Since Iain was free a lot this summer, he made a real effort to keep the creek open near the farmhouse. Lloyd did eliminate one of them (quite probably the adult male), but younger ones were still patching up the flow every night, though they weren’t doing as good a job.
 |
| You can see here that the water is not moving very well. The young beavers use a lot of small sticks and don't add stones and solid mud the way an adult would. |
The amount of flooding, especially on Dodie’s property, made this worthwhile, but cold and messy work it is!
 |
| Iain uses a pitchfork to clean out a lot of the stuff. All the fallen leaves don't help - they get right into the dam and jam it more. |
The water flows better when he’s done. Of course, it doesn’t last – the beavers do it again at night – but it keeps the lake level more like it should be.
 |
| Flowing well - for now... |
The years of damming have taken their toll, though; the creek at this spot is much higher than its natural state of long ago. I miss the summer days in years past, when we had a bit of a beach along the shore, and when “gull rock” as we called it (guess why) was a good six inches out of the water, and the birds would perch there. Nowadays it hardly breaches the surface at all, even when the lake is at its lowest. It’s my thought that this is why we have so much algae and the nice sandy bottom we once had is now rather yucky: the lake doesn’t breathe the way it used to do, as the water can’t run away as well.
Iain took a little walk downstream (well, it wasn’t easy, as he had to push through a lot of bushes), and he thinks the beavers may be making dams further down in response to his “dam-busting”. They won’t be easy to get to, so this may become a problem.
 |
| The view upstream; what a lovely spot this is! |
No comments:
Post a Comment