Brave Beaver

I know I monitor and manage bears during the day.  That is my job.  On my off time, what do I do at Brooks?  I go watch bears.  I walk down the valley road to see what is hanging out for the evening sunlight.  This week every time I walk down to the lower platform I have seen high numbers of spruce grouse.  I have seen a black backed woodpecker which is a rarer bird to see at Brooks.  I have seen it 3 times this year.  There have been reports of lynx in the area and I am hoping to see one but I haven't been so lucky.  Once at the platform I count the bears.  There are about 11 bears hanging out by the bridge area.  There is a mixture of subadults, females and a dominannt male or two.  As I am watching the bears I notice a brown figure swimming in the water.  At first I thought it was a small bear.  To find the fish in the water a bear will snorkle, with just its ears above water, it swims and floats the river watching the water for slow moving, dying fish.  So seeing a brown head in the water is no new thing.  But as I watched, I realized that it wasn't a bear but a beaver.  A large size, slow moving, rather curious beaver.  I watched as it swam in between all the fishing bears.  I thought for sure that a bear would take a swipe at the beaver as how much salmon can a bear eat without wanting a taste of something different and here was a chunky morsel of beaver meat swimming right by them.  Bears do eat beaver.  I saw one attack a beaver den in the spring to get to the beavers inside.  Of course, it didn't work out to well for the bear as the beavers swam out and watched the bear attack their home. I watched the beaver swim pretty close to bears eating fish.  I do not know what the beaver was thinking but he was either very stupid or very brave.  Either way he was a round the area for about 15 minutes then we lost sight of him, which I hope means he survived to go home for dinner not be dinner.