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!

Bestia Non Grata

So Hugh, just across the river, got 2 inches of snow, and it's sticking. No such luck, here. The snow fell all night, but it was dry, flaky stuff, and in the morning, the wind picked it all up and blew it away, leaving cold, bare concrete and icy grass.

And it was a cold, cold wind! I watched a chickadee pounding at the ice in the birdbath, probably not getting any liquid. When he gave up, I went out and poured two jugs of hot water into it. The ice melted a bit around the edges, but soon froze over again.

All the birds that have me on their list of cold-weather soup kitchens turned up for lunch. More chickadees; there was a constant stream of them at the black oil seed feeder. Juncos, in great numbers, house finches, a couple of towhees, assorted sparrows, including a very fat Fox sparrow. (Or was he all puffed up against the cold?) And the shy varied thrush that I sometimes hear under the evergreens spent a good while foraging among the leaves I had raked and piled up just a couple of days ago.

I had sprinkled out a couple of handfuls of finch seed mixed with leftover bacon fat for my guests, and was standing at the window watching them fight over it, when this party crasher showed up.

Not invited. Where's the bouncer?

We had seen a pair of these, months ago, after our neighbour across the alley had been clearing brush behind the buildings. For a couple of days, they scuttled quickly across our lawn, from one bit of shelter to another. I brought in a handful of stones, and dashed to the door to throw one or two every time I saw them. (No rats were harmed in this process; I've a lousy aim.)

They must have found a new home, one with no chainsaws nor stone-throwing women. We hadn't seen them again until today.

This time, the rat came right up to the birdseed pile, and I got out the camera before I stocked up on ammunition.

But ... is it a rat? Or a humongous mouse? It didn't look like the rats I know; for one thing, it's too small, and the face is too pointed.

I Googled and Wikipedia'd (Is that a word?) assorted rodents, and finally found it. It's a black rat, otherwise known as a ship rat or roof rat. They are smaller than the familiar* Norway (brown) rat; up to 8 inches, as compared to 10 inches for the Norway. (16 inches according to this UK site; that's some big rat!) The Norway rat's tail is shorter than the rest of the animal, but this little black rat's tail is longer. And the Norway rat has a stubby, round snout.

*Wikipedia says the Norway rat is

"the most successful mammal on the planet after humans."

But the black rats are as much a pest; they chew houses, make holes, cut cables, bring disease and fleas and bad odours. I don't want them around here. Even if they're starving and freezing. I'm sorry.

I went out and gathered a few good throwing stones; they're sitting on my desk now. And tomorrow, any birdseed will be in a bowl on the table, and I'll bring it in at dusk. The ground feeders will just have to become table feeders. The table will be warmer on their feet, anyhow.
.