First off, as the title hints, this is the three-thousandth post on the old Walkabout Exercise in Thinly-Veiled Narcissism; I really had planned to do something bigger, but nothing was coming to mind or hand, and now I’ve got this schedule to keep. Note that I formerly had a goal to reach this by the third week in September of last year, because reasons, but we’re way off that mark, aren’t we? Ah, well, we’ll all cope. So it’ll be pretty much a normal Estate Find post, but you can have a soda pop while you’re reading if you like.
This week’s find dates back a few days to the foggy morning featured in the previous post, when I went out looking for fun things to photograph, among them the subject that is about to be featured. I missed a few small songbird photos, mostly due to the light levels being too low for the shutter speed necessary for such targets, and got out about as far as that path would take me, the edge of the bayou-like pond area – beyond that it’s wading, and I don’t presently have the heavy-duty boots or waders that should be used for that at this time of year. On the way back, things were still pretty quiet, until I heard the odd noise, which I initially took for an unknown bird call, being a repetitive rasping squeak. I paused and looked around carefully, determined not to scare it off before I had the chance to photograph it, and eventually determined that it was actually gnawing. Ah, that’s better!
And it was coming, as I slowly determined, from just over the edge of the streambank that forms the back border of the property, just a handful of meters ahead. Listening carefully as I inched forward, I surmised from both the sound and the occasional ripples extending out into the water that the emitter was right there, and eventually got a peek at the top of a head. Figuring that it would bolt the moment I hove into view, I leaned forward with the camera raised and kept firing off frames as I got a glimpse of the eye.
This is a North American beaver (Castor canadensis,) which I knew had a lodge on the property yet hadn’t seen the occupant(s) clearly yet, but it was one of the goals for the morning so I was pleased. And to its credit, the beaver wasn’t too concerned with my proximity.
I was able to lean further out and get clearer photos – the beaver had to be aware of my presence, but it was being nicely complacent and I was being as unobtrusive as possible, given the appearance of the long lens and the sound of the shutter.
Eventually, it realized I wasn’t going away and might just pose a threat, and so it swam away from its meal, but not quickly and without diving, instead curving around out in the open where we both had a much better look at each other. I’ve seen this before: beavers can be very curious sometimes, and it still had deep water underneath that it could resort to if needed.
This was a decent-sized adult, so probably in the neighborhood of 10-12 kilos. I had to back the zoom down because it was too close for proper framing, and then I backed it all the way down to 150mm and switched to video.
Yeah, I wasn’t prepared to do video, so unsteady and without the proper mic, but there you go. I’d actually pulled the same stunt before, back in ’91 I believe, with the first beavers that I was witnessing directly – their curiosity gets the better of them, perhaps because the noise is too close to their own gnawing sounds, don’t know for sure. But it worked fine, and as I said in the video, this one closed to about four meters distant.
Now, you know what’s slightly annoying? I took The Girlfriend out there again the next morning to see what we could see, and the beaver that we barely spotted (same one? Don’t know,) refused to come within fifteen meters and dove twice in alarm, even though we were making less noise and virtually no movement. I have no idea what the difference was.
So, here’s hoping that I can top the previous experiences (and video) of the species this year. It’s at least a convenient location…