On the 3rd of November Anne-Marie Macmaster from the Scottish Mink Initiative visited me and brought this walk through arrangement that would ensure that any mink would leave their footprints in the clay.

This photograph, taken on the 26th December shows no sign of mink so far.

I am relieved that this is the case (so far) because I have seen no mink here since 2002.

The Wet Wood aka the New Beaver Swamp and Pools

There has been a bit of a hiccough since the 13th December due to the complexities of the Festive Season. Here are a couple of photographs that I wished to present to my loyal followers.

A grey afternoon and the New Pool is seen from the west. 

Here is a section of the 100 yard dam.

Happy Christmas! (Old Style)

Paw Marks in the Snow

Footsteps in the snow - the front paw of a beaver: 

A little snow fell in the early hours of the morning, leaving enough for a beaver to make clear marks.

The front paw marks are easily seen in these photographs, but the hind feet with their webs are not so obvious. 

Above the front foot in this photograph is a hind foot print.

The beaver whose tracks I have photographed does not seem to have been pulling a branch along behind it, otherwise the tracks would be less clear.

 This photograph of a feed cache was taken on the 4th December

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I took this photo this morning. The beavers don't seem to have added anything to the cache since the day I took the preceding picture.

First Snow at Bamff

The dams by the drive are looking splendid with their dusting of snow.

And the food cache in the downstream section of the Burnieshed Burn is growing, I think.

A Breached Dam and its Repair

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My last post showed a breach in the Long Dam in the Wet Wood. When I found it I wondered if a human had dug a gap in the dam, but I could see no sign of boot prints and there were no signs to show that a spade had been used to breach the dam. I think that the water level must have risen to a point where the beavers in the new lodge on the banks of the ditch upstream of this pool found that their living space was being flooded and so lowered the water level. 

As you see from the photograph above, taken at the place that I think was breached (and there is no other place along that dam that has been breached or has such obvious signs of recent structural work), the dam has been repaired.

Some may ask if beavers are really capable of such a capacity to resolve problems. The answer is 'Yes, they can.' 

Looking across the dam, this photo shows a substantial food cache that the beavers have been preparing for winter. 

After checking on the dam and finding that the gap had been repaired, I walked round the pool to its western side and took this photograph to show the increasing extent of the water. You may be able to make out the dam at the furthest away extent of the pool.

This is the new dam which, I think, may have been flooded by the recent rains and so encouraged the beavers to breach the dam about 30 metres to the east and then repair it once the lodge had been extended.