Don’t worry. Baby beavers weren’t on the menu. But carp, minnows, perch and crayfish beware! There’s an otter in town. Two at least, because Moses filmed a huge one just a few days ago and now look!

This was a little fella, long and sleek and fast. Cheryl and Jon dashed about looking for the right place to photograph as he selected the choices spots to fish. He didn’t use the gap to cross the dam (otters hate to be predictable). He crossed on the bank farthest from the street.

Our beaver pond is a haven for fish eaters. The irresistible temptation to fish that captures the fancys of teens who should know better, is even more powerful for Otters. They have nothing but success in those crowded waters, making it worth risking some human contact. He even followed a few fast fish into the round-fence filter for the flow device! I sent this picture to Skip who was very excited about the prospect of being able to demonstrate that 6×6 wire allows wildlife access to the area! He thought the filter needed a loving touch up though, and asked if he should come out before the next storm?

After the otter cleared away, the main feature came out to play. GQ came upstream with three kits in tow looking lovely. All in all it was a pretty exciting evening. What are you doing this weekend?

Photos: Cheryl Reynolds

I couldn’t leave the above title without this…

Children’s Mural Available for Display

Worth A Dam is proud to present the children’s Mural for Alhambra Creek. This colorful and engaging diptych piece was created by a hundred young artists at Beaver Festival III in downtown Martinez and is now available for loaned display. FROgard, of the East Bay Artists Guild, painted the background with help from Randy Stansberry, based on graphic artist Libby Corliss creek map for the area. FRO provided guidance, instruction and a little judicious editing to help the mural come to life.

Each segment is 36″ x 48″and the pair should be hung in tandem. Imaginations were allowed to flourish letting each child share his or her own vision for the beaver habitat: a close look at the artwork shows that in addition to the green heron, baby ducks and beaver family, there is even a pirate beaver with a “hook” claw! One pragmatic child painted a golf bag with a ‘hole in one’ just in case dad would like to play a few rounds at the Beaver Park.

The hidden treasure of Martinez, CA is revealed not just its famous beavers but also in the delightful and caring children that respect Alhambra Creek and its wildlife. Funds and materials for this mural were donated by generous supporters and it is the hope of the children, the artists, and Worth A Dam that it will be seen around the downtown area in Martinez, inspiring each of us to see the wild beauty of the world around them.

If you would like to display the mural in your office, foyey, stairwell or gallery, contact Heidi Perryman at (925) 283-4499  to make arrangements.

This notice went out as of 3:00 pm Wednesday.As of 9 pm last night we already had expressed interest from the superintendent of schools, the Contra Costa Bar Association, and Superior Court. Worth A Dam is feeling like Scarlet at the ball! Thanks FRO and Randy for your outstanding work on this project. Thanks Mitch Wagner (long time hero of another very famous beaver case) for the generous donation. Worth A Dam promises never to let generous donations go to waste!

Saw an adult crest the dam tonight with a baby in tow that looked SO like Dad. See for yourself. Craggy face/lots of coloration, wild mane behind ears. Also saw a kit MUDDING the dam and reaching up for his own willow branches. Adorable footage to follow. Great night!

I stumbled across this beautiful bit of beaver writing by Kathleen Kudlinski for the New Haven Register in CT the other day and thought you would enjoy it too. I was going to just post excepts to whet your appetite, but its so delightful I decided to post the whole thing. As compensation for my thievery you must click on the charming illustration above and go to the website so their statistics record visitors to her article. I like her writing and appreciation very much, but there are 6 or 7 secret things that we know about beavers that she apparently does not. Lets see if you can guess what they are.

The beaver slid off a bank this week, surfacing nearby to stare at us. We stared back, breathless. A midafternoon sighting of this nocturnal animal^₁ seemed magical and fleeting. Except that this beaver did not flee. He swam around in front of his lodge, eyeing us. Were we dangerous? Apparently not². He slapped his broad scaly tail against the water and waited to see if we would flee. We did not. He slapped again. Clearly, we’d interrupted some important beaver business.

His mate would be waiting inside the stick-and-mud lodge they’d built together years ago. Beavers mate for life at 3 and live up to 29 years³. That means this whiskery old guy may have been living in beaver bliss with his darlin’ for over 20 years. Like all beaver parents, they’ll have two or three nearly grown offspring under their roof. Ma beaver had a litter of kits in early spring, while the big, old yearlings stayed on for a while to help with the new young’uns, and then moved out this summer to start new lodges of their own.

The beaver slapped again. Sunshine glittered on his wet fur, his bristly whiskers and the fresh mud he’d slathered onto his lodge. In winter, that mud freezes and will form a great barrier to keep coyotes, foxes, dogs and bears from digging them out. These predators could never reach the beaver’s front door, a hidden underwater entrance leading to a dark, dry den a yard or so across.

The sun could shine on this pond because, over the years, this enterprising couple had gnawed through dozens and dozens of trees, punching a hole in the forest canopy, their massive, ever-growing rodent teeth working like living chainsaws. Saplings fall with a nip or two. We’ve seen these beavers drop two or three medium-size trees in a night. A maple, 16 inches across, is nearly chewed through next to their pond. We took care not to stand underneath it.

