This morning there were at least two beavers, one at the primary and one at the secondary – I feel more comfortable using that label because a thimbleful of work had been done and more was added while I watched. This video shows a kit-yearling adding mud to its base and I was happy to see it. I saw two branches being added as well with an opportunistic muskrat chewing one and swimming away with it. I can’t tell how securely they are anchored because the tide was still very high but it looks slightly more dam-like.
I promised I’d share yesterday’s accidental find, in which I happened upon a page following beaver heraldry throughout the ages. These were family crests and city emblems that represented beavers in the artwork because of the similarity in name – castor, bifru, beverlac, beverlay, kastorii…you get the gist. An example is the medieval town of Biberach in Germany, (the equivalent of our ‘beaverton’). It is noted by this crest – check out those beaver-boar tusks! They clearly knew there was something remarkable about those teeth.
Some of them were Dr. Seuss-looking comic beavers, but this next one took my breath away. Nice guard hairs and sharp eyes. Aside from the striking color, check out those toes. The back paw is webbed and the front has claws.
Is that the loveliest thing you ever saw? I’ve begged our foreign correspondent Alex of Frankfurt to translate as much as possible from the original text but I was so happy to find it!
My interview with Paul Haeder has been loaded as a podcast in case you want to listen to the Martinez Beavers on radio. I’m told the link will be good for a few years so if you haven’t time today you can catch it in the future. He also wrote this lovely post about it yesterday: which starts out with the inviting paragraph;
I’m thinking about beavers, as in Martinez, Calif., where John Muir ended up living, and where community activists have been fighting for these aquatic rodents and advocating for kids to learn about beavers’ positive impacts.
It’s a nice website all around. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page for a surprising treat.
