As the light was starting to fade this past Monday, I made one final trip along the boardwalk at my local marshland park and suddenly heard some loud chewing sounds coming from the cattails. Although I couldn’t immediately locate the source of the noise, I suspected that one or more of the beavers was out and about.
Slowly I crept forward until finally I caught sight of a North American Beaver (Castor canadensis), vigorously chewing on cattail stalks. My camera was already attached to my tripod, which was a good thing, because the shutter speed was pretty slow, even when I cranked up the ISO. I didn’t have a really clear line of sight to the beaver and the best that I could manage was the second shot below.
After a short while, some other folks came walking by on the boardwalk and spooked the beaver. The beaver stopped what it was doing, grabbed a piece of a stalk in its mouth, and began to swim in my direction. I did not have much time to react, because there was not much distance between the beaver and me.
The third image shows the beaver as it was headed toward me. I decided not to crop the photo to give you an idea of how close I actually was to the beaver. I was shooting with my Tamron 180mm macro lens for these shots, so I had a moderate amount of telephoto capability.
The first image, which is also uncropped, shows my final view of the beaver before it dove and swam away under the boardwalk. Those of us of a certain generation can’t help but think of the Drifters’ song when we hear those words “under the boardwalk,” sparking memories of the days of summers past.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
That song started playing in my head as soon as I read your title. I thought you were going to say it was a muskrat eating the cattails, because they love them too. You’re getting some great beaver shots at that location!
Wow, great photos. Talk about being in the right place! I love your lens– have I said that just a few times before?
Thanks, Sue. I think you have mentioned once or twice that you like my new lens. It’s an interesting challenge to try to capture wildlife shots with a 180mm lens. Often it’s too short of a focal length and sometimes it is actually too long. In the case of the beaver, it worked out pretty well. I imagine that the 100-400mm lens would have been better for the far away shots, but when the beaver got closer, it might well have gotten closer than the minimum focusing distance of that lens. I am noticing that the lens has sharper focus and more contrast than my inexpensive zoom lenses.
This is great:) I have a soft spot for beavers
That’s a great experience well told. It’s so much easier to get better photos when you are closer.
Closer is almost always better, though in this case I was almost wishing that the lens on my camera was shorter in focal length. How often does that happen?
What a thrill to be so close to the beavers and then get such great photographs.
It was pretty amazing, not something that I had planned or even anticipated. Fortunately, I was able to take advantage of the opportunity when it arose.