A Year at a Beaver Pond

"A Year at a Beaver Pond" reveals the dynamic activity that took place within the mini ecosystem of a one-tenth acre beaver pond. With over 130 pictures and insightful text, you are drawn into the unfolding of the events that transpired there. Like the author, you will be entertained by anticipated wildlife activities and amazed by the unexpected. Wood ducks and beaver ponds go together, but who would imagine that on two occasions those ducks chased off a mink or that two older wood duck hens would show up that donned mostly male feather patterns? Otters proved to be amazingly elusive until one finally frolicked in the limelight. A week later there were three. Open the book and see the well adapter one-legged solitary sandpiper and the beaver reaching up to feed on bark after an April snowstorm. Snipe, mallards, warblers, waxwings, raccoons, deer, and brown trout were among the pond users. In total, 61 species of birds, nine mammals, a few fish, toads, various insects, and a wolf spider spun a dynamic web of life that used that one little beaver pond and its immediate footprint. The ecology of this pond provides the framework for our understanding that beavers constitute a keystone species.