This week I went on a walk to the little lake near my house. As usual I brought my camera hoping to catch a sighting, and some photographs, of the beaver family living at the lake. Other times when I have done exactly the same thing I have not had any special wildlife spottings but this time was a true adventure.
A friend and I took the long way to the lake and stopped by the doom overlook first. Because of that we arrived at the opposite end of the lake than usual. What would be our luck but when we first arrive there is a pair of loons swimming around. We stand real quietly and they decide to come a little closer and check us out. Well at this point we are very pleased because loons are beautiful and such elegant creatures. So we start walking down the shore moving along our roundabout way home. Lo and behold as we come out of a group of trees but we see a beaver swim away from the shore directly ahead of us. We are just tickled now and we stop and watch the beaver swim back over the where we just were and grab a branch, I guess we unknowingly scared it off when we arrived. Then it swims past us, sits on the shore and starts eating. At this point another beaver swims by to go harvest more trees. We cautiously approach near the eating beaver and got to watch, and photograph it for awhile. As we were watching two little baby beavers swam over said hi to the eating beaver and then swam on down the shore to eat checking us out on their way by. I eventually decided I wanted to go see if I could make any good photographs of the babies eating on the shore so I quietly walked back towards them. I managed to get pretty close after startling them a few times, they always came back fairly quickly. A few times I heard some sticks snapping but thought it was just a squirrel or something. Then I step around a clump of trees trying to get closer to the beavers and am face to face with a BIG black bear about 15 feet away. It stood, looked at me then hustled off away from the lake. I was still in shock and then was even more surprised when the bear didn't keep running but looped around and stood on the cliff above me huffing. I was really excited abut seeing a bear but also very nervous because it was being threatening. I slowly backed away and calmly walked back to where I had left my fellow hiker and the bear followed me on the cliff huffing at me the whole while and after I had pointed out the bear we walked home. It was really an amazing hike with all sorts of great sightings including some wolf scat on the way home.
O and I had also done a photography project earlier in the week of the farm and really liked the one I added below.
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