What's nibbling me willows?

I have been playing "catch up" in the meadow and along the millstream...
I haven't been able to get onto the meadow over-Winter for three years...
so I have been felling timber that needs to be felled as quickly as possible....
with the intention of tidying up afterwards...
the only tidying that I have been doing has been to create a safe environment for me to work...
or to clear the paths.

Some of the felling has involved the "nursery area" that is outside our bedroom window....
three of the young willows were too deeply rooted when Stuart and I were lifting them for replanting elsewhere....
and that, coupled with the fact that the ground had become very unstable by the time we reached them....
and we had no real purchase in the sticky goo... all that meant that they were left...
and, in reality, neglected for a further two years.
By that point they were too large to try and move, so I cut them off as waist high pollards...
this is the height that some biomass and basket making willows are kept at...
which means no back-breaking bending....
the oldest known pollard, some four thousand years old....
and found in the river bed of the Derwent in Yorkshire, is this same height...
so early man thought that too!

And therefore I began to harvest them in a three year cycle.... to create "bushes"...
which has been interrupted by three bad winters...
so I had a mix of four, five and six year old wood...
and I decided to cut them all and start again, because we only want bushes there...
the trees that they had become were blocking our view...
this resulted in a lot of timber
which I cleared to the side as I went, the largest one of which had its top in the millstream [bief]....
the butt end on the bank where I could get at it easily.

We couldn't help but notice....
as we looked out of the bedroom and kitchen windows at the newly cleared area....
that two of the willows were missing bark from the base...
and I thought to blame it on the ragondins [coypu]...

Two out of the three have had the bark stripped from the base... fortunately NOT all the way round

About two weeks ago, however, we noticed that someone had stripped bark from the branches that I had left lying in the bief...
immediate presumption... coypu!

Lovely white wood under that willow bark!

Then we saw this....

The focus isn't too sharp... I'll add a better one at the end

...now, according to the books ragondin do eat bark, but apparently reluctantly... as Pauline has discovered, they "only eat bark when they are desperate" as they prefer grass... visible and growing all this winter... and the fleshy roots of the teasels, thistles and similar plants... which we also have in plenty, despite their efforts and mine, in the orchard... as well as elsewhere.
But they stop at bark... they don't eat young wood!! Not like that, surely....
only a beaver leaves traces like that!!

Now, we've seen beaver activity... right in the heart of town, near the railway station... and they are spreading out quite rapidly from their point of reintroduction on the Loir in both 1975 and again 1995.... 13 animals in both cases... but up the Aigronne??
We needed proof before reporting it on Faune Touraine, the local focus for Citizen Science data collection...on an ever increasing diversity of wildlife.

So, time to deploy the "pieges photographiques"...trail cameras to Anglophones!
We had a stealth beaver... bark was going missing... but no triggers...hmmm!
The ducks were triggering the traps, as were the coypu as they swam past...
and the rats using the branches as a highway to avoid having to swim too much!
But, not what was bark stripping... by which time we had three cameras watching a twenty-five square metre section of stream...
so I contacted Martin of Wildlife & Countryside Services, the supplier of two of our photographic traps and our Wildlife Accoustics bat detector...
and a very useful source of advice....
who came right back with a probably cause... temperature...
beaver swim with only the nose and a flat area between that and their ears...
out of the water...
so as it emerges to feed, the temperature difference between animal and water...
is too little to trigger the PIR on the camera... try different positions!!
AND, bingo....

Yes, a beaver.... right outside the kitchen window...

... we were probably still up!!  And it is thanks to Simon that we've got these stills to insert...

.... yes, a positive sighting of beaver!!

These are European Beaver [Castor fiber galliae] Castor d'Europe....
and are genuine French ones, not Polish as I had read...
the reintroduction was from a remnant population on the Rhône.
Pauline immediately reported the wood chewing evidence on Faune Touraine...
back dated, which is quite normal....
whilst I tried to get a still from the video... nothing I had would play ball... or were programs I haven't had the chance to play with [learn]... but, again help was on hand in the form of Simon of LVTT and Days on the Claise who, after some Dropboxery and his preferred program... lifted out a couple of stills that Pauline reported the sighting with on Saturday night.... it would have to be the First of April!!
But we've supplied the photographic evidence along with the record....
so hopefully no "no you didn't" emails from the moderators on Faune Touraine...
probably thinking "Mon Dieu... it's those damned Anglais again!"

