Paul Scott of the free Tay beaver group found this on the bank under a willow and happily brought it home to share. Because it was dry when he found it there has been a lot of discussion on its origins. He explained that the river in question has great fluctuations so it’s possible it was ‘exited’ under water and just dried out when the level dropped. Bruce Thompson (respected environmental consultant at ecoTRACS in Wyoming) had this to say about it:
“The usual diagnostics — shape, color, texture, size and location — appear correct for Castor, although I cannot discern what that larger light-colored content is — a leaf? The late and great Olaus Murie refused to claim 100% certainty with scat ID unless he personally saw it exit — I love that man! — but using the process of elimination (sorry) to remove other competing identities (at least in North America), and based on past collections of Castor canadensis specimens, I’m better than 90% confident that it’s beaver.”
Obviously we’re not talking North America here. And since this is Scotland its from Castor Fiber, not Castor Canadensis, but I don’t think they look all that different. Paul explained the ‘leaf’ saying
Was fairly confident of what it was when I first spotted it but it’s always nice to have it confirmed. The small leaf shaped object is fragment of wood which still shows the tooth groove down the middle. The 3ft mentioned in the original post is actually 3ft above the water as opposed to inland. The scat was found on the top of a horizontal Willow trunk, so could have been dropped there by a Fox or a Heron who picked it up thinking it was something tasty. The area is also prone to sever fluctuations in water level, so the original deposit could well have been made in water given that the high level would have submerged the spot. Two other samples were found a few feet away in a beaver dug canal but would have instantly disintegrated had they been handled. Sadly, I’ve been searching for a good example for a few years now. Happily, I can stop now.
And before you question what kind of man looks for beaver poo and happily saves it in tupperware, remember that it could easily be the first wild beaver poo collected from the county in 400 years, and maybe that will explain the fascination. Remember, that beavers were extinct for a long, long time in the United Kingdom.Would you take home dinosaur poo?
Like all beavers in Scotland, this one clearly has a very high castor-fiber diet!
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Oh and Owyhee in Nevada (not too far from the Elko River where Carol Evans of the BLM has documented compelling beaver magic) congratulates this years’ winners of the science fair, in which students Richard Pete and Indira Modesto took third place for “Beaver Pond Ecology.”
To which I can only reply: “Third?”
