Are there any beaver experts here at CP? Yeah, yeah. Har-har. Seriously, I'm talkin' the rodent kind.
There is a trail near my house that I walk with my dogs almost every day. Over the last month or so there has been a very active beaver that has been knocking down trees like crazy.
I'm trying to figure out his behaviour, just out of curiosity. He knocks down all these trees but he doesn't do anything with them...just leaves them laying where they fell and moves on to the next.
There are some fairly large trees that he has knocked down over the last while. The larger ones seem to take him about three days (nights, I have learned). I just can't figure out what he's doing. Alot of the trees he fells go across our walking path....could he be trying to stop us from walking there? I've been reading about their habits but it doesn't follow with what this one is doing.
Are we just dealing with a mentally challenged beaver?
Here's some pics of his recent handiwork (bad pics, just taken with my iphone):
Are there any beaver experts here at CP? Yeah, yeah. Har-har. Seriously, I'm talkin' the rodent kind.
There is a trail near my house that I walk with my dogs almost every day. Over the last month or so there has been a very active beaver that has been knocking down trees like crazy.
I'm trying to figure out his behaviour, just out of curiosity. He knocks down all these trees but he doesn't do anything with them...just leaves them laying where they fell and moves on to the next.
There are some fairly large trees that he has knocked down over the last while. The larger ones seem to take him about three days (nights, I have learned). I just can't figure out what he's doing. Alot of the trees he fells go across our walking path....could he be trying to stop us from walking there? I've been reading about their habits but it doesn't follow with what this one is doing.
Are we just dealing with a mentally challenged beaver?
He/she doesn't have to be working/constructing on your human-centric schedule.
And, sadly, it might be cutting down trees just to keep it's teeth from growing too large and no other reason than that.
Rodents!!!
Cowperson
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They use parts of the trees they cut down to build their lodge, but the majority of trees they cut down wind up in their stomach, though not right away. They keep huge parts of the trees underwater during the winter so they can eat without having to go out. I can't embed this video that explains it all but you can watch.
I learned a lot about beavers this morning!
The Following User Says Thank You to billybob123 For This Useful Post:
I thought I read once that they will cut a path of trees whens starting the lodge or dam so they have a pile of available trees to use when building so they dont have to waste time cutting.
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If you want to watch local Beavers in the city....From the extreme west side of Fish Creek Park head east on the paved pathway. Just after the entrance from Woodbine there is a fork on the path, you can go NE or SE. Go SE and continue for about 1.5km's until you come to a bridge. This is the second bridge you will hit if you start at the extreme West side of FC Park. At this bridge cut to your right off of the paved path and onto a trail that you will take for about 500M to 750M to where all the Beavers are. If you are on this trail, basically take it until you come to a point where the trail almost merges into the creek as the trail is right on the edge by this point. A stones throw to the West from this point is where the lodge is. You will have prime examples of a lodge that they have built on the south banks of the creek and also a dam that is across the path to the North. If you go later in the day escpecially early evening you will see 4-6 Beavers doing all kinds of random things.
The Following User Says Thank You to macker For This Useful Post:
Every fall, beavers in northern latitudes construct food caches, or piles, in deep water close to the lodge or bank den they have constructed. Each cache is an accumulation of the beavers’ favourite woody food items, and it is meant to sustain the beavers in the winter. With the first frosts of September and October, the animals begin to prepare the cache by clearing trees away from the edge of the water. If the area is relatively free of predators, the beavers take their logging operation farther afield—often 125 m away. They gnaw the trees into short lengths and tote them to the water, along trails that they have cleared, for underwater storage.
The bulk of the edible forage, or food, in the cache is held below the water surface by a thick top layer of small, leafy branches most often cut from trees and shrubs that are not the beavers’ most preferred (see Figure 2). The top layer protrudes well above the water surface, where it intercepts snow to provide an insulating cover that prevents water from freezing in and around the stored food.
Figure 2: Beaver lodge, food cache, and dam in water
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to troutman For This Useful Post:
I just find it odd due to the size of the trees he's knocking down; he could never hope to move them and they really don't have a lot of branches on them.
Let's talk Beaver
