The Beaver Pond

You may remember I wrote before about a beaver pond being drained back in June.  We had watched the water level rise over a few trips past until it was quite high.  The beaver had dammed up a culvert.  But the water level was threatening the road, and the township works crew moved in and removed the beavers' hard work, draining the pond.  You can find that story here.

Last week it looked as if the water level had risen again, so we stopped for a quick look.  My eagle-eyed navigator spotted movement on the far side of the pond, so we drove around and this is what we saw.  That ripple at the bottom of the screen is a beaver working again at damming the culvert.

It was dusk and getting dark rapidly, so the lighting was terrible, and these pictures came out very dark.  I had to edit them to make them lighter to see anything.  But you can actually see the beaver's tail, so it's not a muskrat!

They swam quite close, and seemed unafraid, though leery about actually coming back to work on damming the culvert where we were parked.  And yes, we did see two of them, though only one at a time.

We've only seen beaver twice before in our lives, so even though the pictures aren't great, we really enjoyed getting a close look at these busy active critters.

One of them kept swimming in a circle out in the pond and then back closer to us.  They never stopped moving in the time we were there.

We had almost turned to go as it was getting seriously dark, when one climbed out on the shore a short distance away.  Though I had to lighten the picture considerably, you can clearly see the animal here with its broad flat tail.

We both hope the beavers survive and don't get trapped out.  It's fascinating to be able to watch them so closely.  I thought of going back early some morning, or earlier in the evening, to get some better pictures.  We shall see how soon the winter weather arrives.

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