I had been chatting with the photographers I meet down at Juanita Bay and they kept telling me about the beavers that come out in the evenings.  I could see the marks they had left so knew they were active but I had not had any luck seeing them.  The timing of their foraging was not ideal since it matched quite well with my own dinner.  With Nancy taking a trip, I decided to commit some time to trying to get some photos of them.  I didn’t have to try too hard!

My first evening down at the bay, I had barely got there when I saw my first beaver.  The head out of the water was easy to spot when the water was calm.  It was slower than the otters which we see there often and noticeably larger.  The lily pads are growing quickly at the moment and this is a snack of choice for the beavers.  They don’t need to come ashore to eat and instead float around the inlet stuffing as many lily pads in to their mouths as they can.

I decided to move from the end of the trail around to another deck area in the hope that the beaver would come that way.  Predicting the path of wildlife is a tricky game but this time I got lucky and it came right in to the spot I was standing.  A couple with a screaming child approached the deck and I feared the beaver would scram but it didn’t seem to care about us at all.  It was happy chewing on its dinner.

After a while, it swam across to the bank and disappeared – presumably to digest the huge amount it had just eaten.  The question was how long would it be gone?  The light was getting very nice but much later and the sun would be behind the trees.  I thought we might have a long wait but it didn’t take long before it popped out again.  Swimming around in front of us and then heading back across the bay meant I was very pleased with my luck.