There’s a new beaver watcher in the Scottish countryside, and since she’s a very nice writer I thought I would share what she wrote on her blog. This is Mandy Haggith of Cybercrofter.
We immediately saw willow trees at the lochside showing signs of beaver activity, some chewed right off, some partly gnawed. Across the loch was a huge lodge – a mound of sticks built out into the water.
We waited.
There is a special kind of animal-watching meditation. It took me years to learn it. As a child I was incapable of sitting still. My dad used to take me badger-watching, which involved sitting quietly by a sett at dusk until the badgers emerged. I would rustle and fidget, and the badgers would no doubt hear and use a different exit. The more frustrated I became by the wait, the noisier my scuffling and the less chance of seeing a badger, until eventually we would give up.
Somehow as an adult I have learned to wait quietly for animals. Attention is everything. Standing by that loch, I revelled in the cool breeze across the water, blowing gently in my face, perfect for not being smelled by the beavers. There was little sound except for the rippling water and the hush of breeze through twigs. It was good to know I was there, in the beaver’s habitat, experiencing their loch.
Don’t you love those passages? I am so jealous about going badger-watching! How true about the inner stillness you must cultivate to wait for wildlife to show itself to you. Except not in Martinez – where the train whistles, garbage trucks and swearing drunks all combine to create a hum that apparently relaxes our beavers. They seem to show themselves when they’re ready regardless of what you do. She had to work harder on the Tay.
As the light dimmed, details of the lodge became harder and harder to make out across the loch, and it became easier and easier to hallucinate brown furry bodies! I think I saw, faintly, movement at the fringe of the loch. I can’t be certain.
But what I can be certain of was the splash. And then the ‘pfffff’, closeby, a sound similar to that made by a seal surfacing. Only this was freshwater, so it couldn’t be a seal – it must have been a beaver!
Ahhh the inspiring detective work of a beaver spotter! Thanks Maggie for a lovely read. Our own Lory and Cheryl went on their own beaver trek last evening. They saw one of our kits! ( Now almost a yearling) working hard at the third dam. (You should trek down and see for yourself that it’s coming along nicely.) Cheryl writes:
Lory and I went down to beavers. Moses was there and had seen 3 beavers. We followed a kit (yearling now!) down to the third dam where he wrestled with another kit and then brought mud and sticks to the dam. They have a big hole upstream of that dam they brought a big branch into. I have a few pics I’ll get up tomorrow but they probably arent the best as it was getting dark.
And from Lory:
When Cheryl and I got to the secondary Moses was there and he said he saw three beavers. As Cheryl walked further down Moses and I spotted one beaver coming down the bank near the bank hole. One swam down and across the secondary. Cheryl and I followed him down to the third dam. It looks great. Lots of wood on it. Before we left we had two kits down there working. A man came by and wondered what we were looking at. He was from town but didn’t know there were beavers around. He watched with us. Let’s see what happens after these next few days of rain.
How wonderful that our youngsters are growing up together! Wrestling and carrying on in typical yearling fashion! I’m sorry we all weren’t there to see it, but I’m sure we remember what it looks like!
Sniff, they grow up so fast! Since this footage of the tiny fellow was taken on the evening of May 5 last year and then we didn’t see him again until June, I can’t imagine he was more than a month old. So almost Happy birthday to him or her and the siblings!
