This article appeared at the beginning of the month but I liked it so much I always planned to get to it. I am going to call that photo the “Winsome” beaver. I’ve never seen credit for it and I don’t think that photo is castor fiber but Isn’t s/he adorable?
Awww, gnaw! Plucky the beaver dammed to a lonely life on the loch after epic trek
A beaver has been filmed living on Loch Lomond for the first time after embarking on a cross-country trek. But the animal’s solo relocation, hailed by experts as a big step in the development of Scotland’s wild beaver population, could mean a lonely life.
Ben Ross, beaver project manager for the wildlife agency Scottish Natural Heritage, says the animal is thought to be a singleton and probably made its way 14 miles across country. Beavers, which last lived in Scotland more than 400 years ago, were reintroduced to the Tay illegally in the early 2000s, and by the last count in 2017 were thought to number more than 400.
Now don’t you just love how the article automatically assumes that this pioneer beaver is a male looking for his honey? Dietland Muller-Swarze pointed out that the research shows female young beaver dispersers are likely to GO FARTHER looking for a mate than their male counterparts. In fact the only other species known where that irony happens is with porcupines! (And yes I have a weird brain that can remember I was on an airplane flying back from a shrink conference in San Diego when I read that fact and it stuck me so dramatically I remembered it.) The conference is over, the shrink days are over, but of course I’m not forgetting that fact of odd beaver feminism any time soon.
Workers at Loch Lomond National Nature Reserve near the mouth of the Endrick were first alerted when they saw beaver-gnawed willow branches. As a result, they set up a night-vision camera trap and captured the beaver on film.
He said: “It is quite a big deal that it has crossed to the west but it is what we expected What we want is good robust populations that are spreading and spreading away from those areas where there is greater conflict.”
He pointed out there were still many potential territories to fill around the Forth and Tay, saying: “It could very well be many years until another male or female comes over, then they’ve got to pair up.
“This is well within the range which these animals might be expected to travel. The hop-over from the Tay to the Forth was significant, and this is the start of another significant step.”
“I think it’s just a waiting game for this animal, he or she might be twiddling their thumbs for a while.”
If she had thumbs, that is. What will she twiddle instead? Beavers are fairly practical. They don’t do a lot of thinking about the future. They live in a room full of “right-nows”. So they fix the dam “right-now” and they chew a branch “right-now” and they look for a mate “right-now”. But the unlike humans, the ‘nows’ don’t seem to add up to any dissatisfaction or frustration. There are no beaver tally marks on the trunks of chewed trees or lonely beaver journals saying
“Day 170, The nights are getting cooler and there was frost on the dam this morning. I haven’t yet seen or scented any sign of chewing. I’m giving up hope of ever meeting another beaver on this godforsaken landscape. This is Ripley. Signing off.”
Which is good, because waiting through a series of “right-nows” is by far the best way of all to wait for anything. You should try it sometime.
The Lomond beaver is thought to have come from a group on the Forth at Kippen, 14 miles away. It may have been forced out when its parents had new kits. While beavers will cross open country in search of a territory, tributaries of the Forth run up to Balfron, potentially giving a beaver watery cover to take it to within six miles of Loch Lomond.
A few hundred yards of open country at Balfron Station separate one small tributary of the Forth from another burn that flows into the Endrick Water, which enters Loch Lomond just south of Balmaha. This could be the route the Lomond beaver took.
I’m sure she’s coping just fine. There’s lots to eat and no competition for the best places and she’s just making scent mounds and dams to her hearts content.
A kind of ‘Isle of the blue dolphins for beavers’ if you will
