A rat! A rat in the arras!

Our tom cat Baron, aka Bagger, is to be congratulated on the scientific capture and despatch of his first brown rat (rattus norvegicus) known in France as le rat surmulot, rat de Norvège or rat d'égout. He - and we - have been observing this rat for some time, as it was competing with the ground-feeding birds for scraps falling from our bird feeders under the cherry tree. The goldfinches having vanished, there are now fewer seeds tossed aside by these greedy birds in their pursuit of sunflower seeds, but then the hen pheasants that were gobbling up most of the discards have vanished too. Both goldfinches and pheasants are now no doubt sitting on eggs out in the meadow somewhere.

This looks tasty....

 Ms Rat (for she was a female, not lactating) was a plump beast with a glistening coat, having had the benefit of an excellent diet under our bird feeders. Were it not for the diseases the rat is known to carry, one could call her a handsome creature. Bagger was on his way into the house via the back door when movement caught his eye. He shot across, waited until the rat moved, then pounced, caught it cleanly by the back of the neck, and brought it to the doorstep unharmed and kicking furiously for us to admire it, before putting an end to it cleanly with a single bite. Death by skilled cat or terrier seems to me a far kinder method of disposing of vermin than those devised by mankind - Warfarin (die slowly of internal bleeding), Rat Glue (die slowly of starvation while stuck to a board) or Rat Skouiz (die slowly of suffocation tangled up in a rubber band). At least the old fashioned "Little Nipper" trap or tapette is reliably quick - unless the rat gets a leg caught in it... And a humane trap is all very well, but what do you do with the rat once you've caught it? Well, we rewarded Bagger with cat treats. Now for the really big target - ragondins!

It was! Now, where's that cat?

Bagger is really rather an unusual cat. For one thing, he roars. You know that "mad five minutes" that strikes a cat occasionally, sending it racing round the house in several directions simultaneously? When he does that, sometimes he lets out a brief, guttural roar. Then he looks surprised.

One last butterfly on the wing

Still mild and moist and plenty of insects about. RonRon the nosy cat poked an ichneumon fly and got stung [they use the short ovipositor in defence], to her great indignation. A very small mayfly rested on the door of the laiterie, building up its strength for a mad short life. A red admiral was searching along the edge of the millstream in the sun - one last forage before hibernation.

Busy migrants

Today was dreary, damp and misty, the only colour provided by the big flock of small passerines flitting between our lime tree and the bare field opposite recently sown with wheat. The greenfinches, chaffinches and goldfinches could be resident, or more northerly birds replacing our summer breeding colony who have moved on. Just because you see them all the year round, it doesn't mean they are the same birds. Recently they were joined by Bramblings [Pinson du nord] Fringilla montifringilla, the chaffinch's orange relative, and Siskins [Tarin des aulnes] Carduelis spinus. The adult birds, having moulted in summer, now look very fine.

Bagger discovered my fleece tunnel sheltering the winter lettuce plants. I could only find a rather ragged, used piece of fleece when I was constructing it, having bought the young plants on a whim at Descartes market when the night temperature was minus two. He found a hole in the fleece at one side of the tunnel and stuck his head through. Hm, no voles there yet. Fortunately when he pulled his head out again he didn't pull the whole thing down, but it was definitely a smaller hole than the width of his whiskers!

Vole trouble

Our city-dwelling tom cat, Baron aka Bagger, has discovered in himself the capacity to catch mice. Catch, you understand. Very gently, he brings back all items to the front door. And if the door is open, he brings them inside and places them on the floor for us and his sister to admire. As of yesterday afternoon, a fully alive vole is somewhere lurking under the furniture, or in the firewood stack, or maybe someone may discover him when they put on a shoe. Bagger's sister RonRon is a student of wildlife, and watches the vole's progress with great interest, but so far has made no attempt to catch one herself. She prefers to find a warm spot and curl up "asleep" (waiting for the main chance).

We could have at least six species of vole in our environment. Bagger has already brought us a specimen of the Campagnol Souterrain microtus subterraneus. We know this as the Mining Vole because of its little tunnels everywhere, a few inches below the ground and in the floor of the barn before we concreted it. It is more properly known as the Common Pine Vole. How dull. Who thinks of these names?

The little chap running around our living room looked bigger than the Mining Vole and is possibly a Common Vole [Campagnol des Champs] Microtus arvalis or Short-tailed Field Vole [Campagnol Agreste] Microtus agrestis – if and when we catch him, we’ll have him in a dentists chair and look at his teeth! We have two live traps down [a Longworth small mammal trap, baited with “Snacky Cracky” – a sugar-and-nut confection from Lidl that has proved irresistible to small rodents in the past] and a commercial "multi-capture" trap. A couple of years ago, a band of brothers took it in turns to venture into our kitchen – a series of wood mice, all male, went straight for the trap and the Snacky Cracky. Unfortunately before we put the trap down, mouse number one spent some time in the kitchen, sampling this and that. An intellectual mouse, he nibbled the spine of the dictionary. Thirsting for refreshment as well as knowledge, he chewed the foil capsule on a bottle of Cremant de Loire!

Tim encountered a Bank Vole [Campagnol Roussâtre] Clethronomys glareolus out in the meadow. We saw a Water Vole in the millstream but whether it was the Northern Campagnol Terrestre Arvicole terrestris or the Southern Campagnol Amphibe Arvicole sapidus species, goodness knows. Once upon a time, they were both Arvicola amphibius. The lumpers and splitters have been at it again!