A Deep Depression and Much Rain

This is a view from our bedroom window on the misty morning of the 31st October 2009.

And the top dam below the drive later that morning.

Last night, however, the forecast depression came in and rainfall has fallen heavily for the last twenty-four hours or so.

Here is that top dam again in the midst of all this rain.

This is the middle of the three main dams below the drive at Bamff, taken this afternoon at about 15:30.

And here is the lowest of the three big dams. A new one is being built about twenty five metres downstream of this one and it looks as though another one is in a very early stage of construction another twenty or so metres below that.

Why would a salmon or sea trout not manage to leap this dam?

This is a view from further downstream of the same dam. A sheet of water is flowing into the original ditch.

A Walk to the Wet Wood

This is the dam that I photographed last on the 14th October: not a lot of change.

The mild weather has kept the green in the aquatic vegetation in this ditch.

The near ground in this picture was cleared by the beavers in the summer of 2002 and, owing to browsing by roe deer, has remained open. Some scattered willows survive.

In the distance is some grey alder and grey willow. The brown vegetation in the middle ground is dock (Rumex sp.)

Within the woodland the beavers have continued to thin and extract timber.

Looking back from inside one of the copses down a path made by the beavers for the extraction of timber.

The photograph shows that beaver path a little further down, at the point where it enters a canal that the beavers dug some years ago, but which has been dredged.

This copse of willow has been given a good thinning by the beavers. It will be interesting to see how it develops.

Here is the original lodge that Roy Dennis and Alan and Heather Bantick built in December 2001.

The lodge has been occupied on and off ever since. As you can see the beavers have just done some maintenance work on the roof, so the lodge is now ready for winter.

A Walk along the Burnieshed Path

The rains of the last few days have more than refilled the ponds.

The overflows from the big dam below the drive are running again and, as the water level downstream is higher than it has ever been owing to the heightening of the other dams further downstream, I begin to wonder how long it would be before a salmon (were such a fish to consider swimming as far upstream as this) would leap the main part of the dam and not have to make do with the overflows.

The sight of the felled and bark stripped birch tree in the middle distance makes me wonder why beavers would be eating such an indigestible food at this time of year.

That Formerly Lowest Dam

I am posting this photograph separately because it would not blow up in the original post - maddeningly because the other pictures all blew up nicely.

It would be good to know how to ensure that photographs that one inserts do respond to the double click.

Water cress is a great feature of the downstream side of these big dams. You can see it as the darker green mass of vegetation growing against the dam.

Burnieshed Burn - The New Lacustrine Landscape

Despite the low rainfall for the better part of the last two months, the beavers have continued to work on their dams. Indeed, as the water levels fell in each pond the beavers made particular efforts to ensure the impermeability of their dams. So, although some rain fell before I took these photographs, the landscape in this part of the Burnieshed has become steadily more lacustrine.

The lawn (mid left in this photo) that the beavers maintained by grazing is on its way to extinction.

Here is what was the bottom dam. The parapet is heightened and the dam has been extended a bit to the south (the left side of the picture).

The existence of the new dam, still only a plug across the burn, has raised the water level below this dam.

This is the new bottom dam from upstream. It is one of a flight of four in the sequence that runs below the drive to Bamff House.

It is built across the burn just north of a large old Sitka spruce tree. Last winter overflow from the dam upstream to the west flowed round the trunk of this tree. What will happen this winter?

A Lodge and Two Dams

Autumn is the busiest time for beavers as they prepare for winter.

I had begun to wonder if this lodge had been abandoned, but fresh maintenance work shows that beavers intend to live in it for the winter.

This photograph shows the pond that was created by the building of a dam last year and which is being expanded by the extension of that dam and by the felling of more trees on what is now the shore.

A dry September and October have followed a very wet summer and water levels are low.

This is the second dam below the drive here at Bamff. Like the other dams it is being extended and built up to contain the water in the pond upstream.

A Walk to the Wet Wood

A few days' absence and a persistent viral infestation of some kind kept me away from the beavers' terrain.

However, on the 14th I wandered forth.

October is the busy month for beavers. They are preparing for winter and must do maintenance work on their dams and lodges. Trees must be felled to provide the material for construction and to make it easy to access the tender bark of the more distant twigs.

I planted most of the trees along this riparian strip in 2002 and 2003. They have just started to attract the attention of the beavers and quite a number have been cut.

A new dam has been begun.

I came across this dam on the 8th of June for the first time. Here it is: built mainly of stone with grass and turf to make it more or less water proof.

By the sixth of August it looked like this. The stones are covered up.

By the 14th of October the dam looked like this. Not a very rapid progress in terms of length of ground covered or height built, but the dam was extraordinarily solid to walk on. It felt like a real causeway.

I started on this post on the 14th October, just a week ago, but forgot it and only came upon it a few minutes ago.