Muskrats

On November 10, 2011 I was taking my regular early morning walk around the local lake. As I passed by the creek that flows out of the lake, I noticed an animal swimming upstream. The wake and sculling tail motion gave away the identification of the animal as a muskrat. I stopped to observed the muskrat for a few minutes before  continuing on my way.
As I walked the remainder of my morning loop, I was thinking that I didn't have any really good muskrat images in my wildlife catalog. When I got to work my mind kept wandering back to that swimming muskrat. How I could obtain some really good portraits and behavior images of these fascinating creatures?
I decided the first step would be to observe their daily activities from afar, so as not to disturb their natural behavior. For the next 16 days I stopped along my daily morning walk to observe the muskrats, adding considerably to my muskrat knowledge base. I supplemented my observations with research concerning muskrat biology.
By November 26th I was armed with lots of muskrat information and ready to try for some photos. Muskrats have many predators, mainly minks and raccoons, making them nervous and at times furtive.   

I knew in order to get within reasonable shooting range I would have to blend in and make any movement in slow motion to get a photo like the one above. In fact the that photo was taken the day of my first try and was successful because of the knowledge I had obtained beforehand.

Below are six more images of the over five hundred I've taken this past month and a half.

After awhile the the muskrats seemed to accept my presence and generally went about their daily routine, allowing me to capture many great images.

Click on any image for a larger version

You can view more of the muskrat images on my website:
www.bunchlewisphotography.com

Thanks for visiting my journal,
Bunch