17 Wednesday Nov 2021
The rat population at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park is thriving thanks to the generosity of those folk who leave seed for the birds. The rodents are fearless opportunists and extremely cheeky, approaching to grab their share of the bounty even before people have stepped away, but they do at least share the seed with the birds. The rats stuff their mouths full of seed and scuttle away, whereas the squirrels monopolise the seed, staying put and not allowing the birds to approach.
15 Monday Mar 2021
Tags
British mammals, brown rat, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, rat, rats eating bird seed, Rattus norvegicus
Three cheeky rats. Three cheeky rats.
See where they hide. See where they hide.
They poke out their noses to check all’s clear
Then rush out to grab seeds, showing no fear
Even when people like me are quite near.
Three cheeky rats.
11 Monday May 2020
Warning: the photos in this post are a bit gory!
The highlight – if this can be called a highlight – of my early morning local walk was this Magpie, feeding on the grass in a local park.
Although Magpies mostly eat fruit, seeds and small insects, they are also opportunists who will quite happily scavenge household food waste, eat the eggs and chicks of other birds, and graze on road kill and other carrion. This bird had found a dead rat and was happily pulling it apart for a bloody, but presumably nourishing breakfast.
At least, I hope it was nourishing – the rat could, I suppose, have been poisoned, and I’m not sure whether that would have an adverse effect on the bird. I hope not.
27 Wednesday Sep 2017
If you don’t like rats, look away now!
While I realise that a blog about rats might not appeal to everyone, I rarely get to see or write about mammals so, when these two rats came brazenly sniffing around for the seeds I was feeding to the birds at Cosmeston, I couldn’t resist taking photos. And once I have photos, a blog shall surely follow.
These are Brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), immigrants from central Asia that arrived in Britain around 1720. Of course, I don’t mean these two individuals arrived in 1720 – rats usually only live about a year in the wild – but their ancestors were sea-going rodents that just loved to sail the oceans wide and jumped ship wherever they docked. Nowadays, rats are more settled, and they’ll live almost anywhere – houses, gardens, parks, farmlands and farm buildings – you name it, there’s probably a rat in it somewhere.
They particularly like cereals – so, my bird seed would’ve gone down a treat – but they’ll eat pretty much anything, from small birds and their eggs to molluscs and food scraps. If you’re someone who hates these much-maligned creatures, remember that they too play an important part in the food chain, in particular as food for the owls and foxes that everyone loves.
earthstar 
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