Thursday, April 26, 2018

The Beaver Pond


Beavers are fascinating animals, one of the few mammals (in addition to humans), that deliberately alter their environment. When beavers dam a stream they create a pond which helps to protect them from predators and enables them to ferry food and the building materials used to construct their lodge and dam, and store their winter food supply.


A beaver lodge is a hollow dome constructed of sticks and mud with underwater entrances –



Their dams are also built using sticks and mud and can be quite long (reportedly one in Canada extends over a half mile from end to end) –



Beaver ponds create habitat for wood ducks –



And green herons –



Insects –



And plants –



And turtles, frogs and more.

After finding a beaver pond at the edge of the Big Woods

that had an active colony of beavers, I decided to put a camera trap near the lodge to capture images of the beavers –







It wasn’t just beavers that appeared on camera, an opossum was there –


A mink too –


Even larger more charismatic mammals: a bobcat –



And a black bear –



Because the camera trap was aimed low enough to photograph the beavers it was too low to get photos of the whole bobcat or the whole bear – my apologies.

5 comments:

Kay L. Davies said...

Wow. What a selection of forest-dwellers! I'm impressed, even with the headless bear and the back of the bobcat! These are photos I would have loved to take when I was more mobile. Meanwhile, I have brave bloggers to provide some excitement. I'm particularly fond of beavers, Canada's national animal since 1975.
Kay
An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel

Lady Fi said...

What wonderful shots of wildlife! We have a lot of beaver activity around the lake, with nearly all the trees on the shoreline being felled by them!

Betty J. Crow said...

WOW! Wonderful shots. I especially liked seeing the beaver pics. Half a black bear and bobcat is a lot better than none. Enjoyed your post!

eileeninmd said...

Hello, your camera trap is a great idea. I loved seeing the beaver, bobcat and the bear. Your Green Heron and Wood Ducks photos are great. Thank you so much for linking up and sharing your post. Happy Saturday, enjoy your day and weekend!

A Colorful World said...

Wow! The beaver pond had a lot of visitors! great pictures! I loved this post because I have always been very fond of beavers and I think they are often maligned.