I knelt down on the boardwalk, my camera hanging from my neck.

“Look,” I exclaimed with excitement. “There really is something there.” There, with steam rising from it, and the sulphuric odor suffusing the air, there was life there at the water’s edge. This was on a walk among the glaciers in Yellowstone National Park. The brochures were right, it seemed. Even in this inhospitable environment, the very crust of the earth was teaming with life. Even beautiful flowers grew nearby.

In the fall of 2012, we did a tour of the city parks. There was one, Winton Woods that we visited frequently. There are many houses along the edge of that park, such that they seem to actually live in the park. Of course this seemed like an idyllic life…to look out of your window onto an every changing world.

This last year, after coming back from the epic six week journey, I walked into my own backyard to ‘hunt’. I wanted to see what kind of creatures I could find right here. Three months in, I continue to observe, photograph and sit with a wonderful community of animals living their hugely diverse lives, thirty feet from us. Alligators, turtles, snakes, lizards, tortoises, pink birds, blue birds, white birds, black birds, fish, butterflies and bees.

This is just one of them. A snake bird.

• Aperture: ƒ/8
• Camera: Canon PowerShot SX510 HS
• Taken: 2 January, 2016
• Focal length: 129mm
• ISO: 400
• Shutter speed: 1/50s