The Beavers Are Gone

I'm saddened to tell you that the beavers are no longer occupying our ponds.  Over the past few years the numbers were dwindling from a high of about 12, down to two at the beginning of this season.  Things were looking as sparse last year as we saw no evidence of kits in the spring and again none this spring.  

The picture below shows the pond in November of 2022 and November of 2023.  The first sign is the fact that the beaver lodge has collapsed in the center.  Secondly, to the left of the lodge in the 2022 picture, you'll notice and sticks and branches poking above the surface of the water.  That is the food cache where they store food for the winter.  You can't see it in the 2023 picture, but there is no cache visible this year.

 

It's impossible to say exactly why this happened, but it probably started happening back in 2018 when the dam on the lower pond gave way. In subsequent years predators and drought added to the pressure on the beavers. Beavers mate for life and as far as I can tell the same couple has been in residence since we moved here in 2009. It's entirely possible that old age was the final blow.

So that begs the question of what the future holds for our ponds and the beaver population. As one of my friends in the Facebook Beaver forums said, "beavers come with invitation and leave without notice." 

Beavers establish scent mounds around the pond to mark their territory and let other beavers know that they are not welcomed. With the beavers gone the scent mounds will lose their potency and other beavers coming into the territory may feel free to take up residence.

Those of you who have been around for a while know that we need the beavers. In a somewhat understandable but monumental design flaw, the builder installed a road between the 2 ponds and ran our septic lines run under the road. By doing this he took 300 feet of natural wetland drainage between the ponds and channeled it through 4 culvert pipes. This guaranteed that the beavers would be attracted to the flow and clog the culverts.  That history is all here in past posts. 

If the dam were to breach there is a good chance it would wash away the road and expose or damage the septic lines. The beavers maintain the dam and the dam is the only thing protecting the road.

The good news is that in 2011 we installed a pond leveler to stop the growth of the upper pond. When it rains it drains the excess water into the culvert and through the pipes to the lower pond. That's one of the things that caused the growth in the beaver population, because they had much less work to do maintaining the dam and that gave them a lot more time to do other more entertaining things.

So now it's a waiting game. Hopefully the pond leveler will continue to do its work and prevent the dam from deteriorating the way it would if the leveler wasn't in place. We can't put a vacancy sign up or place an ad in the Beaver Gazette to attract other beavers, so we'll just have to wait and hope that a beaver or two will come along and repopulate.

The Month of the Beaver

Wow! It has been almost exactly 4 years since my last entry here. I know this is a blog about our beavers. I will get there shortly, but please bear with me as I explain my absence.

Looking back over the past few years, 20-20 hindsight lets me see my health was headed in the wrong direction. It hit a low point on December 17, 2021, when I had a heart attack. My right coronary artery had a 100% blockage. Now, thanks to modern medicine and 3 stents, I'm alive and kicking.

For me, it was a wake-up call. I changed my diet and began regular exercise. The biggest challenge was keeping my salt intake down to 2000 mg/day. To give you a sense of how difficult that is for me, I was the guy who would salt potato chips, and my favorite snack was extra salty pretzels from Unique Pretzels. I would buy a box containing 6 bags and go through them in a little over a month. That's a little more than 56,000 mg of sodium. No wonder I had a heart attack.

At any rate, I'm healthier than I have been in the past 10-15 years. I'm back to my college weight and have not had a salt shaker, pretzel, or potato chip in my hand since the heart attack. Well, actually, that's not true. I did have just one potato chip just to prove that it IS possible to eat just one Lays potato chip.

That's enough about me. This is the beavers' blog, and at last night's Board meeting, I reported that from mid-March to mid-April is the month of the beaver. They have come out from their winter retreat in the lodge and are lean and hungry. They have to fuel up for the coming spring's work and the raising of kits.

There is no green vegetation yet, so they will look for lunch wherever it is being served. Here on the pond, they have located the largest tree on the property. We had protected it with wire fencing in 2015, but they have finally found their way in and are feasting on the tender cambium layer under the bark. They aren't trying to bring the tree down, but their dining efforts will eventually kill the tree if it is not protected before they work their way all the way around the trunk.

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The old fencing had been mangled and looks like beavers' interpretation of January 6th. I'll be contacting the board later today about getting the needed fencing and making the necessary repairs in the next few days, as long as weather permits. We have a winter mix predicted tomorrow, but Sunday and Monday are supposed to be in the 50's.

I also reported that spring thaw will bring more water to the pond, and the pond leveler will become active. This, in turn, will result in the beavers being attracted to the running water in the culvert and will cause them to do some damming. This is normal and to date, it has not presented any significant problems.

However, one never knows, and until the pond level stabilizes later in spring, we will be keeping a close watch to make sure there are no issues. If there are issues, it will be where you see the water flowing into the culvert cage. That's where they will attempt to dam first. If they do, it can be handled with hip boots, a shovel, and a rake.

The kits are usually born in May or June, but if past years are the yardstick, our friends are eager beavers because we've seen kits in late April.

Beavers are nocturnal, but it's not unusual to see them active in the early dawn hours or toward dusk. That's a good time to walk the trails to check out activity on the pond.

If you are new to the community, this is one of the last videos I made of the beavers in 2019 and is one of my favorites. It rare to see that many beavers active at one time here on the pond. 

If you see anything of concern such as beavers working on a tree that poses a safety issue, drop me an email at awolinsky@3dwriting.com .  There is a tree down now, but that was a dead tree brought down by the winds. The beavers are innocent of that damage, but not the one across the trail marked with the yellow caution tape.

With that, I'll sign off and promise it won't be four more years before you hear from me again.