A Week at the Beaver Pond

Today we return to the beaver pond where the encounter with the mink occurred; one of my camera traps has intermittently been on the pond's shore during the last four years. As spring progressed the remaining ice on the beaver pond almost completely melted and it was time to put a camera trap back on a shoreline tree.

A number of wood ducks flushed from the pond when I went to put the camera in place, which raised the expectation of getting videos of wood ducks as well as beaver and other wildlife.

The camera trap is aimed at a fallen log that extends from shore into the water. The log began as a tree that fell into the pond in June 2019 after the area received over five inches of rain in three days. After that much rain, the saturated soil couldn’t support the tree's weight and down it went; the descent was captured by my camera trap and shown in the video in this post. 

Now, two years later, I placed a camera trap to view the log and the wildlife that uses it. Here are the results from the camera’s first week at the beaver pond –

The videos of the wood ducks were a treat (at least to me) and it was quite gratifying to get several videos of a mink running the log. The plan is to leave the camera in place throughout the spring and summer to capture videos of the wildlife using the fallen log.