This season has not progressed as expected and opportunities to have nice, productive photographic walks in the woods during mid-week evenings have been scarce. A couple of days ago, we had a good day (if forty degrees in the a.m. and seventy degrees at 5pm are good).
Down by the farthest bog where we went to see the beavers, we saw four ducks circling around looking for a landing spot (yes, only three are shown here).
Our best event was catching the beavers swimming around. There were several based on the loud ker-plunks heard from various angles as we approached. If you can imagine the sound of taking a large stone and dropping it from six feet high into the water, you can understand what we heard.
After pausing and letting things quiet down, we approached the closest den and we spotted this beaver swimming slowly toward us. At a point shortly after I took this shot (see left), the beaver spotted me and went into an emergency dive while at the same time reversing direction and pounding the water with his tail, KER-PLUNK!
Woodpeckers
A textbook specimen of a female hairy woodpecker.
Earlier last week we saw this red-head; probably a male yellow-bellied sapsucker.