Photo: Beaver (Castor fiber) cuttings as fresh as you can get them!
I have been doing a small experiment with wild beavers (Castor fiber) in the last few weeks, where I have been returning to a handful of experiment sites every single day. I haven't got a great view of a real beaver just yet, but we see fresh tracks pretty much daily. They are nocturnal animals, so they come out from their beaver lodges during night to forage trees close to the water, and a few days ago I came across this very productive beaver.
During my first visit here only a single one of these trees had been chopped, but upon returning the next day all of these had been either cut or attempted. You can see the freshness of the cuts due to the slightly yellowish/reddish color on the cut; after another day or two these will look a lot more white.
The trees cut are grey alder (Alnus incana), a tree that is kind of liked by the beaver, but it's pretty far down on their list of favorite trees to cut and eat. The beavers in this area didn't have much choice when it came to selecting tree species, which is probably why they have spent so much energy on foraging the grey alder.
As expected, the trees had been dragged down to the water, but we were not able to locate any remains of them to see how much had been consumed or stripped of bark already. But it's still very fun to see this fresh activity, especially when I spend so much time looking for beaver activity these days.
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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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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!
Beavers are fascinating animals. I have always enjoyed coming across their work when out on nature trails. I took this on a trail in early spring of this year of an area they harvested some trees.
Yeah, they really are! It's really cool to be out and looking for signs of them. Thanks for sharing your photo with us.
Wao...They cut pretty fast and deep. Amazing creatures...
Must be a hell of an experience to witness them or their foot prints first hand.
Yep, it sure is. It's very rare to see them in real life directly, since they are most active during the night tough.
Very exciting seeing how hard working they are! These small animals! Would love to see their photos too.
Yeah, it's very interesting how good workers they are. But they are not as small as you might think, a full grown beaver can easily weight 25kg+. I don't have any good photos of them just yet, but I have some night-vision camera trap photos that I will share on my blog a little later.
Their sizes seem small as they are long in the horizontal dimension. So, they can be much heavier than a medium size dog!
Waiting to see the night photo!
Thanks a lot.
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Yeah, you're right about that. Cool, I'm looking forward to publishing it, but it will be a little while still, since it's in my work computer :)
Hi my friend, long time no see. I hope you are ok.
Is the beaver disturbing?
Have a good day @valth
Hi, I'm fine! How about you?
No, the beavers are nice :)
Hehehe
I am fine too my friend.
Oe, so it is unique, isn't it ?
I'm glad to hear that :)
Yes, it is.
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