Beaver!

Thursday
It was late afternoon, when we got out for an outing and a walk at Fernald Preserve. The Fernald Preserve was opened to the public in August 2008 and is the property of the federal government. The site is operated by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management. Once the location of a uranium foundry that served as the first link in America’s nuclear weapon’s production cycle during the Cold War era, the Fernald property has undergone a $4.4 billion environmental cleanup and ecological restoration, using plants and grasses native to southwestern Ohio that were identified in an 1819 land survey of the area.
The Fernald Preserve features 140 acres of wetland habitat, 400 acres of forests and 360 acres of grasslands including tall grass prairies. It is a great place to watch for migrating waterfowl during Spring and Fall, as well as various prairie species, and has become one of the top birding spots in the area - an environmental success story. What we hadn’t realized until today, was that they also have beavers -we saw a lot of evidence of the tell-tale sign tree stumps, and were lucky enough to see three beavers, two in the water, and one on land, though I wasn’t able to capture the one on land. We saw a couple of people early in our walk, but then seemed to have the place to ourselves, as far as human occupants are concerned! It was also the best part of the day - the earlier part of the day was warm, but very overcast, but by this time, some of the clouds had cleared, leaving us with some sunshine and lovely cloud formations and that lovely early evening light.We didn’t have a long walk today, since it was getting late, and towards the end of our walk some of the clouds were beginning to look a bit threatening, and sure enough we hadn’t been in the car more than a couple of minutes before we had quite a downpour - so we had timed it just right. Since it was late when we got back, we brought in pizza from Deweys, one of our favourite pizza places.