Out For A Swim

Hard At Work

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere March 8, 2009

This is the time of year we all feel empathy for our hardworking beavers, who fix the dam one night only to have it pour rain the next and wash it out again. Now of course they have three potential washouts sites to deal with and after the water takes everything out to sea they have to find materials to pack them all again. Sometimes, in my most desperate hour, I have a fantasy of bringing down sandbags to reinforce the dam. Can you image how the property owner would respond to that?

All this to say I got this update from Linda last night on the work load…

Btw I saw (Beaver friend JO) pacing along the dams last night when I got back from dinner. I can’t say as I blame her because I was feeling a tad pensive myself. So at 4:30 when we were down there watching the beavers “spring” into action I texted her and let her know there were hard at work. I thought I would save her from worrying too much, sure enough she showed up there at 5:00am to see for herself. One of the bigger beavers was still hard at it at 8:30 when I left.

Work isn’t something beavers “complete”, and its indistinguishable from play and rest and feeding. Our beavers aren’t planning an early retirement so in truth they just respond to washouts the same way every time with no cumulative wear. Maybe humans would say, “that’s it! I can’t take it anymore!” But beavers just pick up a log and get to work.

More evidence of beaver persistence came this weekend as we visited the colony site on Tribal lands on the Sierra-Nevada border that we spotted a while ago. Last time we had seen no fresh evidence and many of the dams were damaged. The whole visit was so depressing I had thought the fantastic habitat may have finally suffered an end at the hands of a trapper.

Yesterday there was evidence of a wonderful recovery. The dams were fixed and holding snowmelt well, and every three or four feet of thicket was marked by distinct beaver chews. Obviously things are alive and well in the colony, and I couldn’t have been happier.

Sometimes I think these “near misses” happen because trappers come, and don’t get all the family members, and it takes them a while to rebound. Sometimes they might remove a colony and have another move in. Whatever causes the mysterious recovery, I was happy to see it.

I’ll be down checking out our colony tonight. No one’s reported seeing a yearling for a while. I read an article the other day saying the average date of dispersal for a northwest colony was February 19th. I wonder if ours have moved on, but we haven’t got any panicked phone calls yet from folk upriver. I’ll let you know what we see.

Day Light Savings Beavers

heidi08 Environmental March 8, 2009

Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead an hour tonight. The time change is very bad news for those of us who have to get up at seven on Monday but very good news for beaver watching. Jon pointed out to me that my math skills are atrocious, so disregard my previous beaver ETA and expect them out later both morning and evening.

Still we are heading towards longer days and more visible beavers, and that is a plus in my book.

If the popcorn flowers aren’t making you feeling “springy” enough, maybe you should plan a trip this month to Point Reyes to see some remarkable fields of Douglas Iris, or if you love hidden treasures, stop by Samuel Taylor and go hunting for some Trillium.

Spring is coming whether we’re ready or not.

Almost at Buckeye Season

heidi08 Environmental March 6, 2009

Do you know our native California Buckeye Tree? It is apparently undelicious to beavers, but produces some of the loveliest season changes I know of. It is a fractal sillouette in the winter, bursts with flowers in the spring and early summer, and makes a lovely birded canopy for the rest of the year. It producers massive chestnut-like seeds whose smooth surface are perfect for juggling or bouncing off your sister’s head. And long about this time of year, the seeds do something amazing.

They plant themselves!

All through the year the shiny brown nut lays on the ground, uneaten by even the hungriest squirrels. Then when its had just the right mix of sunshine and moisture, it sunddenly wakens like a sleeper cell, splits open and sends a purposful, assertive, extra-terrestial seeming root into the soil.

Once its got its grip on the earth, it hangs on for dear life and begins to grow in earnest. You see these lovely seeds holding their spot on the spinning planet with one arm, and reaching up to the sun with the other. A green leafed shoot begins and the tree is officially on its way.

Some years you find hundreds of these arboreal accomplishments, sometimes one or none, but its a wonderous thing to witness, and I’m sure it anchors us more strongly to our earth when we do. Drive by your nearest EBRP open space and see how the wonders are coming along this season.

With things being so churning and unstable in the world, I think we should all learn from the sprouting buckeye, and hold tight to what we need, while still reaching for what we dream: soil and sunshine both.

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]

The Internet’s Broken

heidi08 Beaver News, City Reports, In the News March 2, 2009

Weekends are usually slow traffic here at the Worth A Dam Cafe. We usually get about 150 hits on saturday, less than half of our weekday traffic. Its possible that’s because on the weekend people have time to go look at beavers for themselves and don’t need to read my writing about them. It’s possible that beaver fans have such rich and exciting lives there’s no time to look at the webpage. Or its possible that beavers are really only interesting enough to read about at work, where the competition is less stiff and distracting.

(Which isn’t a complaint, because sometimes I appreciate the break.) But yesterday we had more like 600 visits with 2800 page views. Think about that for a minute. That’s a lot of readers on a rainy Saturday. Why the sudden bump? Were the children of California all suddenly writing reports on beavers at the same time? Is the economy depressing people so badly that only beavers can cheer them up? Or is it news of our Mom sighting that got passed from person to person and merited a visit?

I’m going to guess the latter. Mom’s got star power. She’s recognizable and central to the action. Heck, she even has a beauty mark.

Whatever the reason let me take this opportunity to greet new readers, and welcome back old ones. As we’re heading into Spring there’s going to be a lot more beaver activity to see and participate in, and the beavers need your support more than ever. In addition to the Worth A Dam Sierra Club presentation, we’ll be working with the city engineer, the ESA students and an interested eagle-scout candidate to work on tree planting. Next Month there’s Earth Day to look forward to, and after that the environmental fair, the creek seeker’s express and our beaver seminar.Your interest and enthusiasm continue to make all the difference.

Still, since there’s high traffic at the moment, I’m going to re-post my sheetpile comments to the council, because Martinez foot the bill for this, and its now a prominent feature of the beavers lives and our lives when we go watch them. The photos researched for this presentation inspired a UC Professor to contact me about using it to teach a course in Historic Photographs, but only 213 people from Martinez have seen it. Even though it was discussed in the LA Times, the Gazette never kept its promise to write about it. None of our fair-weather beaver media friends came to do a story on it, and there was never a sense of shock or outrage that the city spent vast sums of money on a project that improved the life of a single property owner.

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

The moral of the story is that your city lied about the need for this sheetpile, and rumor is now that the restaurant Bertola’s will be closing because the rent was raised unreasonably high to force them out. Steadier minds than mine have suspected that there were plans all along for that property.

The Sheetpile secured them.