The researcher also found waterfowl, including wood ducks, mallards, ring-necked ducks and the hooded mergansers, only at beaver ponds. In all, she recorded 91 bird species at beaver ponds on the SRS in her two seasons of observations. Beavers' favorite tree to eat in the Southeast is sweetgum. Beavers will eat bushes before trees. They switch to trees in the fall and winter as bushes lose their leaves.
Beavers are monogamous, living in family groups in lodges or in pond banks.
Beaver dams in the Southeast are often more than 240 feet long. The United States loses about 300,000 acres of freshwater wetlands every year. But beaver-created wetlands are the only form of wetlands that are increasing in North America. Before the arrival of Europeans in North America, there were between 60 million and 400 million beavers on the continent. The fur trade in beaver hats, coats and robes led to the near-extinction by the last half of the 19th century.