While I made a significant dent in the backlog of photos to be posted, there are still too many in the queue, some of which just don’t fit into any decent category. We’ll get a handful more out right now.
The layout of the property, especially the water sources, is weird and hard to describe. The eastern border is a creek, but at one spot there’s a channel that leads into a small pool on the property, that drains into another pool, that eventually dumps into The Bayou. I suspected that at the mouth of this channel sat a beaver lodge, but it’s on the other side of the channel without any easy way to cross, and thus I haven’t tackled it yet. Over the past few weeks, however, I have determined that this is a lodge, an active one, and while the occupants aren’t being outgoing enough to see very often, much less photograph, it happens occasionally.
This one was spotted, rather suddenly, in that small pool that the channel drains into, and when I say, “small,” I mean I could almost take a running start and jump across it (that’s if I managed not to catch any of the dozens of cypress knees that decorate the landscape around about the ankles and lay myself out flat, which is almost guaranteed actually.) So when I saw something move in the headlamp, I wasn’t really expecting an adult North American beaver (Castor canadensis.) I vaguely suspected it was a nutria, since the neighbors confirmed that they’re in the immediate area, but as it swam past the tail became quite visible and left no doubt that it was a beaver – nutria have tails somewhere between a rat and an otter, not skinny, but certainly not flat like a beaver’s.
After the beaver vanished without a trace within these waters, I went over to the channel to check its depth. It’s worth noting that the entire pond, the one bordering the backyard that hosts the ducks and geese and so on, sits very close to this point and runs roughly 40-60cm deep, so I was thinking the channel and the pool were less than this, but the channel was much deeper, about a meter where I checked; this explained how the beaver left the area without even disturbing the surface. And why they put the lodge at the head of it.
A couple weeks later, once again out at night, I caught movement in the weeds in an even smaller pool, a confusing one, since it has the mouth of a culvert into it as the sole apparent water source; this would almost certainly have to come from the creek, but why? It’s pretty remote to actually dig and place a drain pipe into, and it leads into a pool that I could actually jump across. But the motion of the weeds, and later a swirl at the mouth of the culvert, were pretty distinct, and I watched for some time but never saw the culprit, though I’m almost certain that this pool is way too shallow for beavers, or at least to keep them entirely hidden.
But it’s near (though not connected to) the outlet channel of the aforementioned pool, not to the creek, but to The Bayou, and while watching this isolated pool, I started seeing glimpses of movement in that channel. Eventually, a small, silvery-grey body appeared almost at my feet, but vanished as I got focused, leaving only a plume of mud behind.
The animal in question was about the length of my hand, not including the ratlike tail, faintly hyperactive in manner, definitely a rodent – but at that size, what was it?
This was eventually semi-solved when, after a fruitless search for about 40 minutes, I backtracked over to the main creek and started seeing the same activity from the same silvery-grey critters. This time, I snagged a quick frame:
Now, I’ve only seen nutria twice, and only adults, so I wasn’t exactly sure this wasn’t a juvenile, but I strongly suspected it was a juvenile common muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) instead. I’m used to them being more beaver-like in coloration, from milk-chocolate to dark chocolate brown (now I’m hungry,) and not this grey color. In fact, the grey puts me more in mind of the common brown rat (Rattus norvegicus,) which are quite adept swimmers but typically don’t live or forage in water, and this area is pretty damn swampy – not their ideal habitat.
Shortly thereafter, the same individual surfaced almost at my feet again.
Yes, that’s poop there, and don’t ask me whose it is because I didn’t see it happen – we’re supposed to be looking at the critter here, especially those hind feet in the water, because they at least rule out juvenile nutria, which have webbed rear feet like beavers. While I’m not definitely ruling out brown rats, I’m still leaning towards this being a juvenile muskrat. Now, while this was identical to the one I’d seen earlier, it was a moderate distance removed from it, out in the main creek instead of in or near the pool or channel. Not impossible by any stretch, but far enough that I won’t say this is the same one, plus the previous activity at least implied two. My best guess is that these are juveniles not long out of the burrow, which might also explain their lack of wariness so close to me. At the same time, I was occasionally hearing a slap of beaver tails and knew those were active nearby but remaining out of sight.
I have seen no sign of these since, despite several nighttime visits, and the beavers remain elusive as well, though they are audibly evident. I’m hoping that, very soon now, I’ll see some juvenile beavers appear – stay tuned.