Great Blue Heron Ingenuity
I had to laugh this morning about what I witnessed just after posting about male Great Blue Herons collecting and delivering sticks for their nest. It occurred to me that I have seen hundreds of sticks being brought to nests, but I have never actually seen a heron in the act of collecting a stick. Lo and behold, today was my lucky day. At least one heron came up with an extremely efficient and energy-saving strategy for accomplishing this task.
Being largely fish eaters, herons typically raise their young in wetlands where food is plentiful. Many of these wetlands are created by beavers, who set up housekeeping there as well. Herons owe not only their habitat to beavers, but also, in this case, their nesting material. A veritable goldmine of sticks is right underneath the heron nests, free for the taking right in the middle of the heron rookery in the form of a beaver lodge. Fortunately for the beavers, there is a limit to the size of the stick a heron can carry.
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Winter Provides Predators With Access to Beaver And Muskrat Lodges
Foxes’ and coyotes’ sense of smell is such that they rarely miss an opportunity to check out inhabited beaver or muskrat lodges in the winter, when frozen ponds and marshes allow them access to these tempting sources of food.
Beavers are well protected due to the amount of frozen mud in their lodges that provides an impenetrable barrier to visitors (inset photo: coyote investigates beaver vent in inhabited lodge). Muskrats are not as well protected (even though the walls of their lodges can be up to a foot thick) as their lodges are made of vegetation, primarily cattails and grasses, with very little, if any, mud. In addition to lodges, muskrats build feeding platforms, called “push-ups,” where their scent is strong enough to attract attention from hungry predators (main photo: fox tracks investigate a muskrat push-up).
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Beavers Actively Winterizing Lodges
There are two noticeable differences in the appearance of an active beaver lodge in the fall as opposed to the summer. One is the presence of a growing pile of freshly-cut branches adjacent to the lodge. These branches provide resident beavers with the nutrition they will need during the winter months when herbaceous plants are neither available nor accessible.
The second change noticeable in a fall lodge is the presence of massive amounts of mud. Branches are often placed on top of this layer of mud, so you have to observe the lodge before that happens in order to see the extent of the mud layer. It provides protection from harsh winter winds which would significantly lower the temperature inside the lodge. Together, a blanket of snow and a layer of mud serve as excellent insulation for beavers living in the lodge.
In the Northeast, where the temperature often dips into the single digits or lower in the winter, the interior of an active beaver lodge maintains a relatively stable 33° F. – 35° F., roughly the temperature of the water, thanks to the ingenuity of these rodent architects.
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North American River Otters Use Abandoned Beaver Lodges As Dens
North American River Otters use dens (called holts) for giving birth and for shelter from weather extremes. Den sites are usually close to the water line of rivers and lakes, and have multiple entrances underwater as well as on dry land. They are often excavated under trees or rocks or in river banks, but otters also use abandoned muskrat burrows and beaver lodges as shelters (cohabitation with beavers has also been documented – see https://naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/beaver-otter-cohabitation/).
One of the most obvious and distinctive signs of otter occupancy of a den is the presence of their scat in the vicinity. It usually has little form; rather, it consists of loose piles primarily composed of fish scales. Pictured is an abandoned beaver lodge that is currently occupied by several otters whose scat in the foreground and tracks and slides in the vicinity confirm their presence. A lack of any beaver sign indicates the lodge has been abandoned by its original inhabitants.
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Canada Geese Nesting On Beaver Lodges
If you are fortunate enough to have a beaver pond near you, you should give the lodge more than a cursory glance this time of year. It is common to find Canada Geese nesting on beaver lodges, for obvious reasons – safety from most land predators. While Common ravens have been known to raid Canada Goose nests for eggs and goslings, the overall rate of survival of the goslings of lodge-nesting geese is very high.
A Canadian study showed that ponds with beaver lodges (and therefore Beaver activity which warms the water and thaws the ice) thaw at least 11 days sooner than ponds without Beavers, allowing early access to water for Canada Geese returning for the spring nesting season. Battles between pairs of geese vying for these coveted nesting sites are not uncommon.
Canada Geese have much to thank Beavers for. Not only can geese get an early nesting start on beaver lodges, they have a relatively safe spot to incubate their eggs and raise their young.
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Muskrats Cohabit With Beavers
Muskrats, or “rats,” as they’re sometimes derogatorily called, are semi-aquatic, mostly plant-eating rodents that live in ponds, streams, lakes and marshes. During the winter they seek shelter in lodges that they build out of grasses, reeds, cattails and sticks. Muskrat lodges are much smaller than Beaver lodges, which are constructed out of mud and sizable branches, sticks, stones and mud.
In the spring Muskrats often build nests by burrowing into a stream or pond bank, which they enter under water. Muskrats are also known to set up residence in active Beaver lodges. After dining on aquatic vegetation, the pictured Muskrat made a beeline for the beaver-occupied lodge nearby, and dove under as it approached it. Beavers and Muskrats tolerate each other’s presence in the same pond (and lodge) even though they both consume much of the same vegetation. Unlike Beavers, Muskrats supplement their diet of plants with frogs, crayfish, clams, snails, and fish. It may be that when cohabiting a lodge, they may help one another keep an eye out for predators. (Photo: Muskrat eating pond vegetation)
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Beavers Preparing For Winter
The lazy, hazy days of summer are dwindling, and beavers’ internal clocks are telling them it’s time to batten down the hatches and prepare for several months of life below the ice. This entails adding a significant amount of mud to the outside of their lodge. The mud freezes and creates an impenetrable barrier between them and predators such as coyotes that, thanks to ponds being frozen, will have access to beaver lodges. This mud is anchored by the addition of debarked branches and logs that have provided the beavers with meals of cambium during the summer.
