Started this morning going back down to the culvert that has given me so much grief.^ This is the area looking from the county road onto what is left of the water there. I took about half of it out last trip to see if the adult beaver would patch it or if they are even there. It hadn't been repaired at all so I'm pretty sure the adults were shot or maybe killed by a predator. The four pups I caught there were in good physical shape, but awful small for this time of year, and not much bigger than a Muskrat.
This is looking straight down on the culvert and what was remaining at the mouth of the culvert after draining about half. The water was almost to the top of the culvert when I started this job.^
This is what remained in the culvert, you can see where the water line was two days ago on the side of the culvert. This is what I removed today, note the sand in the bottom, which was about half grass.^^
This is about half way done digging the culvert out. I piled a bunch on that pile to the right, but also put most of the sand/ grass to the left, where there was a hole about hip boot deep when I got there, kind of rebuilding the culvert approach.
This is when I got it all cleaned out and running. ^^ Called the highway foreman and he is sending the backhoe to get the piles cleaned up and spread out evenly on the shoulders. There's a few yards of sand there, roughly eight feet out from the culvert that the hoe will move and spread. We'll keep a close eye on this spot to see if the adult beaver make an appearance later.
These are a couple "Rakes" i made to clean culverts like these. Both are ten feet long and made of 1" tubing. The one with a single prong is for cleaning out brush/ mud, and the one I use most often. The one with two sharp prongs is what I hook large logs with, so that I can maneuver them around when they are lodged in a culvert. The points are quite sharp and actually dig into the log for a better grip. I don't have to use that one a lot, but when I do, it is the cats meow, and sure beats crawling in a culvert half full of water, and all full of spiders and skeeters!! I'm guessing a few of you have walked into a face full of spider webs? Should be done here unless an adult shows up.
Caught another pup at the upstream area of the ditch today, which makes seven there.
This is a barren 2.5 year old female I caught downstream in the ditch today. I caught her in a den entrance going under the road, about half way between the two beaver houses. She could be a traveler that came out of the ditch that empties into this ditch, and drains the two lakes I mentioned early on. I'm not sure where she came from, but she should have been bred last winter, and had pups this spring. She either can't have pups or was pushed out of a lodge elsewhere, and was looking to establish somewhere else. She may be a sister to the alpha female and was working as a live in nanny if she is barren. Real unusual for her to be that age and not have had at least one litter by now.
This is the upstream dam that Kevin asked about. Look what floated into the spillway! These are big pieces of floating bog that break away or are cut away from the edges by the beaver. If you look straight over the top of this piece, there is another smaller piece hung up on something near the far bank. These are a real pain to work with, because they are water logged and quite heavy, there's about half as much below the waterline as the grass is tall. Before I tear this dam out I push these to shore, as much as possible, and run a big stick through them and into the bottom, to hold them in place until the water level drops. If I don't anchor them they float into the spillway of the dam and stop the waterflow. If that happens, and there may be others floating around, I have a two man crosscut saw which I use to cut it up into more manageable sized pieces I can throw on shore/ out of the water. I'm guessing that piece of bog weighs somewhere close to 400 lbs as it's pictured here. It's sitting on top of one of my traps now, so I have to move it! I've seen pieces of bog like this floating in lakes that were 30' across, how would you like to cut those up?