Swan vs. Beaver

On an activity with BYU students a couple of weeks ago I was able to arrive early and observe (and photograph) a swan on the pond near the home where our activity took place. There were also a couple of ducks but they kept swimming away from where I was at and showing a great deal of shyness about being photographed. The swan on the other hand seemed as interested in me as I was in it. It would swim away for awhile and then toward me again and at one point I started to wonder about it's intentions so I figured that I had enough photographs and walked away to another area of the pond. The pond was c shaped and so I just crossed over the small island to the opposite side from the swan.

I was surprised to notice a beaver also swimming in that part of the pond and as I went to capture an image of him he dove under the water. I was a little amazed to see it because of the many times that I have tried in the past to be able to photograph one had never panned out. I either wouldn't find one in the pond where there was an obvious new amount of activity judging on the newly cut trees or they would disappear before I could get near enough to photograph them. I was then interested to see what the swan was doing again so I crossed back to the side of the pond where it was diving under the water and eating. It then noticed me again and began swimming in my direction just as it had the first time. I was starting to get a little worried, because I didn’t want a confrontation with it, when the beaver surfaced just a few feet from the swan and began swimming across to the shore away from me and to the other side of the swan from me.  The swan then turned and started slowly swimming toward the beaver which then turned directions and swam back toward where it had come from. I was amazed at how the swan just seemed to glide across the water because I could not see any activity from it's feet which I thought I should have been able to observe. I then became somewhat interested to see if there would be an interaction between the swan and the beaver because the swan seemed quite interested in it and if so which would win. Well when the swan got to within about 2 feet of the beaver it again dove under the water and left. (So did I.)