Upstream to the Wet Wood

Last Friday, I took a walk along the upper part of the Burnieshed Burn.

In the West Wards I saw that the beavers have stretched a small plug dam that they had added just downstream from the stone built dam with which Jim Duncan blocked the burn in 2002

This shows the dam in detail. Mud, reed canary grass stems and sticks are the materials the beavers have used.


The photo below shows the top of the straining post of a fence.

I must find photographs that I took eight years ago that included this old straining post  because the dam from which I took this photograph is well above the level of the post.

I wonder if the water level has been raised by as much as a metre?

Frustrated by the thought of having to hunt through CDs I took a photograph of the one photo that came to hand. I probably took the original picture during the winter of 2002/3 or 2003/4.

Dredging canals and other waterways is a part of the life of a beaver. Here, some dredging has been done and the spoil dumped on the canal's bank. Beavers have then walked about over the spoil and left their foot marks.

From the top of the dam that closes the larger of the two ponds in the Wet Wood. The crest of the dam is, as Bryony Coles has written, a fine causeway along which humans and others can walk. 

A chaos of cutting and coppice regrowth.