You'll hopefully have seen that on Friday 27 January we successfully moved a family of seven beavers to the Loch Lomond National Nature Reserve using our nature reserve as the release site. If you haven't then you can read more about that here, check out a behind the scenes video here, or head to the RSPB Loch Lomond Twitter or Facebook for photos from the release day.
We’ve got a clever camera set up to watch how the beavers are settling in which sends the motion-triggered clips it records to us remotely. So below are some videos (and descriptions of what's happening) that were captured on Monday morning (6 February) in an area the beavers have favoured from the start.
This 10 second clip was captured at 1 am on Monday. Two beavers are stood in shallow water feeding on supplementary food and bark in the centre of the shot and a kit walks across in front of them towards the temporary lodge made of straw bales.
At 1.58 am on Monday the same camera captured a short clip of two kits play fighting in the shallow water. They start grappling before the kit furthest from the camera overpowers the closer one and they splash into the water.
At 2.32 am on Monday. The same camera captured a short clip of a beaver dragging a bundle of sticks through the shallow water out of shot to the left.
This clip from 2.51 am on Monday captured one beaver splashing through the water dragging a stick out of shot to the left. A second beaver (adult female) is sat at the right next to the temporary lodge and likely the male walks towards her and sniffs at her.
By 3 am on Monday more of the beavers were in the same area and the camera captured this clip of four – one on the left eating supplementary food, one in the middle eating bark from a small tree, and two further right near the temporary lodge.
If you are wondering how much difference the beavers have made in just over a week. This clip was captured at the same location the Monday before at 3.40 am. A beaver drags a branch off the temporary lodge and runs off to the left with it over quite dry ground.
And finally below are two screenshots to highlight the difference. The left from 30 January when the ground is dry and the right from 6 Feb when the area is now under shallow water due to damming activity. It’s amazing.
We want to thank everyone for being so excited about the beavers. But also to warn you that it’s resulted in lots more visits to the reserve and last weekend it was one-in, one-out for the car park. Visitors are not seeing the beavers, but we’ll continue to share updates on social media and also here as often as we can.