A Wet Afternoon

Well, in fact, I took this photograph in the morning, but I liked this image, so here it is.

This is the pool created by the beavers' lowest dam along the Burnieshed Burn at Bamff after a day of heavy rain.

I walked out this afternoon to take a turn round the south side of the Big Pond and find somewhere for a Trail Camera to hang and photograph a beaver I had seen trying to eat stems of horsetail while swimming. I have seen this happening twice and it is a most endearing sight.

After fixing the camera to a tree trunk I walked on and found that the beavers had built a new lodge in the canal that joins the two ponds. It was six o'clock. A tail splashed and I realised that beavers were about. A few moments before taking this photograph I had noticed disturbance in the water to the right of me, but thought it could have been a mallard, or some other water fowl - there are little grebes and water hens about.

I walked back about fifty yards and realised that the beavers had built a long and very bendy dam to create a terrace, almost like a cultivation terrace, but holding back a pond, perhaps like a rice paddy. On top of this bit of the dam I found these hind paw prints of beaver.

By this time the rain was on again and I decided not to find my way through the swamp, but to go back by the way I had come, and then walk round by the north side of the ponds.

I was keen to photograph bog bean in flower.