Sheri Hartstein has done it again. I suppose she’s sitting on a mountain of this kind of footage and just dropping these Easter eggs every so often. I feel like our experience watching and waiting for beavers is very very different. There are no bears in Martinez, for a start.
The Muskrat Council was upset by my post yesterday suggesting that the little rodents don’t engineer their environment as much as some might think. There was even objection on the beaver management facebook group where one muskrat believer posted a host of research arguing that muskrat alter the invertebrates of the watershed and provoke changes.
Okay. I’m willing to attest that muskrat varied diet results in muskrat droppings that contain fertilizers that change rivers. And I admit that sometimes swans nest on their little reed huts to lay their eggs in safety. Will that suffice? Yesterday the muskrat appreciation lobby was feeling so threatened by my post that they released this report:
Can you close your lips behind your teeth? No, you can’t. Because you’re not a muskrat. Bet you can’t close your ears when you dive underwater either. There’s a lot more to the magnificent muskrat than meets the beady little eye. So much so that this is part one of a two-part series wherein Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager talk about muskrats.
Timing is everything. Let me know the name of your publicist, muskrats. Because we could use someone like you on our side.
In the meantime I’m just going to carry on appreciating the creatures we believe are worth a dam and post this lovely video by Sheri Harstein documenting her work with the sierra beavers.Turn the sound up and make sure you watch full screen. It’s that lovely.
Did you watch the Mars landing yesterday? It was must see TV. And no finally we might get some answers to the question posed in this 1930 issue of popular science.
Click here to visit the new California Beaver Summit website! The good news is that Amelia finished this last night which should start the conversation nicely,
I think that should catch some eyeballs right?
The other good news is that Sheri Harstein shared a video she’s been working on yesterday of her patient work in the Sierras. I think you’ll enjoy it. Turn your sound up.
Yesterday was solstice and I couldn’t imagine spending it without the beavers. I remembered how every solstice for the past 8 years we have watched our kits swim into the world, usually unsupervised. I couldn’t bear the thought that things were different this year, so off we went.
On Friday I had been contacted by Sheri Harstein, a wildlife photographer and friend of Sherry Guzzi’s and the beavers in Taylor Creek. She and Ted showed me her video project of beavers through the seasons when we were in Santa Barbara for the salmon conference. Some of our visitor’s lovely photographs can be seen here. She was a regular reader of the blog and said she wanted to meet me and bring a donation to the silent auction: Two BEAVER cutting boards with her beautiful photographs embedded in them! (Honestly, you need to bid on these.)
We sat at the primary dam and talked about how she knew of the beavers. She had first connected with our story when Thomas Knudson interviewed me for our historic paper in the Sacramento Bee, and since then had becoming an avid reader. She said ridiculously gratifying things like what a lovely writer I was and how remarkable it was the the website was always updated by 10:00 am every single day! We told her urban beaver tales of city battles, false legs in the dam, homeless holding lights for Mooses and the dead body floating in the creek in 2011. At one point she went off in pursuit of a Great Egret and Jon trotted off to the secondary to check what was going on. And I was left alone in amiable silence with this:
Did I just see what I thought I did?
When they came back they were disbelieving. It couldn’t be the new kit. He was too big. He dove too well. It had to be the small yearling. But we had watched all the yearlings and Dad go over the primary dam earlier. I reminded that maybe this kit was big for a first sighting, but he was exactly the right size for late June.
There was a little more disbelief until he swam close enough for everyone to see his tail, which was the final convincing factor necessary to confirm his kit status. Finally we get to see the sneak! That and the fact that he was a little more playful than the other beavers. Just look at how he handles the water stream through the gap from the rising tide.
Yup, that’s a baby. The 7th year of beavers born in Martinez (no kits in 2011 after mom died).
Were there more to be seen? Will we get footage of mom and the kit playing? Will the yearlings befriend him? Will we get to hear him whine? A million adventures waited. What a great way to start the summer! I promise we didn’t drive home singing this song – but we might as well have been.
