On 3 January, Herb and I visited four of the trail cameras that I have in Glen Valley Park, for the first time in two weeks. With about 10 inches of snow on the ground and around minus 6 C temperatures, it was a cold business. I appreciated Herb’s help in changing dead camera batteries and  holding memory cards while I switched them for fresh ones. Fingers numb with cold can easily drop things into the loose, fluffy snow. 

The camera at the “beaver tree” had stored over a hundred short videos of a beaver at work, cutting the big cottonwood tree.

 I have to  assume that this huge task is being done by a lone beaver, as during these many weeks of camera surveillance, never more than one beaver has appeared in the pictures. If it is alone, the question of why it should tackle such a large tree defies imagination. Trails in the snow lead out from the stream to places where smaller cottonwoods have been cut and dragged back to the creek. Of course there is food for a beaver in the smaller branches of the big cottonwood, but a beaver could starve before reaching that.

 Now and then another animal visits the tree, as if to inspect the beaver’s progress. The camera held pictures of a red squirrel, a coyote and two raccoons. 

The raccoons demonstrated some interesting behaviour, which I have not seen before. They deliberately scooted their bottoms on a large bare root at the base of the tree, obviously depositing an intentional scent mark there (see video below).