04 January 2021

One year on a beaver dam

 
I have endless admiration for beavers and their dams.  I don't like them when they take down trees in my woods, but I do respect their hydraulic engineering skills.  When you are driving along and see a dam, you typically see it from the "downstream" side (from the "upstream" viewpoint all you see is a pond).  From the back it look like a pile of sticks, but what you can't see from far away is the amount of mud that has been applied to the upstream side to plug leaks.  The result is a sturdy structure that requires heavy equipment or dynamite when humans deem removal necessary.

This video is a time-lapse of one year of a dam in my favorite part of the country - the northwoods of Minnesota near the boundary waters.  Besides the variety of wildlife, note the sturdiness of the dam.

I should pair this with another video I posted a year or so ago about wildlife using a fallen log to cross a stream, but I can't seem to locate that postHere it is (with a hat tip to reader Bub for helping me locate it in my own blog!).

BTW, this is another video that is more rewarding when you click the fullscreen icon in the lower right corner...

A tip of the blogging hat to reader Matt, who found the video and emailed it to me.

8 comments:

  1. Yes, that is the video. But what I couldn't find was an old post on this blog that included that video so that I could add the beaver dam to that post. Perhaps I never posted it and the link is somewhere in my endless pile of bookmarks... *sigh*

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  2. What kind of camera and rig did you use? I would like to install a camera on our property to record the river and wildlife. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. was that a black bear and a brown bear? or just a light coated black bear?

    I-)

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  4. Have you read Paddy, by R.D. Lawrence? It was one of my favorite books as a teen, picked up by chance in a used book shop. It's the story of a man who camps in the north woods, and rescues an orphaned beaver kit.

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    Replies
    1. similar beaver story told by grey owl in his book 'The Adventures of Sajo and her Beaver People'.

      I-)

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  5. site:https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/ log

    first hit - feed a man a fish, blah blah blah


    https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2020/03/year-2-of-log.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah, there it is. Thank you, Bub. I'll get these two posts combined in a day or two.

      Delete

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