Birds and the Bee's, and water mammals

Well the mystery of the river mammal has been solved. If you have read Ana's Blog you will know it was a Nutria. It is a large South American rodent. It's considered a bit of a pest. So it wasn't really as interesting as I'd have hoped. We went from thinking it was a rare Japanese mammal to an introduced pest.

On other animal news we went to Hanafesta Flower Park in Kani. This time of year the roses are out. The park is huge and has one of the largest collections of roses in the world. It has many other things as well but the focus was on the roses at this time of year. One of the things we found interesting, which wasn't part of the park really, was the amount of insects and such. On a small path that you just used to go from one area to another we saw masses of caterpillars and a few lizards. I think the Japanese thought we were crazy looking at the bugs instead of the flowers.

We also saw a Mamushi (Japans most poisonous snake). Actually, we heard it is not that dangerous. It was in an area with a small water feature and there were plenty of people around. This was ironic because before when we were coming off a path that had a sign warning people that they were in that area we heard a couple decide not to go because of that. And here you have one swimming around near to people picnicking and playing with their kids.

Another animal encounter was the with swallows. A couple had started building a nest on our exhaust fan outlet but gave up. On the floor below us there is a nest we see everyday. At Hanafesta on a covered walkway there were numerous nests and birds and they didn't seem to concerned by the people. You could get to within reaching distance as they sat on the railing. You could easily touch the nests as they were a little bit above head height. It's nice to see so many animals around. I have posted pictures on my photosite. Unfortunately we didn't get one of the snake.