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 