Yesterday when I was walking the dogs, I came up to a fence, and was focusing on the field beyond it to see if there were any cows. Suddenly an owl swooped over my head and landed in a nearby tree…he’d been sitting on the fence and I walked right up on him without noticing! I’ll try to do better next time. 
I prepared some large pots for Mexican sunflowers today, filling them with dirt. I pulled one of the pots I was thinking of using off its shelf, and sitting inside nestled atop the remains of a small bag of potting soil is a wren’s nest. I’ve seen wrens hopping around on the deck for at least 10 days, so now I know what they’re up to.
We were walking back from dinner with friends last night at about eleven, and man were our owls shouting. It was crazy loud! I can imagine how, in unlit and superstitious times a few centuries ago, it must have been terrifying.
Today was a delightfully warm and sunny spring day - and we saw our first butterfly of the year!
j
ETA: while I remember, I usually nominate a bird of the year, based on how often we encounter them - a rough indicator that numbers are up. So here in SE England, the 2024 birds of the year are: the greater spotted woodpecker and the Eurasian jay.
Flashy! 
I had to go to the “City” today, and I had a big fat Macy’s gift card to try and use up… Drove into the parking lot and saw a bunch of Canadian Gooses lounging around on the pavement.
No shortage of green open space around here. Why did they choose to kip on the parking lot of a mall?
I don’t know about where you are, but around here Canada geese have just given up on migrating. They spend the winter standing around in fields. I think your answer may be that they just have time on their hands.
j
If there is grass nearby (including strips in and around the lot), that’s good enough for them. Even if they are hanging on pavement in the moment, if grass is nearish that’s fine - they’ll wander offer to have a bite when they feel like it. Geese like to hang in wide open areas with good lines of sight to spot threats, which parking lots have in abundance. It might seem to us an empty field somewhere might be much more congenial, but the geese don’t always seem to agree. Grassy parking islands are bizarrely often perfect goose habitat as far as the geese are concerned - no pesky trees or shrubs around to impede views or hide predators.
This is even more pronounced when they enter molt and become ground bound, which tends to encourage them to congregate in greater numbers. But that’s usually more a June-July thing.
Owls can be extremely difficult to spot. Once upon a time while I was mowing a very large lawn a small chunk of dead wood near some Spruce trees turned into a small owl as I got very close to it.
So earlier I posted some images of egrets chasing otters hunting in the shallows down the shoreline to take advantage of the fish they stirred up. Herons and egrets are clever, adaptable birds at least in the specific area of finding a meal. Recently I saw a Snowy Egret (or possibly two, it was at different times and they are impossible to tell apart) doing the same thing with a pair of Common Mergansers.
Female merganser:
Hmmm…
Synchronized…
Fishing friends forever!
Fabulous photos once again, @Tamerlane.
All I have to offer is an observation lying somewhere on the spectrum between banal and intriguing (as you see fit). Yesterday was one of those April days with bright sunlight and flecked cloud, and pretty breezy too.
So: how fast are those clouds moving? As it happens I was driving directly downwind, following the shadows of cloud edges, as clearly demarcated as you could wish. Answer: about 35 mph.
Never been able to observe this before.
j
I had a similar experience but not with clouds but with the tips of the blades of the wind farms overtaking me while driving at 120 km/h on the Autobahn. And it wasn’t particularly windy! I was impressed and spent a couple of minutes trying to calculate how fast they were. Two tips overtook me while crossing the diameter of one windmill (is that what they are called?) and I calculated that they were moving between 200 and 250 km/h, but I may have miscalculated by some margin. Not really nature, I know, but having read that the pressure diference before and after the blade passes is enough to kill birds and bats without touching them it felt like nature after all.
I’m not casting doubt on your math, but that’s astonishing.
Hmm - after a little digging:
Despite their seemingly slow speed from a distance, the rotors of a wind turbine may exceed speeds of 100 miles per hour during steady winds, with large turbines topping out at 180 miles per hour. The blade tip speed is directly tied to the wind speed and length of the blades.
Still astonishing.
j
Oh, yes, wind turbine is the word I was looking for! The calculation was only approximate, as depending on the angle of the sun the shadow can move much faster on the ground than the tip of the blade through the air, but the power of those things is astonishing indeed.
The orientation of the sun, the turbines facing the wind and the Autobahn was just so that I tried to calculate that while driving. It was probably less than 200 km/h, now you cite what the really big ones do, but still it was much faster than I was driving.
Bunny rabbit.
I like these Black-tailed Jackrabbits we have locally because they always seem sort of comically goofy to me. This following pic looks sorta dynamic, but it really isn’t. He was moving slowly at a sedate galumph. They can take off like greased lightning, but just wandering about they give off a distinct ‘dopey joe’ vibe to me .
Also a Blue-Winged Teal which is oddly showing his neck iridescence more in his reflection. Optical physics are weird. I always feel sorry for blue-winged teal having such a non-descript name. They get it from their wing patches, but their very close cousins the gaudier Cinnamon Teal not only have identical wing patches, but even had the original scientific name Anas cyanoptera, i.e. the ‘blue-winged duck’ (both of these teal are now in the newly separated out genus of Spatula). Blue-winged teal meanwhile were Anas discors, the ‘different duck’ 
. I guess “Blueish-Gray-with-a-White-Stripe-Headed Teal” was too much of a mouthful.
Beautiful subjects and good shots!
I took this in my yard yesterday. See the hummingbird?
Driving home yesterday we saw a herd of around 30 (wild) deer, just grazing in a field by the side of the road - this at around 3 in the afternoon. This may be the largest herd we’ve seen - less than a mile from the edge of town. As I’ve said before, there are a lot of deer round these parts, and they’re getting more and more urban.
j
We have a little pond (an acre) with goldfish and koi. We have mallards that hang out and raise their ducklings, which is cool. Occasionally a kingfisher or heron will stop and eat a few goldfish.
These mergansers are a first! Hope they stick around for a bit.
Awesome! It’s not something I’m likely ever going to have since I’ll probably remain urban even in retirement, but I’m envious of your pond .
Are the koi pricey to replace?
Here’s the thing. The original goldfish population was from a bag of 25 feeder goldfish my gf dumped into the pond 35 years ago before we knew each other. When I moved in, 20 years ago, we went to a PetSmart and bought some tiny koi. They were $2.99 a piece and I bought six of them.
The koi grew fast. One died two years ago and I used a fishing net to get it out. It was buried in our pet cemetery. The five remaining koi are too big for predation.
Now that the weather is warming up, we’ll start our routine of sitting on the little dock, tossing fish food, drinking wine and eating cheese, and watching the sun set. It’s a routine we and our dogs love.
Never underestimate what a great blue heron can swallow ! Still, that’s pretty cool - it’s like planting a tree and seeing it through.