By Audrey, Executive Director
(Eli and Raine testing out the Rocky Talkies in the photo).
We’ve begun our spring time visits to the Salinas River in search of active beaver habitat, full of questions: Are the beaver dams still standing after the winter rains? Are they actively building on them? Are they in the same areas as last year? Will we see active beaver sign?
We headed out to the most northern reaches of the Salinas River in San Luis Obispo County. We were armed only with our walkie-talkies, water bottles and camera phones. And we were not disappointed.
Scent Mounds
Our first find was a very pungent, active beaver scent mound. In fact, we found many scent mounds. It appears springtime is a very communicative time for beavers. Both male and female beavers make scent mounds to communicate to other beavers. Beavers can not resist a scent mound. (Neither can we). In fact that is how most trappers are able to trap beavers, by baiting a trap with beaver scent. We weren’t sure what these scent mound was saying, maybe, “This Site is Taken! “, or, “I’m looking for a mate!” , or something else?
Active Dams
We also successfully found some active dams with ponds.
The depth of the water surprised us. None of us thought to bring waders. We were pleasantly surprised to see that these dams were the same dams surveyed in the fall – they survived the winter rains and were doing well!
Western Pond Turtle
On one of the smaller dams we caught sight of a pond turtle. Unfortunately it wasn’t alive. Curious, most of its body was uneaten, only missing one leg, but a good portion of the turtle’s organs were outside of its body. Not sure what had happened here, but it didn’t surprise us to see a pond turtle had utilized the beaver pond.
Carp
We saw dozens, and I mean dozenS, of very large carp. Carp is an invasive fish in the Salinas River, and we regularly see them in the main-stem of the Salinas River. They muddy the water a bit, but they don’t harm juvenile steelhead or other native fishes since carp are plant eaters. But this was the first time we’ve seen so many, all in the same place. I tried to get a photo before they all swam away, here is my poor attempt….
Coolest mystery swimmer ever
And you would never guess what we saw swimming across the entire channel of the Salinas River. It was the coolest. We couldn’t believe it. Who would have thought they swim!??!?! Here is a hint: this tiny tunnel is where this critter went immediately after exiting the river, creating this tunnel just below the surface.
Did you guess it? A star-nose mole! (I kid you not!) We noticed this small critter swimming, tiny pink fingers paddling away, AND tiny pink nose-thingys sticking out of the water! It was crazy. And a wonder. And made our day.
Another successful survey of the Salinas River. Maybe you’ll want to join us one day?