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RE: Photo: Beaver (Castor fiber) cuttings as fresh as you can get them!
Now this is interesting. I have never though about the beavers´ preference when it comes to biting different tree species. All I can say is they probably love this tree:
I took this photo by a river outside of my Czech hometown in winter, two years ago.
Some beavers can be really picky actually. But it depends on what they have to choose from, and their favorite food typically tends to be very high in nutrients, so it makes a lot of sense from a biological standpoint.
Those are really huge trees for beavers to cut! It's not often that I have seen this big trees get (almost) harvested. It's too bad it gave up before finishing, because it could probably have gotten a huge amount of food and lodge material from those.
And thanks for sharing your photo with us!
Oh man, I feel a bit stupid now. Honestly, I thought the beavers only cut the trees to get material for buildings their dams and lodges. I did not know the wood is also their main source of food actually. Thanks for educating me (again!) :)
The beavers are quite common here in the Czech Republic so sights like the one in the photo I shared with you is nothing unusual here :)
Don't feel stupid - it's very easy to overlook some things that might seem obvious in hindsight. The beavers will typically eat leafs during the spring and summer, and move in to eating the bark and wood itself after the leafs fall off the tree (which is happening right now).
I'm glad to hear that they are doing well in the Czech Republic now! I was actually reading a paper from the 1990s about the different populations in Europe, and at this point it was apparently only a handful of beavers in the Czech Republic. But a lot can happen to a population in 30 years, so that's not surprising, but it's still good to hear :)
Thanks for the explanation @valth :) It makes sense. Oh yeah,the beaver population here in the Czech Republic has been constantly increasing. Actually, some river authorities are even complaining about them as they have to remove the trees cut by the beavers and there is a lot of them now.
As a matter of fact, our wildife has been doing great in general. It was just recently when several wolf families settled down comfortably in our mountains and there even were some sightings of the brown bear recently. Both of theses species were absent in our nature for decades so it feels good to have them back :)
It's great to hear that the wildlife is doing this good in the Czech Republic! How is the public responding to the wolves and bears? Some countries like Denmark also recently got wolves for the first time, and their response was very polarized with lots of people wanting them gone..
Ah, thats is a good point. Fortunately, the response has been mostly positive here, people are glad that animals are returning to our forests. It is their natural habitat after all, not ours :) It is actually quite surprising for me to hear that the Danish are not that happy about the wildlife comeback. I thought Western Europe is generally even more eco-friendly (and pro-animal if you will) than the Central or Eastern Europe.
@holm What´s wrong with your fellow citizens? :)
hmmm. I actually had the notion that Denmark embraced the return of wolfs. But I guess there's always some who are afraid that the wolf's are gonna eat all our animals or something lol.
But overall I think we are happy to have them?
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Hmm, maybe it's not as big of a debate as I believed then? You're from Denmark, right?
My reason for saying this was that I read a few newspaper articles with debates going on between environmentalists and farmers who obviously had very different beliefs as to what they should do with the wolves. One of them was illegally killed already, and I'm not sure about the rest of the small wolf population in Denmark right now.
But I'm glad to hear that you think that the overall population in Denmark is glad to have them!
I have no idea if the general Danish population really dislikes it, or if it's just a small, but vocal minority. I remember reading some newspaper articles about the debate that's going on there, because it's a huge problem here in Norway as well, where farmers want to kill all the wolves to reduce the predation of sheep.
Maybe. I have no idea, but it would certainly be interesting to find out more about!