A beaver can transport its own weight in material (roughly 45-60 pounds). Retrieving debarked pieces of wood in many cases involves carrying them over both land and water, using only jaws and sometimes a shoulder for support. A beaver’s short, muscular neck and its powerful lower jaw muscles make this possible. Try lifting one of the larger logs on a lodge or beaver dam sometime. Then imagine carrying it any distance in your mouth with no assistance from your hands. (This feat rivals that of a moose carrying two 25 – 30 pound antlers around for several months.) While there are recorded cases of beavers felling trees 150 feet tall and 5 feet in diameter, logs of this size are not used as building material for dams and lodges, but rather the bark and upper branches provide them with food. (Thanks to Roger and Eleanor Shepard and Sara and Warren Demont for photo op.)
Beavers Especially Vulnerable
Little did I know when I wrote yesterday’s post about the silver lining of our low water levels that I would so quickly encounter another predator benefiting from the current drought. I have spent a considerable amount of time this summer watching three generations of beavers do their best to survive as their pond proceeded to diminish to the point of exposing one of their lodge entrances and confining them to an increasingly small body of water. The underwater entrances to a beaver lodge are vital to their protection, and predators are well aware of this.
Yesterday the importance of water as a protective barrier was made very clear to me when a coyote appeared on the opposite shore of the beaver pond from where I sat. It stood for several seconds exactly where the beavers leave the pond on their way to nearby woods to cut poplars and birches which they haul back to their pond to eat. A well-worn trail marks the spot. You could imagine the coyote, upon surveying the shallowness of the pond, telling itself to be patient, as better days were just around the corner.
Moments after the coyote left, the mother beaver got out of the pond precisely where the coyote had been standing and took a few steps before sniffing the ground and then the air (see insert). Being nocturnal, beavers have an acute sense of smell which they use for detecting danger, food and for communication with each other. It took mere seconds for the beaver to detect the scent of the coyote, at which point she turned and sought refuge in the dwindling amount of water remaining around her lodge. May the heavens open up soon.
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Red Fox Vixens Preparing Dens
With their breeding season nearly at an end, red fox vixens are preparing for the arrival of a litter of pups in March or April. This involves locating and cleaning several dens, and then choosing one in which to give birth and raise young. An adult female red fox may use the same den year after year; eventually one of her daughters may take it over.
While specific den locations vary, most are on sandy hillsides, often in the woods but close to an open area, and usually there is water within 300 feet or so. A den typically has several entrances, with the main one measuring about ten inches in diameter. At this time of year (if there is snow on the ground) it is relatively easy to locate fox dens, due to soil that has been removed and scattered on the snow.
Vixens often renovate an abandoned woodchuck burrow, but occasionally den underneath an outbuilding, in a hollow log, rock pile or other sheltered area. Pictured are a typical hillside den as well as an abandoned beaver lodge that has been renovated by a fox. Scat (located about 2 o’clock in the photo) deposited near the entrance of the lodge indicates that this may well be a den that will be used for raising young.
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Beavers Mating
Reproductive activity begins when a beaver reaches the age of three years. Beavers mate in January and February, with the peak activity in mid-February. Typically mating takes place in the water (under the ice), but can occur inside their lodge. Kits, usually three or four, will be born in May or June. Beavers are monogamous and pair for life. (Note: ponds still frozen – photo not recent)
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Sign of Beaver Activity
Beavers are meticulous housekeepers, in that they almost always defecate in the water, not in their lodge, and rarely on land. Because of this, it is rare to see their scat, but fall is as good a time as any to look for it (should you wish to see it).
In preparation for winter, beavers are repairing their dams and lodges, and stock-piling a winter food supply pile of branches in the pond near their lodge. They spend a lot of time working in the water in one area, which means that signs of their presence, including scat, are plentiful in these areas. If you look in the water along a beaver dam at this time of year, it’s highly likely that you will find light-colored, kumquat-size pellets, which, as you might expect, are full of tiny bits of woody fiber. The pellets are essentially little balls of sawdust, and disintegrate easily. (Handling, for those tempted to do so, is discouraged due to giardia or “beaver fever.”)
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A Variety of Beaver Lodge Designs
Beavers are hard at work refurbishing their mud and stick lodges in preparation for the coming winter, when their movements will be restricted and they will spend both days and nights inside their lodge. When we think of a beaver lodge, we picture it in the middle of a beaver pond. This was not always the case, however, and still isn’t today. The earliest and most primitive beaver lodges consisted of a burrow in the side of a high bank with the entrance under water (see exposed bank lodge entrance in photo insert). The next advance was the addition of sticks and mud piled over the top of the bank as added protection from predators (see photo). Eventually beavers started building a complete lodge on top of the bank which had an underwater entrance. The most advanced design is the lodge we most commonly associate with beavers — one that is built up from the bottom of the pond and is completely surrounded by water. It requires the greatest amount of work but offers the greatest amount of protection to the beaver.
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