During a few recent kayak outings, I have noticed that the beavers are quite active right now … guess they were beginning to experience cabin fever, too! Besides conducting extensive repairs to the lodge (bringing in and placing cut-down saplings on the lodge), they have been very active swimming around … at least when I have been there.
Here are a few images that I captured recently:
The beaver lodge at sunrise:
And some images of the beaver swimming around the lodge:
At one point, he dove underwater with his tail out of the water for a brief moment:
On this day, there were as many as 6 beavers swimming around my kayak at one time! One of the larger beavers, I noticed, seemingly had a bunch of “growths” all over his back, as you can see in this next image:
I’m not sure what was on his back. Maybe he got out of the water into the adjoining field area and picked up some “cockle burrs”? A couple of the smaller ones looked a bit like ticks, but many of them did not. If you have an idea what this might be, I’d be interested in hearing from you.
Besides having fun “swimming” with the beavers, I took along a trail cam and strapped it to a tree near the lodge. I look forward to picking it up in a few days and sharing, hopefully, some interesting behavior videos/stills of the beavers hard at work around their lodge!