Beavers eat ferns

The evening before last I was out at the Big Pond with friends and was able to film this beaver, eating the fronds of a fern.

Here is the link: it's the first time I have seen beaver eating fern fronds. It must have taken them there from some place along the shore where there are ferns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-jJJDiLX4A

This is a day of downpour. I have managed, at last, to discover how to delete all the old bits of video on my camcorder and have uploaded the most recent clip on to YouTube.

I was impressed by the galls on this birch tree while looking around for a place to fix my trail camera.

Otters and Beavers

After feeding the wild boar down the drive this morning I thought it would be time to remove the trail camera and see what activities it had recorded during the last week.

Here is what I found:

Disappointing, really: however, yesterday evening I walked out with my camcorder. I walked along the Burnieshed path and stood behind a patch of ferns. The wind was from the North. The five adolescent mallard ducks swam by me in single file and settled down to feed some distance upstream. A beaver climbed out of the water on the opposite bank and began to graze. 

It did not settle, though, and turned back to re enter the water. I watched it swim about for a little and then land on the bank near the dam. It settled there and grazed for some minutes. While this was going on another beaver appeared where the first beaver had started feeding. It was rather bigger than the first beaver, so I took it that the new beaver was the female and that the first one was her mate. For while they grazed. Occasionally the water near me stirred. I wondered about trout. There was a sharp, short splash sound at one point and the bigger beaver looked up. What's up with you, I thought to be disturbed by that - probably only a trout. She went on grazing. 

Then the first beaver took to the water again, circled around a bit near the dam and made for the bank where his mate was feeding. Suddenly, there was a lot of splashing and what I thought sounded like rather aggressive activity, out of my sight, behind the rushes that fringe the burn. Odd, I thought, are they playing together? And then, but was it then, I saw the otter. It ran off. The beavers rushed into the water swam about, met each other and rubbed noses and then headed off together at speed. I lost continuous sight of them as they disappeared behind the fallen fir in the pool. They gave long keening cries. A short while later they turned back a returned to view, but not before the otter, joined by a second otter, ran out from behind the rushes. One of the beavers rushed out of the pool and the otters fled, chased by the beaver.

After this the beavers patrolled the pool vigorously. The wind had veered a little to the East of North. I thought, 'Now the beavers will get wind of me'. One of them swam across the pool about thirty yards upstream of me, followed the scent downstream and faced me, sniffing about. It got a good contact and crash-dived.

What a fascinating experience! I think the otters must have been waiting around in the hope of attacking a kit and the beavers were probably aware of this for some time. I had not heard the single keening warning note before. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phdDrSIK5fg

Dams and Pipes

The new dams by the drive have been creeping up and with the rains of last week, the beavers felt obliged to raise them still further. They have crowned this dam with rhododendron, brought down from the bushes upstream. 

The height of the water level upstream began, however, began to present a potential problem for the drive. We do not want the drive to become a water course and, by means of cuts in the side of the drive have been carrying out work, familiar to anyone who maintains roads, of taking the water off the road as soon as possible.

Therefore, we have taken this opportunity to instal a pipe through the dam. The perforated polythene pipe is fixed at both ends and wire mesh covers the upstream end to prevent beavers blocking it.

Paul Scott and Alan Ross came here last Saturday to carry out this work. So far it has proved completely successful and the water level of the stream upstream of this dam has been reduced by about 4 inches (100 mm) as you see from the tide mark in the photo.

Contrary to what I wrote yesterday, this is surely the same doe as figured in the other photograph, but taken at a different time and day. What I took to be the antlers must be a combination of the ears and some grass stems.

Some pupils from the New School at Butterstone came to watch beavers with me earlier this week. One of them wondered what he might see at close quarters and found this invertebrate drama in progress. A spider is stalking a fly. I put my iPhone to the eyepiece and this was the result.

Walking round the Wet Wood recently I noticed this and wondered what it was: a gall of some kind, or a chrysalis? 

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/947367

showed a nice photograph of what I had seen: Dasineura urticae, a very common gall of nettles - beautiful, all the same.

Wildlife along the Bamff Drive

The sequences of film in Springwatch that showed beavers cutting trees and swimming down canals of their own digging made me think it was time to put out my own trail camera, so I did: and this is what I found on the memory card after a week.

Someone with a sieve. Was she looking for tadpoles?

A young roe doe going for a drink.

Wild boarlets, having passed through the stock mesh that detains their parents, on the rake.

And wild boys.

Where were the beavers? By mistake I had not set the machine to work at night.

Rich brown waters - there was heavy rain yesterday evening and the beavers have been active, clarting the dam with mud.

This is the lower of this pair of dams. 

Up a nearby ditch there is another beginning.

This mud sculpture was very pleasing.

This time a roe buck goes for a drink.

 Alan and Cyril came from Stirling University to take samples of the vegetation in the ponds. As one can see from the surviving exclosures the bog bean is less abundant than formerly, but where there are spaces in the bogbean, horsetail is growing. So, it seems, less biomass but greater biodiversity. 

I have learned since that horsetail (Equisetum spp.) has very extensive and deep growing rhizomes. These transfer nutrients from deep in the soil up into the plants themselves. Something interesting is going on here, I suspect.

Here is a sward of Bogbean (Menyanthes trifoliata).

I can only make out three beavers in this photograph, but there was another one close by.

This past weekend we celebrated the tenth anniversary of the return of beavers to the Tay.

There was a good turnout, but best of all was the number of children who came to see our displays.

Some of us canoed from Ballinluig to Dunkeld. 

This photograph shows some of our party before setting off for Dunkeld. Hugh Chalmers, who sighted a beaver in the River Earn ten years ago is in the middle of the picture, wearing a red life jacket.

Springwatch!

Destructive Capability of Beavers...Unbelievable

I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK 

I've seen damage done by beavers in the past but this is the worst!!

 Beavers, left unattended, can clear a forest in no time..... 

This legend accompanied the above photograph that Aileen sent me. A friend of her father, Jim Broun, had sent it to him and he forwarded it on to Aileen. I expect it will get this blog identified as one that deals with 'adult' subjects.

Well, there you go! I thought this was a most entertaining photograph. I wonder where the event it depicts took place. I must say that I would not like to go a wooding with no clothes on: least of all when wielding a chain saw. Still, the picture is very lovely.

And now for something quite different! This and the photo below are of a couple of new dams. One, it is true, was begun last year, but left. With the onset of spring the beavers have come back to this work and have added to the dam begun last year and built this new one. It is, of course, work in progress.

As a matter of fact, this is the new one.

A little upstream this tributary ditch has a couple of tentative little plugs. Here 

and here.

I took a look at the dead trees on and behind the barrage that closes the big pond or lochan this morning. I wondered if any more had fallen during the windy weather last week.

Several have. Three stems have broken along the barrage now and some more in the ground below the barrage. More light is coming in and willow and birch are making a come back.

The swamp behind the barrage.

 

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