Breached beaver dam closes Mount Jefferson Road in Hubbardston

HUBBARDSTON — The breach of a beaver dam Sunday along Mount Jefferson Road wasn’t bad, unless you live in Marjorie Filleul’s house at No. 26. “The water came from the street into our front yard. It ruined our driveway and made a couple of ponds in the back,” Ms. Filleul said. Some of the water ended up in her basement, as well.

The flooding closed the road as crews worked to plow away the rocks and debris that landed there, she said. Photographs from the scene show damage to the roadway and swaths cut across yards by the rush of water.

Never mind that there was about 5 inches of rain last month in Hubbardston and more in April. It’s gotta be the beaver’s fault because who else can you blame? At least there WAS a beaver dam in beaver-challenged Massachusetts. People who let it stay near or on their property. Although that might not happen again, after this story.

Because driveways never flood without beavers.

A nice article on identifying active beaver lodges after snowmelt from naturalist Mary Holland. Of course it’s absolutely no use at all in Martinez, but you’ll enjoy it anyway.

Beaver ponds have finally started to melt, making it easy to determine whether or not there have been beavers living in any existing lodges over the winter. The tell-tale sign is floating de-barked sticks and branches. During the winter, beavers leave their lodge and swim out to their underwater food supply pile and haul branches back into the lodge where they chew them into foot-long pieces for easy handling. The bark is removed and eaten as the beaver holds the stick and turns it, much as we consume corn on the cob. When little or no bark remains, the stick is discarded out in the open water. These sticks remain hidden underneath the ice on the surface of the water until warm weather arrives and the ice begins to melt. At this point the sticks and branches become visible, and often extend several feet out from the lodge. These sticks will not go to waste, but will be used for dam and lodge repairs. (Photo taken standing on lodge.)

Nice tip, Mary! I will make sure our sierra beaver friends see it. Mary has the brilliant attention to detail and observation skills that has turned into a very successful website and several well-respected books. I am always thrilled to see what she has written and photographed.

Still, our beaver friend and photographer Ann Siegal and myself both had the same reaction about the last line. “Ack! Don’t Stand on The Lodge!” we both said instinctively when we read that. Maybe because we’re used to beavers in more urban areas where there are many more curious feet to worry about. Or maybe we’re just beaver-centric. I admit, I’ve seen footage of bears, cougars, beavers and other heavy things standing on the lodge and not falling through. But she saw a high school student fall through one! Why risk it? Just imagine if baby beavers were sleeping inside and you crushed them!

When I went to her site I saw that she just published a children’s book on beavers so of course you know what I did.

Along a stream a dam pops out of the water. Beavers are busy at work! These aquatic mammals have unique traits that aid them in building the perfect lodge to raise young beavers and keep predators away. Mary Holland’s vibrant photographs document the beavers’ activities through the course of a year. Do these beavers ever take a break? Follow along as they pop through the winter ice to begin the busy year of eating bark, building dams and gathering food just in time for winter to come again.

Someone get me a cup of tea and a cozy chair, I know just what I’m doing for the next half hour! Mary kindly wrote me back that same day:

What a great event and poster you have, for such a worthy cause! I have forwarded your email to my publisher and asked if they would send you a copy of THE BEAVERS’ BUSY YEAR. If they don’t, I will – I’ve asked them to let me know, but if you don’t hear from them within a week or so, would you let me know and I’ll put a copy in the mail to you. Congratulations on the success of your project! Mary

Thanks Mary! The publisher wrote me this morning and is sending a copy forthwith. If you can’t wait for summer to get your own, go here to support her lovely work. Mary lives in Vermont, the same state as Skip Lisle who installed our flow device, which we are not at all surprised about. The same state as many good beaver articles. Let’s hope we get another lodge some day to be careful of, and just remember that it never hurts to ask…

The real sign of the beaver!

