Beaver watching

With the long summer evenings we have quite a few visitors coming to see the beavers. Currently the beavers emerge around 20.15, but sometimes earlier than this. While most people get to see them, some don’t realise that you have to sit still, without speaking and just watching quietly. Beavers hear and smell very well and feel vibrations through the water if you move your feet clumsily. So fidgety children are not an asset in a beaver hide!

But whenever I watch I see the beavers. Our new pair of imported Bavarian beavers are flourishing and must now have kits because we have seen them taking food into the burrows. We haven’t seen the kits yet but the beavers are now using several burrows which is a sign the kits are moving about. It’s amazing how a full grown beaver, about the size of a cocker spaniel, can emerge from an underwater burrow right in front of you, then swim underwater across the whole pond to the other side, with hardly a ripple, just occasional bubbles. If you don’t know what is going on you don’t understand the quiet movements and could miss them altogether. But eventually an adult will come out onto the bank and spend several minutes slowly and carefully grooming and scratching a large corpulent tum.

Scotland has now fully protected its beavers and established a management programme. About 50 beavers are being translocated from places where they are not wanted to new homes in Yorkshire and Devon. Step by step the beavers are reclaiming their lost homes. Here in Wales, as far as we know, NRW has made no decisions at all.

Comments are closed.