Pauline also had emailed Yohann the River Technician....who Susan posted about in December [an interesting read about a difficult job in itself].... during the afternoon to let him know... he came back with the nearest to us he'd seen activity was near Gatault... only about 2 kilometres from us downstream... so, as they have a multi-kilometre territory when confined to a stream, it/they have probably been going up and down quite regularly... or are doing so now? Looking at the grey wood on the largest stump, they've been here for at least three years it takes around that long to colour... and I hadn't noticed any damage before that....

The bright bits just as the shadow starts are teeth marks from the lower jaw.

BUT we may have also blown the myth that ragondin only eat bark when they are desperate... we got three videos where one particularly large animal stripped and ate the bark.... the tail said coypu, not beaver... unless it was so perfectly "side on" that it appeared the same as a coypu's... but my guess is that coypu will eat nice young bark if it is "presented" to them.

This stretch is perfect for European beavers as... because they burrow... there are plenty of old coypu homes ready to occupy.
It is calm and quiet, assorted different depths of water, too, so an underwater entrance would be easily maintained... even in the driest of summers.
We will keep watching... and feeding... our beaver(s) and add more information as and when!!

Here is the actual video of the beaver... uploaded via Blogger, so invisible on Safari and on Apple machines even if you are using Firefox, sorry....

And a much better picture of the tooth marks on the branch...

Yes, it does look dry... I rescued it before the branch broke at that point completely...
it is now strapped to a length of roofing lath as it has almost broken at the thinnest point.

Now... if that isn't natural news for us, I don't know what is!
We keep getting surprised!!

Back on track....s

Snow on the ground can tell you a lot about what's going on.... provided you can follow the tracks.

We've recently blogged about the hare that came past.... but there were more traces of animal and bird activity to tell us who was around.

Vole tracks under the snow....

The first was some strange lines in the snow near the lime tree.... the crust of the snow had been pushed up and cracked. These were caused by a rodent seeking food under the snow... most probably a vole. There were other tracks on the surface there... definately caused by a field mouse out on the hunt for food.
How do we know the difference? Well, voles tend to create runs in the long grass and thick vegetation... mice tend to keep to the clearer spaces.... so our thoughts are directed by their behaviour. Why were we certain about the mouse... splayed back feet prints and a drag line from the tail.

...Mice above [it hops more than walks].

We could see the tracks of the moorhens, forced to plod from the bief to the feeder out in the field, the slight strip of webbing each side of the toes giving a distinct chubbiness to the print. The pheasants, also around the feeder, had their own pattern... a sharper, slimmer toe line with a longer rear toe... and a drag mark from the tail. Also... they tend to hurry, not plod, so the print has rough edges with traces of snow spread over the undisturbed crust.

A fox trotting... paw marks inline.

We had a fox that came into the bottom corner of the verger, did a short circuit toward the bief and returned almost the same route and over the fence... those tracks were totally different from the coypu [ragondin] tram lines where they had journeyed in convoy from the bief to the fence line... where longer grass had left pockets of vegetation exposed.

The coypu rocks along as it walks...

... here though you can see the lines caused by two tails...
a pair of youngsters went along here [the other tracks are hare].

But perhaps the most vivid was the little vole hole in the snow with a trail of footprints leading from it....

The vole hole is at the top... just beside a line of pheasant tracks.
You can see that these tracks are very different from those left by a field mouse.

You can see the hole here at the right... 
you can also see the toes in the pheasant track.

We followed and found why they hadn't returned... it had become supper for an owl.

The final moments...
the vole track is coming in at the top...
the owl struck from the  bottom right...
the pit is where the feet grabbed the vole...
the wings pushed into the snow as it lifted off to the top left...
and there is a slight disturbance of the snow beyond the wing prints...
probably caused by by the vole's body bumping on the crust.

Like we said... you can learn a lot about who is around and what they are doing.

