I went for a walk this morning on the Quinobequin Rd trails along the Charles River and came across this tree. I’ve never seen a beaver’s handiwork in person before but this sure looks like it to my untrained eyes.
This tree is right along the river bank. I couldn’t see any other trees up or down the river that appeared to be gnawed.
The pile of chewed chips around the tree looked relatively recent but probably more than hours or a few days old.
I have no idea if beavers take many days to take down a single tree or whether this one just changed his mind halfway through the job. It was a big tree and would probably have fallen about 2/3’s way across the river if it had come down.
This probably isn’t a comforting photo for the Quinobequin Rd neighbors. That road has a history of regular flooding in various spots whenever there’s a big rain. I’m guessing that some busy beavers, hard at work at building unplanned for dams is not likely to improve that situation for neighboring houses.
I’m beginning to have 2nd thoughts. I just took a quick look on the internet of beaver gnawed trees and they look quite different. That potentially makes this even more interesting. What or who did that to the tree?
Yeah, I’m not sure either- I did see a tree near the water by the Chestnut Hill Mall recently that I’m pretty sure was modified by a beaver. Can’t be sure though, and that’s a pretty well-populated place to have those critters around
Perhaps a deer? They will gnaw on bark if they have run out of rhododendrons…
Slightly off topic: If I remember correctly you posted about a year ago on some work planned for the trail along Quinnobequin Road. Haven’t been there in a while – what’s the situation?
I’m going with beaver. Just went down and checked it out. The chips are scalloped off the tree and that section of the trunk is covered with tooth marks, big wide rodent toothmarks, not deer nibbles. And they strip the bark to use it for bedding in a lodge, and that is consistent with the way the bark is stripped. However, I’d just read that in April in Russia, a fisherman was attacked and killed by a beaver when he got too close, trying to take a photo. So when I heard a noise in the undergrowth, I hightailed it out of there pretty fast, although it was probably a bird or a frog.
@Yigal – Actually that was a few years back. The trails are in pretty good shape these days. Go on down, see the beaver? tree, and have a look.
(1) A beaver
(2) A flood
(3) An election season
(4) ???
This step 1?
(off topic)
Q. What’s the dirtiest thing on TV?
A. Ward, I think you were a bit hard on the beaver.
(Go back to original topic)
Do you know the MIT cheer?
I’m a beaver, you’re a beaver, we are beavers all.
And when we get together, we do our beaver call:
Cosine, secant, tangent, sine.
3.14159
Square root, integral, udv
Slipstick, sliderule, MIT!
A friend email’ed to tell me that he’s nearly certain it’s porcupine damage. I did a quick check on the Internet. This picture definitely looks like the same kind of marks. None of the Internet photos from either beavers or porcupines show the gnawing going right down to the ground like this tree was though.
I think I’ll root for porcupine since I’ve never seen one and would like to get a glimpse<
A friend and I took a canoe down that stretch of the river yesterday. We found maybe ten more, similarly gnawed trees. Like this and this and this. The more we saw, the more it looked like beavers. We found what looks like a beaver dam in a little stream on the far bank.
We got a few quick glimpses of what might have been beavers and then at the end of the trip we got a clear view of a small beaver running down a hill and jumping into the water.
Here’s a brand new beaver tree photo from Quinobequin
.., also, notice the stumps beside the tree. It looks like this wasn’t the first tree this critter took down.
… and if the beavers don’t get the trees the Asian Bittersweet will. It’s a nasty fast growing invasive vine that encircles the tree and will eventually pull it over. There’s a fair amount of it at the southernmost end of Quinobequin. We’re also dealing with it on the Upper Falls Greenway.
Jerry, there are quite a few beaver damaged trees along the shore near Quinobequin. And about a week ago, there was a large dead beaver on the ramp to rt 9 Westbound, near the river. Sorry to see him as road kill but he was very tasty with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
Hmm, Rt 9 westbound. The plot thickens. Who knew our beavers have been commuting to Wellesley.