Frozen Dinner

My wife saw a large dark bird drop sown to the ground in the backyard and asked me what it was. I suspected it was a crow, but got up and looked. It was a crow, but what caught my attention was that it seemed to be toying with a pine brush. it would peck at the “pine brush”, flip it over, and peck some more. Finally, the crow picked up the “pine brush” by the stem and flew with it up to the branch of a bay tree down by the creek where it proceeded peck at it. When the crow turned it, it looked as if snow may have frozen solid in the in the needles. At one point, the crow was hammering on it like a wood pecker on wood. 

I got my camera and looked at the crow through the lens at 500 mm. It was obvious the pine brush was a rodent, a woodcut maybe. But I checked and wood rats aren’t found in coastal areas. Possibly, it’s a rice rat. In any case, it was frozen solid. The crow picked up at the base of the tail and the stuck straight out as it flew to the tree and the crow really hammered away at the rodent’s body in an attempt to open it up. Either the rodent froze to death on top of the snow in the open, or possibly had escaped from a predator only to to die from its wound.

I didn’t see the crow leave, so I don’t know if it flew off with its swag or dropped it in frustration and flew off.