Mass Audubon – Your Great Outdoors | A Mass Audubon Blog

In case you missed it, our wildlife sanctuaries are taking over the Mass Audubon Instagram feed one week at a time showing off what makes each sanctuary so unique. Last week featured Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary in Easthampton and Northampton.

Check out the week worth of posts below. (Please note: email subscribers may need visit to the blog here to see the images). And be sure to follow along this week get a snapshot of Boston Nature Center in Mattapan.

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It’s common knowledge that beavers build dams, but do you know why? It’s so they can survive the cold of winter! Beavers build dams to form ponds that are deep enough that they won’t freeze at the bottom. That way, the beavers can store a cache of edible branches on the floor of the pond, which they can access from their cozy lodges by way of underwater entrances.

Beaver dams actually benefit other species (including people), as well. By building dams and flooding woodland swamps, beavers play an important part in the restoration of lost wetlands, providing habitat and food for a wide variety of plants and animals.

To learn more about beavers (which are easily confused with their cousin the muskrat, by the way), beaver dams, and how to deal with various beaver-related issues, check out the Nature & Wildlife page here.

If you’ve got some great wildlife shots of your own, we’d love to see them! Enter the 2016 Picture This: Your Great Outdoors Photo Contest today!