Wildlife in the backyard September 14, 2005
We live in a rural area, but since we’re in the middle of Orange County, suburbia is all around us. Some mornings our slightly rural location is a lot of fun. I dragged Ricki out on the deck with me this morning to enjoy things a bit. As you can tell, she wasn’t terribly excited about getting her picture taken this morning. She didn’t even have morning fur. Don’t know what she was on about.
Down below we saw a couple of wild bunnies out playing. I managed to get a photo of one. They’re adorable. Sometimes a bunch of them are out there playing, chasing each other, making bunny eyes at each other (usually in the spring), and generally having bunny fun. This one was hiding in the shadow of the big bougainvillea in our neighbor’s yard. You can see it there to the left of the bush. You might have to click the image to get the larger image in order to see the bunny sitting there.
In addition to the bunnies, Ricki and I also saw a small flock of parrots this morning (do parrots flock or do they prefer to covey or something else?) while we were enjoying the morning. We also watched a couple glistening blue-black crows fly by beneath us, and a mockingbird. I think there was a roadrunner down there, as well. Some sort of bird was running across the fields, anyway, but without binoculars, I couldn’t tell what it was. Here’s our yard, such as it is. Except for cutting down the grasses for fire abatement every year, we pretty much leave it alone, as you can tell. Our yard goes from the bougainvillea on the left, to a chain-link fence (fences in our other neighbor’s dogs) on the right. There’s a huge green shrub down the hill where the bunnies have a warren, and beyond that you can barely make out the split rail and barbed wire fence. Beyond the fence is a small organic farm. When we moved in a very old white horse named Smoke lived in that field. The farmer was careful to keep Smoke away from the vegetables, but other than that he had a large area to roam around in, and a stall to hide from the weather in. Smoke’s tail reached all the way to the ground. We could hear him neigh when he felt frisky. We miss Smoke. He was a cool horse.
