Young Mallards and a Pair of Beavers

One day I shall get my HCO Scoutguard trail camera to work at night, but in the meantime I pushed out the boat and bought a Bushnell Trophy camera. The first time I put it out I ignored the instructions with the result that I found a huge number of clips of ten second video, showing water flowing over a dam and waving grasses in the foreground.

For my next effort, I shifted the camera, paid more attention to the instructions, and caught this group of young mallard. They are benefitting from renewed work by the beavers, extending the watery landscape they like.

And then, at night, the camera worked, despite the heavy rains of the week. I should say that the next two clips were taken on the night of the 12th August.

You can hear the rain.

I did manage to centre the clip after all and exchanged the wrong one for the right one.

Black Darters and an Archaeological Visit

When John Thorpe first came to visit Bamff, he asked me if I had noticed whether dragonflies were more abundant since the arrival of the beavers in 2002. I replied that I hadn't noticed any change then but, later that summer, came across a whole lot of black darters (Sympetrum danae). I didn't notice any of these dragonflies last year, but have seen some by the pools of the Burnieshed burn in the last ten days. Here is one lying out sunning itself on the bark-stripped trunk of a birch tree that the beavers felled last winter. It seems that these darters like to lie out in rows, warming them selves in the sun.

On the 31st July I had a very pleasant visit from Nick Dixon and Barrie Andrian from the Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology. I attended a meeting of the Scottish Freshwater Group in 2009 at which Dr. Dixon spoke most interestingly about the discovery of ancient woodland in what is now a submerged part of Loch Tay. Among the remains of the woodland they found a dam built by beavers.

Here is a description of their work taken from their website 

www.crannog.co.uk/docs/whats_new/ArchiveNews.html :

'The remains of ancient oak, pine, and alder trees embedded in the shallows of the loch below Ben Lawers were first discovered in 2005 during work carried out by the Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology (STUA) for the National Trust for Scotland’s Ben Lawers Historic Landscape Project. Initial radiocarbon-dated samples placed the submerged tree remains in the Neolithic period more than 4,000 years ago, but further dating has revealed the timbers range between 1,500 and 8,000 years old.'

And

'With support from Historic Scotland, underwater archaeologists from the STUA and the Scottish Crannog Centre at Kenmore have returned to the area to try to determine the origins of the tree remains, possible causes for their inundation, and any evidence of human activity. Last year charred grain was found in a sample collected from deposits one metre below the lochbed. Given previous discoveries of Neolithic stone axes nearby on land and the proximity of Scotland’s only known stone axe factory near Killin, it is possible that further evidence will be preserved in the loch.

Now, in the course of searching for the root systems of one of the most upright stumps, the archaeologists have discovered upright and jumbled sticks buried up to one metre below the lochbed which have been gnawed and cut by beaver. Dr Nicholas Dixon, Chairman of the STUA and Research Fellow at Edinburgh niversity said “We were hoping to find timbers cut by early farmers using prehistoric tools; we never expected to find evidence of beaver activity. It will be exciting to date these finds – many of which have well-preserved teethmarks - and to try to establish if they represent the remains of a dam or lodge.”'

Here are Barrie Andrian and Nick Dixon photographing something that a present beaver has gnawed.

They kindly sent me the following photographs that show some of their underwater beaver gnawed finds.

Another go at salmonid parr feeding.

http://vimeo.com/27013432

Vimeo and Youtube seem both to be fixated on my beavers and otter video. Or is it just my incompetence at loading the right one? Probably the latter. Anyhow, I am trying again.

A young yellowhammer sitting on a fence post. 

Water Forget-me-not (Myosotis scorpioides), I suppose, growing out of one of the dams in the Wet Wood.

And here is an aspen leaf: the beavers have not yet, after nine years, returned to fell this group of trees - the celebrated 76 suckers that grew out of the original dozen trees that were planted, after they were felled in 2002.

When will the beavers return and cut them down again?

Salmonid Parr feeding in the Burnieshed Burn at Bamff

Here is the link that should lead you to a video of salmonid parr feeding. I think I took this clip last Saturday evening but, as I mentioned in my last post, I walked out yesterday evening and filmed similar activity in the same pool.

http://vimeo.com/27010638

Gradually, the water level will creep up to cover this ground, but over how long a period of time? What will seed into the silts? In the meantime it will be interesting to see what walks about and leaves its footmarks.

Hydraulic Support

Beavers often build dams close downstream to previously built 'high dams' to give the upstream dam hydraulic support. Before its breaching about three weeks ago there was a little dam about thirty metres downstream of the dam in the photo (now called the Third Dam) and this was breached at the same time. Since the 6th July the beavers have been building a dam about ten metres downstream of the main dam. What made them do that? Lars Wilsson, the Swedish zoologist would have said they were programmed to do this: the late Donald Griffin would have allowed them powers of problem solving. I tend toward the Griffin school of thought.

Here is the small dam that gives hydraulic support to the bigger one, seen from the parapet of the Third Dam.

Yesterday evening I sat by this pool as the dusk approached and video'd the parr of brown trout and, perhaps, Atlantic salmon as they fed on the invertebrates that flew about.

This is what I filmed in one of several clips that I took.

http://vimeo.com/27007011 - This turns out not to be of parr feeding, but of beavers and otters. I will try again.

Chris Potter, handyman and gamekeeper, told me recently that he had seen a salmon of about 10 lbs (4.5kg) in the Burnieshed burn sometime around 1990. As I may have mentioned in an earlier post, Chris said back in 2007 that he thought that we might be seeing salmon parr jumping in the first of the new pools that the beavers had created that year. It looks very much as though he was right, but the abundance of salmonid parr that we are seeing has to be due to the increase in area of habitat and the proliferation of invertebrates on which the fish may feed.

The reductionist management of salmon that cannot allow the presence of pike, or eels, or goosanders, or cormorants, or herons, or otters, or beavers should have no place these days. 

The breaching of this dam, the lowest of the big dams on the Burnieshed Burn, happened around the night of the 6th July. This photograph was taken on the 7th.

and this, I think, on the 8th

as, perhaps, was this.

A lot of little frogs are going about.

Here is that dam again, taken this morning, the 26th July.

Otters and Beavers

The repair of the breached dam is well underway and the pool behind the dam is full of parr, leaping up to catch the insects.

Our friend, David Wilson, stayed for the night, so he accompanied me to see the beavers. We reached the pool to the east of the drive, striving to avoid crunching the road metal that has been spread to fill the pot-holes formed during the winter. It was soon apparent that something was up: the beavers were out and about, patrolling the pool. I became aware of a high whistling sound, wondering first if it was a bird: but which bird? Then, looking right, along the drive I saw an otter emerging from the vegetation: the cries came from it. I could see the movements of its mouth as the whistles sounded. The animal turned about and disappeared back into the pool.

The video on YouTube is a sticking together of two or three separate clips, the last of which shows two otters as they came up onto the drive, walked away from us and then disappeared down the bank to swim upstream in the Burnieshed Burn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zV8-9xmR28

Moments after the otters had left, we saw the five young mallard swimming serenely among the tumble of dead dogwood in the pool.