that beavers structurally may be onto something, but the beavers themselves are not welcome. Hmm. I wonder how Mr. Collier would feel about that takeaway from his novel?

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.

Lovely family, shame if something were to happen to them…

heidi08 City Reports April 6, 2009

Defending our beavers has been a constant struggle against threat of one kind or another. We were warned that lives could be lost, that buildings would collapse, that supporters would be sued, and that the website would be come a target for hate-mail the world wide. With each subsequent challenge the threats would increase. Of course when you feel most threatened, you instinctively feel most vulnerable and unable to achieve your goals. However I have learned through painstaking observation that the reverse is usually true.

The closer you get to power the more ominous the response, and the surer your success. Threat comes when you are strong, not weak.

I mention this because this weekend one of our beaver loyals ran into a certain councilman who kindly wondered whether the “beaver people” were planning some kind of anti-Redevelopment campaign. He expressed concern that this could harm the beavers and bring “Stigma”, and he hoped that wasn’t true.

Are we both hearing the same theme song in the background here? “Nice Colony, shame if something were to happen to them”. (I mean other than lowering their dam by three feet, removing all their food and installing sheetpile through their lodge.) It would be a shame for the beavers to be tainted by a controversial issue that has been dramatically argued in this city since 1950. We wouldn’t want to bring controversy to these peaceful uncontroversial and uncritically accepted rodents, right?

For the record, Worth A Dam doesn’t have an “official” position on the Redevelopment issue. We’re beaver people, and we are committed to beavers. We are a heterogeneous group, and voted for Kennedy, Alford, McCain, Obama and Ron Paul. This is the way its supposed to be, where people set aside their differences to work on common goals, support each other’s shared interests and make space for things that they can’t agree on. I don’t expect readers of this website to agree with my opinion on everything, including RDA. You know how to contact me and express your thoughts as well. To be honest, if the city had ever sat me down and said, ‘if you will make sure beaver people don’t have any opposition for our RDA we’ll keep them safe and build the most beautiful habitat for them you’ve ever seen’, I’d have seriously thought twice. But of course the city didn’t do that. They didn’t ever view us as important enough to promise anything, or even vote on the issue. They just want to threaten that if we offer any opposition to an RDA they’ll support the beavers even less than they do already. (Get your nano-tools so we can measure the incremental shift.)

Honestly, their sheetpile-palooza was for me the single best indicator about whose interests they are likely to protect in this city, with or without an RDA. Warning a beaver loyalist that talking about RDA could harm the beavers is italian old school. Here’s the kindest version of what I think about that particular councilman’s concern for the possible stigma my having an opinion will bring the beavers…

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=0LnJskwydvM&feature]