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Dispersal, Friends of Martinez Beavers, pictures May 21, 2013

Naturally Curious: Scented Signposts

Mary Holland

When they disperse, most young beavers go downstream to look for unoccupied territory. Ideally they come upon an old, abandoned beaver pond that has regrown a good supply of aspens, willows and birches — a beaver’s preferred diet. However, young beavers are rarely that lucky. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility for these young upstarts to attempt to move into an inhabited pond site, so resident beavers take measures to alertthese youngsters that the pond is spoken for.

In an attempt to discourage young beavers from lingering, one of the first things adult beavers do in the spring is to mark the perimeter of their territory. They do so by gathering mud and leaves from the bottom of their pond and making piles, or “scent mounds” to advertise their presence as well as ownership to any beavers passing by. They deposit castoreum, a secretion that conveys information such as the beaver’s age and sex, on each mound by straddling it, everting their castoreum sacs and dragging them across the mound. Scent mounds vary in size, from a height of just a few inches, to three feet or so and they are usually located within two feet from the water’s edge. The pheromones in the castoreum are broadcast far and wide from these mounds. An encroaching 2-year-old beaver detects the odor, and, if it is smart, continues on its way. If a stray male beaver deposits some of his own scent on a resident’s scent mound, or stops to feed, the resident male drives him off by hissing loudly, and if that doesn’t work, he attacks the interloper.

This is a nice article about a little appreciated beaver behavior that really only gets talked about at all if we’re complaining that castoreum is used in strawberry flavoring, or some such nonsense. Scent marking is essential to beaver survival and indirectly lead to the success of the fur trade – since even once metal traps were invented, trappers had no idea what to bait them with, until someone accidentally tried castoreum! Wham! Instant beaver!

We have been avidly looking for scent mounds in Martinez, but never spotted any. We’ve even asked visiting beaver experts to hunt them down with no avail. Where ever our beavers are marking their territory, we it’s a secret we haven’t yet uncovered. Mary’s article is on the Valley news site and definitely worth a read, but the paper has an impolite subscription policy that might not let you come back so just between us shhh.

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Late-breaking news: our friend Malcom Kenton of Washington D.C. was inspired enough by beavers to write his own ballad and he’s looking for a musician! Here’s a taste but you really should go read the rest of it!

Many of fur and fin and feather all would gather ’round

Where pools of still, deep water were plenty to be found,

Made by a flat-tailed engineer whose works helped shape the land.

The beaver, steward of the continent’s streams, made ponds and wetlands so grand.

Inspired yet? Cheryl took this photo last night of some hard working-stewardship happening at the secondary dam!

Beaver Mudding: Cheryl Reynolds

Curiouser and Curioser

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Environmental December 27, 2011

When I worry that our beavers have to contend with poor water quality, garbage trucks, beer bottles, train whistles, restaurant lights, city workers, floating styrofoam cups and the occasional shopping cart, I think about beaver cousins in colder climates where the pond freezes and they have to store enough food underwater to make it through the winter. Early on they reportedly make a concerted effort to “break the ice” by poking their heads through at intervals. Remember beavers breathe air like us and they want to make sure they can get through to the air when they reach their destination. .

11-7-11-beaver-breaking-ice2-img_4324 — Beaver Breaking Ice: Mary Holland

The naturalist behind this lovely photograph is Mary Holland, who resides in Vermont and recently published the irresistible book “Naturally Curious“. She maintains a nature blog of the same name and has an open-hearted wonder for the living world outside that regards with equal delight loon chicks, dragonfly larvae or scat samples.

Mary says she is especially interested in ponds and is a big fan of beavers. She once crashed through a frozen beaver pond wearing snowshoes and that’s got to test any relationship! Since she lives about 38 miles away from Skip Lisle, I can only assume they’ve met. Why they’re not teaming up for a speaking tour touting beaver ponds as the trickle down economy that will make more nature to be “Naturally Curious” about we can only speculate.

You can bet I’ll suggest it.

Watch Mary Holland on PBS. See more from Profile.