Wednesday 14 October 2009

A Walk to the Wet Wood





A few days' absence and a persistent viral infestation of some kind kept me away from the beavers' terrain.

However, on the 14th I wandered forth.

October is the busy month for beavers. They are preparing for winter and must do maintenance work on their dams and lodges. Trees must be felled to provide the material for construction and to make it easy to access the tender bark of the more distant twigs.

I planted most of the trees along this riparian strip in 2002 and 2003. They have just started to attract the attention of the beavers and quite a number have been cut.

A new dam has been begun.








I came across this dam on the 8th of June for the first time. Here it is: built mainly of stone with grass and turf to make it more or less water proof.













By the sixth of August it looked like this. The stones are covered up.


















By the 14th of October the dam looked like this. Not a very rapid progress in terms of length of ground covered or height built, but the dam was extraordinarily solid to walk on. It felt like a real causeway.

I started on this post on the 14th October, just a week ago, but forgot it and only came upon it a few minutes ago.

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