Our lot is bordered by a creek on one side.

It’s a good creek, year-round, but at this time of year it is made up of pools connected by a trickle of water. It’s a good time to put out the game cam, and see who’s around.

We knew we would see raccoons and coyotes; what we did not expect to see was a beaver!

We knew that the creek had beavers — an old map of the creek marks a beaver dam farther upstream, and a couple years ago a beaver came up a seasonal offshoot in March and took out a few aspen seedlings and a bunch of ferns.

That was a thrill (once we got over the aspens), but the creek was running high, and beavers can come quite a ways when there is water.

There is not currently much water… the photo above is taken from the middle of the creek bed.

We’re not sure where the beavers are living, but it can’t be very far. We adjusted the position of the game cam the next night, and got a number of good shots of the beaver hauling salmonberries home for the winter.

Yesterday, we discovered that the beaver had moved on to larger prey.

It took out not one, but two, 10-20 year old Big Leaf Maples.

They were nice trees, but in a somewhat awkward place, so we weren’t broken-hearted, but we’ll be doing a review of other trees close to the creek.

I might also don waders and go down the creek a bit, see whether I can find the den. Given how hard it’s foraging in our backyard, it can’t be coming that far!

Stay tuned!