Once the beavers fell a maple, birch, willow, aspen, poplar or other fast-growing tree, they strip the bark off. They’re only after the tender, nutritious cambium layer between bark and wood. This time of year, they may eat water lily tubers, clover, apples and the leaves, but their main course is always cambium⁴. To keep at fighting weight, 40 pounds⁵, beavers have to fell many trees just to stay alive. Not one stick of wood goes to waste after it is stripped clean. It is all used in dam- building and maintenance, lodge construction and improvements, or stocking in an underwater cache for midwinter snacking.

All of this busy-beaver activity makes them a keystone species in the ecosystem. A beaver colony changes a moderately productive woodland into a sunny wetland, bursting with life. The beavers’ work supports thousands of species of mammals, fish, turtles, frogs, birds, ducks, dragonflies and a myriad of water insects and invertebrates. Almost half of endangered and threatened species in North America rely upon wetlands, and so do we.

The beavers’ multiple dams slow water flow and absorb excess floodwaters, prevent erosion and raise the local water table. Several feet of silt build up behind old beaver dams. When polluted water trickles through this fine mud, particulates are strained out. Toxins, like pesticides, are broken down by bacterial action or simply the slow trickle of time. Water is far cleaner after it goes through this natural treatment plant.

Once 60 million beavers reported to work in North America. They were hunted and trapped for their glossy brown fur, but that’s not all. We hardly notice the territory-marking scent of a beaver, but two special properties made it sought after. The smell of this “castoreum” is especially long lasting, so perfumers use it as a base ingredient in their products. Also, for some reason, beavers concentrate one chemical, salicin, from willow trees, which is transformed into salicylic acid.

Today, we know that chemical as aspirin, but Native Americans and early settlers sought it for fighting pain^?, lowering fever and reducing inflammation. But it was competition that nearly did the beavers in⁶. We like our land dry for farming and development. Beavers like it wet. They lost. We nearly drove them to extinction by the early 1800s. Now, beavers are on the rebound. There’s nearly 14 million in the United States today. Mostly, that’s because we’ve learned to live with them.

The cranky old beaver slapped his tail one last time at us this past week. We decided to retreat to our cabin. A quick glance back through binoculars showed him already at work again, getting the place in shape for the winter ahead.

Contact Guilford naturalist Kathleen Kudlinski at kathkud@aol.com, or write her in care of the Register, 40 Sargent Drive, New Haven 06511. She is the author of 39 children’s books, including, “Boy Were We Wrong About the Solar System!”

Well that was a lovely glance at the value of a keystone species and the value of that moment in busy human  life where we stop and consider the natural world. Thanks Kathleen for reminding us that beavers have a huge impact on their environment and are fun to watch! As a woman whose been seeing the Martinez Beavers four times a week for the past four years I have some additions/corrections I hope you won’d…

Out in Massachusetts the disgruntled folk from the Committee for Resposible Wildlife Management are headed to a lazy man’s victory. The bill making it easier to circumvent humane standards for killing beavers has been approved by the governor and is in its final stages before passage. Just remember, where beavers are concerned the problems rarely have anything to do with reason. (Martinez knows that fairly well through first hand experience.) The original law  requiring humane traps passed in the commonwealth back in 1996. It included a list of 9 lengthy exceptions to the rule under which traditional trapping could still be used.  At that time, Clinton was president, the economy was booming, and everybody knew somebody that was doing a start-up.

I guess times really do change.

So my brief obsession with superciliary vibrissae lead to Sherri Tippie sending me some early kit photos that showed they were present from a young age. Mystery solved, but ohhh looking at these photos has caused such a grand commotion of oooohing and awwwwwwing among Worth A Dam members that we are incapable of forming complete sentences. I thought I’d share the source of my affliction with you, but first, the answer to the mystery, so we can lay that to rest. Look at those wiry black hairs above the eye. Not as stiff as an older beaver and certainly the sense isn’t as developed, but those are vibrissae.

Okay now that we’re done with that mystery, check out the entire photo. Remember Sherri is the top beaver relocator in the country so she often ends up caring for or raising kits/orphans. In this picture her friend Chris is holding a week old kit. Look at that tail against her wrist! . I’m thinking a visit to Colorado next June is in order?

Sure grown-ups and skilled professionals can manage to hold a beaver. But how difficult is it? Wouldn’t those incisors take out a finger? We are constantly meeting people (usually trappers) who tell us how vicious beavers are. I guess she’s holding that kit a special way or something to make it harder to get a dental grip?

Meet Anna R. who is 8 in this picture. Sherri tells me that when she was 5 she became cheerfully obsessed with beavers. Her dad says she used to walk around the family home repeating “Sherri Tippie! Sherrie Tippie! Sherri Tippie!”. (I know the feeling.) Even though she was too young to help with relocation, she wanted to be involved. This is such an traffic-stopping photo the police should be called. Here’s another one in case you want to see Anna and the beaver smile.