Of "Ratty" and Rats and Ragondin

We are both currently in the grip of a bad cold... that has meant that we aren't doing much.... except watching out of the window and keeping ourselves warm.
I was observing the meadow and bief [millstream] this morning keeping an eye out for the pheasants, the water rail and the dabchicks. The latter haven't passed our way since the heavy rain of the end of January... the bief changed into weak, milky tea and we presume that the dabchicks have moved elsewhere to cleaner water, where they can see the fish they are after! The rail is still with us... water quality doesn't affect his probing and leaf-flipping feeding methods... just before the weekend I saw him get quite a large larva [possibly dragonfly or water-beetle], wash it in the murky water and bash it on a stone, then swallowing it whole... that was caught by the probing method!
And yesterday, in the current gloom, I managed to get some pictures of "the ladies" cleaning up under the feeder.... but, until they're worked up [and I need a clear head to do that], none good enough to post!
But, what has this to do with "Ratty", Rats and Ragondin.... I search for the water rail by looking for ripples coming out from the bank... they are small and vanish quickly and easily told from the moorhens' frantic splashings.
And I spotted some, just opposite the window, where I'd seen the rail appear before.... binos to that point and.... fur and short legs... and out from cover came "Ratty" our water-vole [arvicola amphibius] Campagnol amphibie and cruised stately across towards our bank of the bief [this was at 11AM].... I'd seen him yesterday, earlier, and had presumed that he'd been partying at at Toad Hall... all the books put them as nocturnal....

Water-vole. Taken by Nick Ford at Castle Acre, Norfolk at 8:35 am.

but as this picture [again one of my brother's and taken later than the above at ten to ten.... very useful is my bruvver!] shows.... they are out in the daytime too! So for "nocturnal"... please read "mainly".... I've seen them at midday, in high summer, full sun on a Norfolk stream. Actually the French guide (2) says they are both.... ie: out when you see them out!!

Water-vole. This is my shot of our vole.... not in the same class [picture that is!]

The three aquatic rodents we've got here are this little fellow [maximum head and body length 220mm], the Muskrat [Ondatra zibethicus] Rat Musqué [Head and body length from 240 to 370mm] and the Coypu [Myocastor coypus] Ragondin with a minimum head and body length of around 340mm]... so there is some overlap in size.... you cannot mistake the Coypu out of water... the long thick tail and the humped appearance.... along with the droopy, white moustache. But in water? Well, from observations here, they don't seem to like getting the moustache wet... they hold all of their head upward, out of the water, that makes their back sink more than the Muskrat with a gap 'twixt head and hump... also, contrary to illustrations in Collins(1) and the Delachaux et Niestlé (2) guides, they've got a distinctly buff-cream appearance around the ears.

Coypu. The cream round the ears can be seen here... but the white nose and moustache are very clear.

The Muskrat swims higher in the water and the long, wedge shaped head, almost vertical from the nose to the upper lip give it the appearance of a small tugboat chugging through the water. It leaves quite a narrow, clean wake too. There is a rich cream colour to the cheeks of the 'Musky'... again, in real life, much brighter than illustrated... and it is a BIG panel of colour running from the nose to the ears... and fully as deep as it is long. And, if you see it swimming away from you, the vertically flattened tail is a clear indicator!

Muskrat picture[it's on the system somewhere... please call back!]

Finally 'Ratty'... very obviously a vole.... same shape nearly, front and back, and the tail can only be seen in clear water. It seems to bob along on the water surface!

Water-vole. From directly above by our bridge.

Water-vole. And swimming away... beautifully hidden by the iris leaf!

But there are also European Beavers [Castor fiber] Castor d'Eurasie nearby... in the centre of Grand-Pressigny to be precise [they felled a riverside tree last year, and a couple of months ago did the same to a neighbouring tree!] As where this occured is right by where the Aigronne joins the Claise.... will they venture up the Aigronne.......?

Beaver evidence. This is last year's tree.... this years has fallen across this [right to left]

This years felled tree shows some bark removal and there is a possible entry/exit point on the bank nearby.

(1) Collins Field Guide Mammals Britain and Europe [1993]
(2) Les Guides du Naturaliste - Guide des mammifères d'Europe, d'Afrique du Nord et du Moyen-Orient [2008/2010]