Beaver, Millpond

When the beavers returned to the millpond last year, I saw almost daily evidence of their busy work, the undoing of which, by this equally busy, or, at least, persistent, naturalist, was a constant theme last summer in this chronicle. But try as I might, Castor canadensis remained a ghost, and aside from fresh woodchips, newly felled limbs heaped up on the dam, and a rare footprint or two, I never spotted an actual animal. Late this afternoon my luck changed. Not only did I see one of the long-lived rodents swimming easily across the ice-free surface of the water, but I happened to have my go-to lens, the incredibly useful 55-200mm telephoto, on the camera. I don't know how many beavers are now present, but, from the number of trees that have been felled, I'm guessing there's a construction crew in the neighborhood. Since they haven't built anything like the classic domed lodge on the pond, they're probably holed-up in the bank area and have crafted some kind of weather-tight, subterranean McMansion. With any luck, there'll be more photo ops to come, but hopefully not another round of dam fighting.