Photos courtesy of Sherri Tippie

Gosh those are lovely, thank you so much for sharing! And just in case you think we are just bunny huggers around here, I’ll offer some intellectual stimulation as well. Sharon Brown of Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife lets us know that her letter to the Buffalo News.com was printed in Thursdays issue. Remember the nice article about some researchers noticing that the beaver dam in Woodlawn Wetlands was actually helping water quality and restoring the stream? I wrote them that this wasn’t unique to Buffalo and that if New York could allow more beavers to improve the watershed we’d all be better off. Sharon thought so too

As if that wasn’t exciting enough, Moses got footage of that big otter again this morning, going inside the old lodge to eat crawdads!Ohh and a green heron catching a fish on the primary dam. Nice!

Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions in Massachusetts points out this footage which was taken by a satisfied client at Farrar Pond on Friday. The first thing I noticed was the speakers reference to the round filter with a domed top that Mike installs to block entrance to the pipe — the narrator refers to it as a “Beaver Dome” which made me giggle and think,

Good thing Mike had his summer helper (his nephew, Devin) for this massive project which involves three pipes and requires underwater installation. The residents are only willing to have the flow device visible once every three years when they lower the pond level to control vegetation, so everything has to be installed underwater. Thankfully, its been a hot summer and Mike said the water was pleasantly cool, not cold.

Well that went smoothly, didn’t it? A well oiled beaver installation team. Managing the third pipe is a little more challenging and Devin unwillingly looses control of it. They eventually get the thing righted and finish it off. All in a days beaver work. I can’t help but wonder if the beavers were watching from the lodge and snickering amongst themselves.

Looking at that deep pool I remember our own dam and how high it used to be. Beaver friend Bill sends this photo of the old dam that gave me a pang of nostalgia. Ahh how lovely! Didn’t Mom and Dad do a great job?

Ohh and apparently a certain prominent property owner has cleverly suggested the area be named ‘Puddle park’. This amused me, as it is as near to a veiled admission of his own tempest-in-a-teapot fears as I believe we will ever see. Still, I wondered, given the use of the area under the bridge by the homeless, perhaps what he meant to say was ‘Piddle’ park?

Back when I was trying to prove the number 1 picture of a beaver on (the) google was actually a nutria (I’ll wait while you go check). I started noticing that beavers have unique whisker-like hairs above the eyes. If the lighting is right and you look close you’ll see them. Artists almost never include them but I made sure Libby added them to the beaver festival flyer. Apparently these are called “superciliary tufts” or “superciliary vibrissae”

Your cat has them and they tell him to blink and react to changes in the air flow to catch things. Whiskers in general are incredibly important as guides to tell an animal how close things are and whether they can squeeze in between them. Our wikipedia friend researched the issue and found a 2009 article saying that the neural information communicated by the vibrasse in aquatic mammals was so significant it deserved its own sensory name.: “The Vibrassal Sense.”

Behaviour and ecology of Riparian mammals

By Nigel Dunstone, Martyn L. Gorman

While beavers don’t have to worry so much about trees getting away from them, they do need to detect small changes in flow and water motion to know when and how to make repairs to their dam. Skip Lisle writes this about superciliary tufts in beavers:

Beavers have a phenomenal ability to find their way around a pond underwater in the pitch dark—-in deep water, under ice, at night. They know every square inch of the underwater world, all learned by touch. Various hairs must play an incredibly important role.

This makes total sense. When our very first kit got sick years ago and was found out to be blind we realized that his ability to navigate in water was never notably affected. Yesterday I realized I had never seen these ‘tufts’ on our kits, and lord knows I had been looking at them long enough to notice. Did that mean they get them when they got older? Could they be a mark of maturity? In scouring through photos it seemed like dad had more than mom. Maybe they get more as they aged? Could they be used to tell the maturity of a beaver? Who knew more about this mystery and who could help? I wrote every beaver expert I know to ask their thoughts and I’ll let you know what I learn.

Then I got out our heavy duty binoculars and went down to the dam for some tuft-hunting. Guess what I found our kits have?

Click on the picture to enlarge it. They’re there. While I was down there solving my own mystery, I heard some activity behind me downstream and saw some big wave action. As I was trying to find out who was below the dam, I saw a hulking furry figure scurry over it, dunk immediately underwater and run a steady line of bubbles all the way up to the lodge.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!DAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It has been almost two months since we saw him, but I kept telling myself he was most likely still here. Where would he go? I was by myself at the dam last night for most of the evening and maybe that’s why I saw him. He’s a wary beaver who stays away from commotion. I was sooo happy to see him, and know that our three lovely kits have at least two defenders to look after them.

Hi, greetings from Latvian capital Riga, situated at the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea about 300 US-miles south of Finland. For a week now I`ve spent my vacation time to check on proper solutions for a beaver contest launched in mid-June by  Riga City Council: The Old City of Riga is surrounded by Old City Canal that stretches around in a half-circle of two US-miles mouthing at both ends into river Daugava. The canal is embedded  into an enchanting park alongside its banks with neatly mown lawns, lots of flowers and awesome old trees lining up its whole curved stretch like an water alley.