Regular readers have seen many photos of the large beaver pond on our land, home to otters, waterfowl, turtles and more. Here the beavers return year after year, swimming straight towards me, full speed ahead.
In a different corner of our land flows Andrews Brook:
Over the years, beavers have dammed the brook from time to time, stayed a year or two, then moved on. The dams then eventually collapse from lack of maintenance, and the small ponds drain. (The remains of the dam are in the background, at right.)
Wildflowers flourish, like this ladyslipper orchid.
This spring, I noticed that one of the ponds had refilled:
I saw signs of beavers snacking, and ducks moving in. A female Hooded Merganser:
and a pair of mallards.
(If mallards were rare and only found in Africa, we would pay more attention to their stunning plumage. Familiarity, as always, breeds contempt.)
I explored downstream, and found this dam, photographed from below with the mallard’s pond at eye-level:
So yesterday I followed the stream for a while, further downstream, and I found a total of three more dams over a stretch of 0.5Km. Here they are, in order, from upstream on down:
Just as rice farmers terrace the hillsides, beavers terrace the streams, creating a string of small ponds deep enough to hide in, build bank lodges, and float branches around. These four dams handled a drop of about 8 metres between them.
The energy of these animals is remarkable. He has earned a rest.
PS On this stretch of this particular stream, the undammed stretches were either fast-flowing, narrow steep drops, or the opposite: very slow moving, placid and wider with no visible drop. They seem to know which parts are worth damming!
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Eyes on the Wild 