Winter Beaver

Deepening cold and weak sunlight have fostered ice on quiet water such as on this new beaver pond. Despite the apparent calm of the pond, the beaver continue to labor at night, felling large trees for their wealth of buds and cambium on the smallest branches. The beaver will take the branches back near to its hut, where it will ballast them with mud on the bottom of the pond, the better to swim out of its ice-bound hut for that occasional winter snack as the ice thickens.
In spring, the bare wood will be collected and added to both hut and dam.