Well, it’s a mess down there around the pond that Bernie has claimed as his own. Here you see the state of the lodge that he’s building as of yesterday:
Frank Lloyd Wright he is NOT. And he better hurry up; it’s getting colder. (American beavers build their lodges by planting a few stabilizing logs in the mud and then just piling and piling on trunks and branches until they have a large pyramid or dome in which they can hollow out chambers and underwater accesses to them.)
More than 20 trees, ranging in diameter from 1 to 7 inches, have been felled by Bernie since he arrived in late September. He eats the inner bark and keeps his ever-growing teeth from becoming tusks by felling trees. He sometimes uses most of the tree for his lodge, at other times he uses only a small part of it and leaves most of the tree lying there. It looks almost random.
Now that the days are getting shorter, it’s harder and harder to see Bernie, who only works night shifts due to beaver union rules. The most excitement that we’ve had, beaver-wise, since our last Bernie report here was the appearance of a second beaver in an adjacent pond:
The newcomer was hard to see and almost impossible to photograph through the surrounding vegetation and in very low light. I’m leaning toward thinking it was an invading male (let’s call him Putin) that Bernie chased off, because I’ve not seen any sign of a second beaver since.
However, if it’s a female that is attracted to Bernie (let’s call her Bernice), our patch of paradise may be in trouble this spring. Beavers mate in the winter and usually have two to five kits in May or early June. The family usually starts a colony that needs a bigger lodge. We should be okay for this winter, though. Bernie’s three dams have not created a flood risk. Yet.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 6 and 17, 2025.)