A concerned citizen files a 311 complaint about all the rats at Lewis and Commercial streets in the North End. Read more.

Eileen Murphy spotted some people enjoying the beach off N Street in South Boston today.

Meanwhile, up on the Charles River, just upstream from the Arsenal Street bridge, some geese just couldn't be bothered to try out the water: Read more.

Whitney reports:

We came home to an actual live white dove on our front door. If anyone knows what to do (because it won’t leave) with an actual Xmas miracle, please help.

Savin Hill Sailor reports the Savin Hill coyote was looking pretty bold and sassy this morning down at the yacht club.

Jamaica Plain News posts some photos from the motion-activated camera one Jamaica Plain resident set up near her backyard compost pile.

Roving UHub photographer Mary Ellen spotted a pied-billed grebe at Jamaica Pond yesterday.

You can tell a grebe (you just can't tell it much) because they're a bit smaller and not as black as the coots that frequent the pond this time of year.

Also at Jamaica Pond today, Stephen Baird photographed a bald eagle soaring overhead.

Jessica Bartlett of the Boston Business Journal videoed a deer swimming alongside her Hingham-to-Boston ferry this morning.

We spotted this rafter on somebody's lawn on Washington Street in West Roxbury this afternoon.

Roving UHub photographer Mary Ellen spotted this purple gallinule in Milton over the weekend. The bird normally doesn't get much farther north than the South Carolina coast - where it uses its giant feet to step "gingerly across water lilies and other floating vegetation" as it hunts for frogs and worms. She reports the people in the house where the bird came to roost are trying to take care of it until it, hopefully, starts heading south.