Click photo to enlarge

Today we came across several large beaver lodges while we were excerising the dogs. Beavers live in ponds, lakes, rivers, marshes, and streams all across the United States and Canada. However, they are not found in Florida and parts of Nevada and California. Beavers are large brown furry rodents with small eyes, small rounded ears, large orange teeth, and a large flat, scaly tail.

In the Spring, Summer, and Fall beavers are very busy.
They spend most of their day searching for food and trees to build their dams and lodges. During the Jiime Adventure last fall, we saw many beavers and took a lot of photos of them in action. Beavers live near water because they have short legs and do not move well on land. They stay in the water as much as possible to avoid predators. Their large webbed feet allow them to swim powerfully through the water. In the winter beavers stay in their lodges and are not very active. They nibble on the food that they have stored up during the fall and sleep a lot to save energy . But just because we do not see them in the winter does not mean that they are not around! We still see lots of signs of beaver activity. Today we were able to hear a family of beavers squeaking inside of their lodge! Sometimes you can feel warmer air coming out of the "chimney" at the top of an active beaver lodge.

Beavers are related to mice, porcupines, rats, and squirrels. Beavers have long, sharp teeth known as incisors that are used for gnawing. These teeth are always growing so it is important for the beavers to trim them by continuously gnawing on trees and branches. The incisors on beavers can grow as much as 4 feet per year! Beaver teeth are so strong that they are able to chew through large tree trunks.

Click on photo to enlarge These active animals weigh between 44 to 60 pounds. They are about 3-4 feet long.

Beavers love to eat the bark and leaves from the trees that they fell. Their favorite trees are aspens but they will also eat birch, alder, willow, and mountain maple. They usually prefer trees between 2-6 inches in diameter . A busy beaver can chew through a 5 inch willow tree in 3 minutes! With the leftover wood they create dams and lodges. A pair of beavers takes down about 400 trees per year.

The Wilderness Classroom Organization 4605 Grand Ave. Western Springs, IL 60558 (630) 204-0420 info@wildernessclassroom.com All content copyright (c) The Wilderness Classroom, 2002. All rights reserved. | Home |Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use |