What a cool find!
I spent a couple hours with a group of birders looking for rails, and we ended up seeing only one, very far away at the edge of a marsh. Good thing someone brought a spotting scope!
Always a good day when you see a Rallus. I started to just say ‘rail’ and then I remembered coots are technically rails and they tend to be slightly easier to find 
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King tides aside (when they tend to great driven onshore and exposed), I’ve found the best time to find them is around tide changes, especially the start of high outgoing tides. If you can get a good view of marsh edges as the tide is going out you can often see them getting active and starting to hunt along those margins.
Of course the vagaries of local population size has a big impact. The area I mentioned in an earlier post is an unusually concentrated habitat thick with them.
Nice shot, @Kolak_of_Twilo . I’m sure I would have been too excited and failed.
Thanks for this, @Tamerlane. If I get a chance to go out there again (this was at the Outer Banks of NC), I’ll take a look at the tide schedules to see if I coordinate for best results.
@Tamerlane yes, coots are easier to find, even in the middle of Chicago where this picture was taken. A sighting of any other member of the rail family causes a great deal of excitement for just that reason.
@carnut, I probably wouldn’t have gotten such a good shot except this guy was pretty much out in the open for a good 10-15 minutes. I managed to get at least a dozen good captures.
@romansperson, if you find yourself in Chicago you should check out Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary. It is crazy with birds during migration even though it is located in the middle of the northern part of Lincoln Park on Lake Michigan. A major resting spot for birds in the middle of this big city.
A fox has been hanging out just outside my front door in view of my doorbell cam. Here s/he is carrying a freshly caught squirrel. Cool. 
Very cool! And in daylight no less, which is uncommon for a gray fox. Wonder if it is out and about because of pups? It would be the right season.
Yeah, I was wondering about that. Door cam has caught the fox 3 times in the last week around noon, and not once at night, unlike my 4 am skunk that pops up sometimes.
I’m envious, I rarely see a fox.
Is that a distortion from the camera or would all water be funneled down to your front door off the blacktop?
One good fox deserves another. Well, two actually:
Two of our cubs investigating Boot Camp under the security lights. (Boot Camp being where young plants get hardened up before transferring to the allotment).
j
The driveway slopes left to right; water drains away from the house
Well, the graders are scrapping the range grass off the area now. The pronghorn will never be feeding there again. Next up Cement, Clay and Glass.
Not me, but a neighbor: she filmed a young black bear on her property. It’s that time of year that the youg’uns are run off by their mothers to go live their own lives elsewhere and they get seen in our area until they land in their new territories.
A bluebird. They’re uncommon around here.
I saw an indigo bunting on my ride this morning. They are quite a beautiful bird.
Just to add, a few days ago, working on my allotment (/community garden) I saw a single crow mobbing a (European common) buzzard; and today, at about two in the afternoon, right outside our house, we saw a single crow mobbing a fox. Crazy - they’ll take on anything.
j
No today, but I’ve seen a mockingbird attack two crows at once.
Yesterday, I saw a crow faking an injury at the roadside until he realized that no one was watching except the driver of a vehicle that in no way could be construued as the one that injured him. He suddenly stood straight, looked at me, and flew off. I am so curious about what he was thinking.
I also saw a crow yesterday, only mine was robbing a barn swallow nest at work. I chided him/her gently for their lack of respect for the sanctity of the home. It listened politely while mostly ignoring the dive-bombing parents, then went back to grab another chick.
Ah, well. ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw.’