For some years this lodge seemed to have been abandoned, but this autumn it was clear that the beavers had decided to live in it again. The whole edifice has been freshly coated with mud and has been extended somewhat.

The freshly stripped sticks in the foreground have been added to this dam, the lowest of the three big dams on this stretch of the Burnieshed Burn, within the last week.

The field that runs along the north side of the Burnieshed Burn was sown with stubble turnips. These small turnips are sometimes called '100 day turnips' because they are sown sometime in June with a view to letting sheep graze on them quite early in the winter. They are not as frost hardy as swedes, but convenient as a catch crop.

On the 30th November and 1st December I posted photographs that showed the way that beavers spread out of their burrow and made their solitary ways into the field of stubble turnips. These were plucked from the ground, gnawed and left to be consumed later.

Here is a fast flowing stretch of the reinvigorated burn, just below the middle of the big dams along this stretch of the burn.

The Glenfiddich 'Spirit of Scotland' Awards' Dinner took place at the Prestonfield House Hotel in Edinburgh on Tuesday, 8th December.

The centre piece on each of the tables was a bottle of Glenfiddich whisky frozen into a shapely block of ice.

Louise and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, but the whisky was still imprisoned in its iceberg when we left.