At 7.30 this morning, Roisin Campbell-Palmer and I met under a still dark and rain laden sky. Roisin is the Beaver Team Leader for RZSS (Royal Zoological Society of Scotland) and is currently staying in Kilmartin in order to head up the beaver catch ups.
We currently have two catch ups in progress: one of all of the Trial's beavers so that they can be health checked and have new radio tags attached; and one to retrieve the animal/s currently residing on the River Add. They may be one or possibly both of our missing females from the Creag Mhor family on the Add; so far only one at a time has been seen by our staff but we have had a couple of very positive sounding sightings of two together.
Since the monumental rainfall of two weeks ago washed out their burrows (shown above), the animal/s has/have moved on so we are busily looking for field signs again. Until we find another foraging trail it is impossible to know where to place the traps.
Meanwhile, the routine catch up of Trial area animals has got off to a much more encouraging start. We set the traps, that we lugged out into the field the other day, for the first time last night but didn't for a moment expect that we would have caught one as we braved the cold and wet first thing this morning.
When I rounded a corner and called back to Roisin that the trap was sprung, she hardly believed me and we both suspected that the strong winds overnight may have just triggered it. On peering inside however, we could see the glossy brown fur of quite a large beaver and we both grinned excitedly. Now all we had to do was get it out of the trap and into a sack!
Roisin and I have both worked with animals for many years: in the wild, in zoos and with domestic livestock. Roisin has been spending a lot of time out in Norway working with beavers and it was good to put all of that knowledge to the test today.
Without too much trouble the beaver was soon safely contained in a sack and we went about collecting samples of faeces, hair, anal gland secretion, attaching a new radio tag and ear tags and recording her weight.
Once we were able to sex the beaver, we knew that we had Frid, the adult female of the family, but we were able to confirm this from her microchip number.
We were pleased that we managed all of this quickly and efficiently and it wasn't long before we were able to release Frid and watch her make her way back to water. Out of the sack we were able to get a proper look at her. She looked in very good condition and not unlike a small bear as she trundled back to the water. From the weight measurement we can see that she has put on nearly two kilos since her release into the wilds of Knapdale.
She paused to give us rather a filthy look from the safety of the water before disappearing off toward her lodge and family. The new tags are certainly colourful and will help us immensely in identifying her at a distance. Now we have to attempt to catch her mate and son.
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