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Thread: Wild beaver

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  1. #1
    Craftsman
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    Nov 2015
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    West Midlands
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    Wild beaver

    Bit of an unusual sighting this week. I live opposite a farm, we are only divided from the farm fields by a small river. We have around half an acre of garden and have recently invested in a robotic lawn mower, the grass is constantly short now and starting to green up. On Monday they cut the sweet hay on the field the other side of the river as they do three or four times every year, Tuesday threshed it’s and yesterday bailed.
    The river brings a wide variety of wild life, everything from ducks to king fisher, we have a resident swan who is always on the water and chaises the geese away for our entertainment. We feed the ducks seed every evening so on Tuesday when I was cleaning up the threshed grass that had blown onto our lawn some of the ducks landed with a large splash into the water as they often do, my wife was by the river and all of the ducks started making a real commotion, not uncommon but normally it is short lived. This time however they wouldn’t settle and the adults flew away leaving their chicks to hide in long vegetation on the opposite bank. Mr swan was very interested in them this time and started to hiss and flap, my wife assumed he was attacking the chicks and clapped her hands at him and attempted to shoe him away from them, a few seconds later she shouted me, “quick come and look, I think it’s an otter’. I’m no expert and I got there just in time to see less than a second of it go around the corner and disappear. We watched for a minute and it came back our way, head up and looking fine. It went into the vegetation again and the swan was riled up big time, then a large head popped up by the swan, went back down and started swimming in our direction underwater. As it got by us it surfaced about 1 meter from our feet and looked us straight in the eyes one after the next before swimming off again. It did a few lengths of our garden and left us for the evening. What a fabulous sighting I thought. We could hear it calling from up river and a reply from down river so we assume there was a pair of them but we only sighted one.

    Later in the evening I searched online to find out how common they are and look up a few pictures, otter tails look like a Labrador’s tho, but the one we saw had a large flat tail, like I said I’m no expert. I searched pictures of beaver and sure enough that’s what it was. I managed to run and get my phone out of the house just before it swam away earlier and take one photo of said animal, yep it was definitely a beaver. It seems there could be as few as 200 in the UK so I feel quite lucky, I am curious to see if anyone else has seen one in the wild or can share any information about them etc, I tried to contact the uk beaver trust but they have no email address on their website and annoyingly no way to refuse cookies! I am keen to protect them in the wild it was great to see. I also hope their presence could be a way to prevent and future development of local green belt etc, it’s a small village and the locals all fight back new housing because we want to remain a village, win win.

  2. #2
    Grand Master markrlondon's Avatar
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    Nice beaver!

    I heard that they had been reintroduced in a number of places and have slowly been spreading.

    It will be interesting to see what their dam building activities are like.

    Sounds like you have a lovely garden.

  3. #3
    Click bait title!

    Sounds absolutely idyllic.

    Sent from my M2101K7BNY using Tapatalk

  4. #4
    Craftsman
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    Lmao it could be click bait now I think about it. My wife was showing everyone at work pictures of her soaking wet beaver the day after. Apparently it was a hot topic. Her mate Jane was telling everyone who came in to ask my mrs to show them 🤣

  5. #5
    Master
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    Can't recall the last time I saw a wild beaver.

    Sent from my Nokia 1.4 using Tapatalk

  6. #6
    Grand Master oldoakknives's Avatar
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    Hope the ducks find their chicks again.
    Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.

  7. #7
    Master John Wall's Avatar
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    Wow. What a treat for you to see.
    Beaver are vegetarian so I wouldn’t have thought they were any threat to the ducklings or cygnets but I suppose the parents weren’t taking any chances.
    They will have had experience of mink and a dark long furry thing swimming about your family looks much like any other.
    Mink are killing machines and will decimate young water bird families at this time of year.
    Otters the same…. but we like Otters ;)

    Is there info of them being re-introduced to you locally ?
    Last edited by John Wall; 16th June 2022 at 12:36.

  8. #8
    Craftsman
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    The ducks are all back together yes. Very quickly found each other.
    There is no information regarding beavers being introduced locally but otter have been seen now and then over the years by all accounts. We had a mink in the river a few years back too but it was caught apparantly.

  9. #9
    Master John Wall's Avatar
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    Just had a look at release site and there’s nothing anywhere near you (West Midlands)
    Wild releases down south and several enclosure releases, including one in Wales.
    They’ve obviously had a bit of a journey.
    Which river are you on ?

  10. #10
    Master murkeywaters's Avatar
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    Where I go fishing on a south west river there are wild beaver, that tree below is a fair size Ash tree -




  11. #11
    Craftsman
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    They can fell a tree with a 300mm trunk in one evening. It isn’t ideal if it’s your prize garden tree, but in a wood or wetland it encourages new tree growth and lets light to the floor bellow the canopy of branches so that other plants can flourish. I guess it depends where they are whether they constitute a pest or not.

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