This morning’s visit to to pond showed the rain had raised the water level and slightly damaged the park side of the secondary dam, but was just flowing nicely over the top of the main dam. A quick glimpse of a beaver swish in the water, and everything looked right with the world. There are rumors of a giant beaver costume going to make its appearance on main street, I’ll keep you posted when I know more details, but I’m hoping the appearance will make it into the documentary! Made me think of a massive pied-piper type parade where droves of chanting school children follow the giant beaver and maybe the high school marching band plays the Beavers fight song. (Clearly the campaign has gone on too long…)
On a more studious note, beaver-loyalist Linda tracked down this brief article from the Audubon Magazine issue July-August 2007. Apparently a young male beaver made an unexpected appearance at the Bronx Zoo’s millpond. The article, by Ted O’Callahan states:
“The beaver is nicknamed Jose after US representative Jose Serrano who secured 15 million in federal funding for restoration of the formerly garbage-clogged waterway…Here is nature doing what we couldn’t even imagine, says Eric Sanderson, an ecologist with the wildlife conservation society that overseas the Bronx zoo. The rebounding Bronx river is now home to 45 species of fish and serves as a migratory corridor for birds.”
Catch that? Mo’ better fish with beavers, which is what Igor Skaredoff reported at last Tuesdays meeting after attending the beaver conference in Oregon. It has been shown that the standing crop of “plankton” in beaver ponds is 5 times larger than in the unaltered flowing stream. This means that fish life is denser and more varied…which means that the things that eat the fish life are denser and more varied too. Nice find, Linda. Let’s all get our bird books and start the count of what our beavers have added to the corridor. Here’s the picture that ran with the article…
