Catching up with the Napa Beaver Pond

After a vary slow few months at the pond activity has been slowly picking up in Napa. The Beavers are coming out aprox 45 minutes before sunset on a regular basis. The Beavers seem hungry and eager to find food. The dams were washed away and rebuilt during a storm, and the lodge made it through the Winter with no damage. (see part two below)

Saturday while walking to the Earth Day event in downtown Napa I stopped by the Beaver Pond to see if anything was happening. An occasional Mink, Muskrat and various birds stop by during mid-day if you are lucky. I walked upstream past the dam and lodge and just Western Pond turtles so far

and turned around to continue my walk when I saw what looked like a Beaver swimming, but during mid-day it’s usually a Muskrat. I was 100 yards away or so but realized it was indeed a Beaver and started filming it but quickly noticed something was wrong. It was having trouble swimming and appeared to be drowning. It struggled a couple of minutes at most and then sank. Not a good start to the day. After contacting Heidi and Cheryl there was some discussion about what could have caused this and if the body could be located and taken to Davis for necropsy. Since it sank in fairly deep water with low visibility and in the middle of the pond it didn’t seem like it would happen. Cheryl decided to come to Napa that evening to observe and see if she had any thoughts about what is going on. Robin another Beaver advocate met us around 6 pm and we all just waited to see if any Beavers would show up that night. We had been seeing two Beavers on a regular basis for the last two weeks and just the day before we thought we might have seen three out at the same time, but because of the distance and lack of light it could have been a Muskrat fooling us. Around 7 pm we saw the first Beaver, and shortly thereafter a second. What really surprised us is when a third beaver came out clearly in view of the other two. This is the first time since the kits were born last year when we saw three very active Beavers clearly at the same time, and one had died the same day. This brings up questions about who died? How many Beavers are at the pond. Was the Beaver sick or an intruder who was attacked by the resident Beavers. Anyway the evening got better. A parade of ducklings brought our spirits up.

The Beavers were active and hungry so they kept an eye on us but let us get close enough for photos too.

A Green Heron joined in.

A Muskrat taking food or nesting material back to the Beaver lodge

Part two.

During a couple of storms the Beaver dams were almost washed away. Main dam Oct 4th before storms and before cattail clearing by Napa Flood Control.

Main dam Oct 13th, 2014 after Napa Flood Control cleared some of the cattails below the main dam, being careful not to damage the dam, but leaving a path for possible flood water flow.