April 30th, 2007
the dilemma
I’ve just finished uploading the last of the bioblitz photos from the farm into my online galleries on Pbase. Later today, I’ll go through all of the images and ID and caption as many as I can, and then fill in a report sheet to send to the team that will be compiling the data for the Blogger BioBlitz.
As it turns out, I’ll have an extra mammal to add to my very short list. I’d hoped to see a fox or coyote around the farm this week, but they must have been hiding from view. In their place, just a few days ago, a small beaver dam suddently “appeared” in the drainage creek behind the barn. I’ve been watching it ever since, and over the weekend, I finally caught sight of the builder sliding off the bank and into the water. So, it seems that we now we have a beaver in residence. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough to get a photo of the builder, but that’s the small dam above.
Of course, the sudden appearance of the beaver and the little dam now present us with a dilemma. Do we leave it be, or do we break it up before he/she becomes settled in? No doubt, the beaver swam up here looking for a place to build its dam after having its last one broken up somewhere further downstream. In fact, I expect I know right where it came from.
At the moment, we’re not quite sure what we’ll do. Chances are that we’ll probably try to discourage the beaver so that it wanders off elsewhere. But, in truth, we don’t really mind that it has dammed off the drainage creek (really more a wide ditch than anything else). With the kind of summers we’ve been having in recent years (hot and dry), the ditch dries up a lot by midsummer and doesn’t provide good habitat for frogs and other creatures anymore. We realize that wasn’t the original purpose of this ditch when it was dug over thirty years ago, but we’re more than happy to see it full of water, cattails, and salix as that provides good habitat for the frogs and odonates, and also for the warblers, blackbirds and other birds that nest along its length. The only real problem with the beaver taking up residence is that it will cut down trees, and in fact, yesterday, I noticed that it has begun cutting down a poplar next to the water.
Anyhow, we haven’t quite decided what to do. As things stand, the dam is holding back a bit of water in the ditch and it seems that the Leopard Frogs are quite pleased as they’ve been snoring and croaking away for the past few days. Don noticed a Mallard duck swimming around back there last night. I’m wondering if we might get Bitterns nesting along the creek again now. They haven’t nested back there over the past few years — probably as there just isn’t enough water to interest them.
So, there it is — the dilemma of letting things take their course, or doing the practical thing and breaking up the dam. Perhaps coincidentally, there’s been quite a discussion about beaver dams taking place on the local NatureList email listserve. Several of the members of the listserve don’t mind having the beaver on their property, but have soon discoved that their neighbours are less than pleased. I guess we’re not the only ones trying to figure out the “right” thing to do.
Well, back to figuring out IDs for bioblitz photos. With any luck, I’ll post a final report on our bioblitzing effort here at the farm sometime tomorrow.
Tags: Blogger BioBlitz, beaver dams