We decided to come back in the morning, Sunday, May 5, but were unable to find any beavers at work. But we did find a male Shoveler and his mate who was a little more difficult getting a picture of her.
Saturday, May 4, Jeré and I went up Mary Ann Creek to check out the impounded waters and whether we could see any of the engineers at work. We were pleasantly surprised to find one of the engineers eating dinner about 6:30 pm. If you listen carefully you can hear our friend gnawing away on the stick!
Here is a still I was able to get that is pretty sharp—s(he) was very cooperative or maybe distracted by the juicy morsel being dined on. Notice how the bark is chewed off like eating a cob of corn.
Further on we saw another beaver cruising, diving and floating in a pond—what a treat!
Thursday, April 11, Patrice lead a Beaver Patrol Tour of Mary Ann Creek Wetlands. It was a cold day so we drove up Mary Ann Creek Road a ways to start our tour. The weather was sunny from time to time giving us a good opportunity to see where the waters glistened through the riparian vegetation, noting that our little engineers do a good job of slowing down the flowing surface waters, spreading them out to saturate the bottom of the bed, charging the ground water beneath.
This small but active lodge was in the large pond our friends have established in this part of Mary Ann Creek.
The pond that is backed up behind this modest dam holds the lodge pictured in the previous picture. Below this dam in the making is a more substantial structure impounding these two ponds on either side of the new dam.
All along the sides of the creek bed are multiple evidence of our industrious and sometimes over-achieving examples of obtaining food and materials for their work.
More to come—stay tuned!
