I’ve given up any idea of convincing myself I do not live in a wild animal park.
Sometimes I think it is ridiculous that I enjoy the backyard as much as I do, but understand what I’m saying: I’m not traveling nowhere to see all these creatures. All of them, except the one heron – the black crowned night – and the moorhen, have shown up in the backyard. I frankly expect to see even them soon enough.
No, all these animals are a maximum of about 200 feet from my backdoor. Since there are neighbors, I assume they would have a somewhat similar experience to myself, but it just means they also live within the boundaries of the wild animal park!
This morning there were not one, but two abandoned eggs on the lawn. It seems it can be illegal to remove the eggs, but also, more importantly, it does not serve the wild animal population. Around the eggs, the lawn was dotted with white feathers. I assume that in the before-dawn hours there was some kind of contretemps that led to this. 
Perhaps something like yesterday’s spectacular chase by one muscovy duck after another along the shoreline. The othere one is behind him somewhere. The display didn’t dissuade him and this guy had to skitter off in the other direction. 
So, while I am pondering the lawn as the site of this showdown, I hear a crackling across the water. There’s a flash of movement. A deer. Again. I know they aren’t rare at all, but this is what I mean. All these non-rare animals gathering together in one space must surely be rare.
After that (because there’s always an after in the backyard), there comes flying overhead a huge bird, quite close. It perches on trees to the left of the cove. An osprey. 
Wow. Fantastic looking bird. (I amped up the colors here because the image produced by the P900 was almost monochromatic. Possibly my first edit, beyond cropping of any photos on RTBT. Progress, yes?)
After all that, this little bird flew up on the porch screen. It appeared to be trying to find a way in. It would fly up, meet resistance, back off just a little and fly up against the screen again. Again and again. Then it somehow went round the corner to door seemed to try to come in that way.
This, I believe is one of the two ‘new’ species of birds I that I have around here. There is a bird that looks somewhat similar to the blue gray gnatcatcher, and then there is this one, above. It might be the yellow-rumped warbler. Whether it is or no, there were certainly yellow-rumped warblers a plenty on the lawn today. You can see the yellow rump in this quite clearly.
This is the bird I used to confuse with the eastern phoebe (and may have one so here on the blog). These two individuals are certainly the yellowest I have ever seen.
Now can we agree? A deer saunters by. A minute later, an osprey perches 40ft from me, and less than 30 seconds later a wood stork with its dramatically huge black and white wings soars ten feet above my head. Not that much later, there is a flurry of activity in the lawn as eastern bluebirds, eastern phoebes, and warblers dash down from trees to search for food in the grass. Then there are the red-bellied woodpeckers, limpkins and belted kingfishers.
This is in addition to the usual sightings of mallard and muscovy ducks, snakebirds, herons, egrets, vultures, and limpkins. Plus, of course, the grebe – the menagerie’s newest addition.
This is all in one day. Today.
And today was not unusual.
Wild.
Animal.
Park.
- Aperture: ƒ/6.3
- Camera: COOLPIX P900
- Focal length: 250mm
- ISO: 560
- Shutter speed: 1/125s