Tips for Tracking Beavers

Video Transcript

"Hi! We are Nick and Valerie Wisniewski on behalf of expertvillage.com. We are here to talk about animal tracks and sign and if you are interested in more information, please visit our website at walnuthilltracking.com. We are here on the banks of this pond next to the house of one of our favorite animals. This is a bank lodge of a beaver, castor Canadensis. Beaver construct these lodges out of stick and mud. Sometimes they are on the bank of a pond, sometimes they will be out in the middle. The beavers are actually living and part of the way we know that is by fresh sign. Beavers are vegetarians and they eat plants. Around here we can find places where the wood has been freshly cut by their sharp incisors. We can also tell by the bank lodge here there is an opening that comes in under the water several feet under the water and goes up underneath. The bottom of the pond is swept clean where we can see that their traffic has been coming in and out. The lodge is well maintained and has a height to it that if the beavers had abandoned it, would collapse in on itself. There are also scent mounds ringing this pond where the beavers are dragging debris from underneath the water, depositing debris on the shoreline and then depositing scent called castorium on those scent mounds marking their territory. This is a place that is home to the beavers and many other species of animals as well. "