A Smart, Naughty "Riverkeeper"

Good Morning Gina,

A happy "morning after" a glorious Fourth: just when I think we have seen it all, Beth and I discover even more in the region.  Upstate at its best!

We were reading the Sunday paper by the river and this picture is worth a thousand words:

The calm sparkle was beautiful.  I put the paper down and was just staring out toward Thompson Island (little spit of land with the trees in the center-left of the photo).

At first I couldn't tell if it was a breeze or maybe a small bird in the distance, but there seemed to be something out on the water.  I went in for more coffee and brought the binoculars out.

A little hard to tell but not likely a bird.  It was swimming toward us though.

Beth had the binoculars and said "I think that is a beaver, look can you see a flat tail?"

We do have beavers along River Section Two.  I've seen comically-perfect chewed tree stumps and beaver dams in some of the back water sections off the Hudson, like below, upriver from our house.

The orange vests say "GE HR," human resources or Hudson River?

The day was waiting and soon we were off.  The next morning we were on the front porch, facing the river, having our morning routine and Eagle Eye Beth saw something in the tall grass by the river deck:

"Peek-a-boo": Cleaver the Beaver comes for a visit.

With her encouragement -- "it doesn't seem afraid" -- I went and got a camera and took this picture.  It was very cool to imagine a beaver swimming across the river and coming up our hill (we are probably about 20 feet above the actual river)!

To be sure what we had, Beth was "internetting" beaver info.  A lot of surprising and nice info popped up. click here

"Beavers are more than intriguing animals with flat tails and lustrous fur. American Indians called the beaver the 'sacred center' of the land because this species creates such rich, watery habitat for other mammals, fish, turtles, frogs, birds and ducks. We now know that beaver damming provides essential natural services for people too.

"Beavers prefer to dam streams in shallow valleys, where the flooded area becomes productive wetlands.These cradles of life support biodiversity that rivals tropical rain forests. Almost half of endangered and threatened species in North America rely upon wetlands. Freshwater wetlands have been rated as the world's most valuable land-based ecosystem.

Helpful and naughty!

"Beavers reliably and economically maintain wetlands that sponge up floodwaters, alleviate droughts and floods (because their dams keep water on the land longer), lesson erosion, raise the water table and act as the 'earth's kidneys' to purify water. The latter occurs because several feet of silt collect upstream of older beaver dams, and toxics, such as pesticides, are broken down by microbes in the wetlands that beavers create. Thus, water downstream of dams is cleaner and requires less treatment for human use."

Wow!  All that without a graduate degree from Cornell!

And Dr. Donald Griffin, the father of animal cognition, has said, "When we think of the kinds of animal behavior that suggest conscious thinking, the beaver comes naturally to mind."

We even learned that beavers are seen as "gentle, reasoning beings who enjoy playing practical jokes. An [American] Indian word for 'beaver-like' also means "affable.'"

So, as a part of our celebration of the Fourth of July, Beth and I added Beaver Appreciation.  Apparently -- on a per-pound basis -- castor canadensis is doing more than its share to clean up our Hudson River!

America the Beautiful, pretty "great" after all these years.