Beaver Pond

Photos taken Sunday, March 20^th show that the beaver dam was running a pretty sizable stream through a two foot wide gap.  One of these was placed on this blog Monday.

Tuesday, March 22, I observed that the water level had risen by about four inches in the pond, but as close as I could tell no work had been done on the dam by beavers.  It appeared to be more likely that some sticks had merely floated to the site and sort of lodged in such a way as to hold back some water, but not really to seal it.

This evening, the 23^rd, Alex and I made an excursion to see what we could see.  We proceeded back around one side of our neighbor’s meadow about half its length when suddenly we spotted two deer.  No, it was three, and then a fourth.  Although they ran into the nearby woods they were not panicked, and I’m sure they returned to the meadow shortly after we were out of sight.  We were excited to see our resident deer population.

We continued on to where they had entered the woods to try for a photo op, but such was not our luck so we headed on toward the beaver pond.  As we were crossing the pond on the farm road Alex asked, “What was that,” and pointed to the north side of the roadway.  I turned just soon enough to catch a glimpse of something sliding under the water.

I said, “I don’t know what it was, but I saw something.”  We sat there on our ATV for a minute or two and I noticed the water rippling slightly near the south end of the under road sluice pipe.

“Watch over here,” I said.  Sure enough in a few seconds a body sliced through the water exiting the pipe only a few feet from us.  As it swam, first under the water, and then surfacing, we could tell it was a beaver.  We watched it for a couple of minutes, but it was too dark for photos then so we moved along rejoicing that a beaver had returned.

A minute or two later we spotted two more deer for sure, and Alex thought he might have spotted another.  All together it was a good night for game spotting, and especially nice to see a beaver back in the pond, no matter how short a spell he may stay.

We’ll get some photos of the deer and the beaver as soon as we can.