Tag Archives: Catskills Wildlife

A Mink Sighting

© J.N. Urbanski

© J.N. Urbanski

A mink has moved into my neighbor’s yard and my dog, desperate as always to make new friends, was a little overly zealous in his introduction. My dog almost made friends with a bold, friendly deer once, and for a few minutes they chased each other around, but I ruined it by getting in too close for a picture. That’s country life. We left the mink in peace and haven’t seen him since.

A Beaver Sighting

© J.N. Urbanski

© J.N. Urbanski

A beaver has moved into the hood, specifically the woods at the end of my road, and now I realize why the term “eager beaver” came into existence because he’s highly prolific. In his new habitat, a roadside pond, he has downed nearly ten trees in the short space of a week and was spotted yesterday, clearly from the road, swimming around on his back, surveying his work. One of the trees he felled looks to be about a foot in diameter. The town excavators who were clearing out all the gulleys in the area last week may not have noticed his handy work, but it looks like the over-achieving beaver is building the Empire State Building of dams and this could be a problem for the small stream that drains through the pond. He swims late in the day when the sun has warmed the pond, so I’ll be back around 4pm to see if I can catch him.

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