Scat, berries, and bugs. And a rat.

The Serpentine River lives up to its name. It winds across the flat Fraser Delta farmland, spreading out into wetlands where it finds opportunity, dawdling on its way down to the flats of Mud Bay. In the Fen, a wide, gravelled path winds with it, Northwest, then South again, almost meeting itself as the river carves out a bulbous finger of marsh.

I took a side path, leading across a small bridge, through a thicket, and past tall stands of cattails bordering a former lagoon, now mostly dry, cracked mud, in spite of the previous day's rain.

No wonder the birds are elsewhere! Two stubborn Canada geese waiting for the water to come back.

From here, the path turned west, ducked through a narrow tunnel of bush - I'm short, and the branches brushed my head - and then along a straight path, hawthorns and baneberry on the left, great mounds of the invasive Himalayan blackberry on the right, sometimes three times or more my height, and loaded with purple-black berries. I passed people with buckets, picking. I tried a few; ripe and sweet. Even after I had left them behind, when the breeze picked up, I could smell their perfume.

Hard at work, pollinating. More berries on the way!

He's carrying big bags of pollen to take home to the nest.

A common red soldier beetle, Rhagonycha fulva.

Another turn, a short, noisy walk alongside the highway, and then the path came out onto the river bank again. Beautiful silence!

This end of the fen is old farmland, with remains of fences and groves of hawthorn and crabapple, all showing their dismay at this dry summer.

Hawthorn, needing water.

Here the path is bordered on the inner side with weedy grass, all brown and dead. I poked along, chasing grasshoppers and big blue dragonflies, with no luck, and dodging coyote scat.

This one has some sort of fungus.

Besides the coyote scat, every few steps, (one with a hawthorn berry on top, like the cherry on a cupcake), the grass was full of rabbit pellets. Predator and prey, but the rabbits seem to be doing ok.

A hawk was patrolling this dry land, swooping low over the grass, looking for small birds and mice, and maybe a juicy rabbit, too.

Tiny fly, unidentified. About half an inch long. Update: Sand wasp. Thanks, Christopher!

White feather. What bird would this be from? About three inches long.

And a final surprise; swimming along the shore, going downstream at a good clip, I saw this big rat:

Not a house rat.

And over the river, a pair of swallows were catching mosquitoes. Good!

On the banks of the Serpentine

The weather was perfect; windy and cool under a heavy cloud cover, just the sort of day for a long walk in the open. The Serpentine Fen beckoned. It's been quite a while since we visited.

Serpentine River, facing northeast.

It's a wildlife area, a wetland following the meandering path of the Serpentine River, home to thousands of birds, even in midsummer. But not today. I walked the entire circuit, 4 kms, and saw two swallows, one heron, three sandpipers, a gaggle of geese, a hawk and a crow. And a white feather. That was all. The rest - I caught a glimpse of them from the highway as I was leaving - were congregated in the No Public Access area.

Never mind; the bugs made up for it; I came home with 250 photos to sort. Bees, bee mimics, flies, soldier beetles, all very busy pollinating the tansy. I'll be busy for a bit.

Tansy, grass, and blackberry leaves. No bees on this one.

Goldenrod and tansy

Hardhack, dried flower heads. They bloomed early this year.

What else I saw, tomorrow.

A Skywatch post.

Serpentine Reflections

We stopped for a moment last week beside the Serpentine River. A crew was working on the bridge, adding a walkway, and creating interesting reflections on the water.

Looks like footprints on the river.