Today, a wild turkey flew over the hood of my truck and barely made it. God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
Just not well 
.
At my job on one side we’re set next to a semi-protected creek and we regularly get wild turkeys on the property. However our entire perimeter is fenced - there are small, easy-to-miss squeezable-for-wildlife gaps at a couple of corners, but pretty much enclosed. Every once in awhile we’ll get a youngish, but physically mature turkey (usually they seem to be young males) that is separated from its flock as they the rest filter through one of those corners and it misses it as it was off browsing elsewhere. It then gets panicked at being on the other side of the chain-link fence from its buddies and starts making loud distress calls and running up and down the length of the fence. It could literally fly over in two seconds, but it just can’t seem to grasp that fact. Back and forth, back and forth.
About the only thing that seems to work to shut it up is one of us going and chasing it a few feet, which is enough to panic it and induce it to fly over the fence. Which it promptly, if clumsily does. Wiley wild turkeys my ass - they just aren’t that bright 
.
A flock of turkeys made a last-minute decision to cross the road in front of my car the other day. I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting them. They seemed very annoyed and offended that I was so close to them. 
Meanwhile, the grasshopper was partying. The ant stored staples for the winter.
Ha! Brilliant.
I’m starting to see bucks wandering in daylight near the side of the road if I commute to work via the country route. It’s pretty early for them to be getting restless, but this is one of the first signs of approaching autumn.
Driving back from the store today I saw, in the grassy median, a mature water moccasin. It slithered off before I could get to my camera. But, hey, that’s right where I photograph plants most days. I’ll be less cavalier about jumping the drainage ditch in the future.
While mowing the lawn today I had to keep on my toes for wildlife. There were tiny baby toads all over. I also saw a very small garter snake, who will one day be eating those toads.
I saw a bald eagle on the river today.
A buck and doe were grazing outside the bedroom window this morning.
They just aren’t that light. I’ve seen turkeys fly but only for short distances and not terribly high.
They do roost in some fairly tall treetops around my home. But I have to say that though I’ve seen them fly straight down (easier), I’ve never really followed one to see if it went more or less straight up to the top or fluttered up a few branches at a time.
Tonight there were three fawns munching grass in my front yard. No mamas, just the fawns, who were getting pretty big but still had their spots.
A mountain lion. I live in North Phoenix, on the edges of what’s called the mountain preserve. But basically downtown, A major freeway is just over the mountain from us, there’s a 6 points intersection I can walk to. The airport is 20 minutes. And on our walk this morning, the fella sat down on a wall at the edge of very overgrown somebody’s yard. I was standing looking towards the worst of the overgrown mess, and saw a lion walk up under a tree. Hidden, except for where I was standing, maybe 25 feet. I saw her before she saw me, and when she did, she crouched. We stared at each other until I told my guy to get up and turn around and look. We left while she was still watching us. Not a bobcat, this one had a tail.
My mailman had told me he’d seen her all over the neighborhood for a while. I felt lucky to see her, but too dumbstruck to get out my phone.
A group of white-tailed deer by the pond last night. A doe and two fawns, iirc.
Come to think of it, I often see female adults and young deer, but I’ve never seen a buck in the area. I wonder why not?
Because bucks don’t raise their young, the mothers do. They are not like Elk and Moose in this manner. In a couple of months you may see the bucks around the females more when they go into rut.
I sorta knew that the males don’t raise the young. But I’d have thought that I’d see some solo males hanging around occasionally.
But it’s just a park I walk past most evenings, I’m not doing a scientific study.
Our baby toad season is finally coming to an end. We had them everywhere for about a month starting in July. I was walking the dogs on our trail in the woods one day when I looked down and saw all of these little things scurrying around. At first, I thought it was a horde of baby spiders but then noticed they were teeny baby toads. I was hopping around trying not to step on them for weeks after that. My husband had a heck of a time mowing the lawn. I always ponder what it would be like if all of those babies made it to adulthood. It would be like a horror movie with big toads covering the ground.
A couple of years ago my gf was checking out the grass to see if the dew was dried off so we could begin mowing. She saw so many tiny toads that she ordered a halt to my mowing until later in the week.
I point this out to my gf when she attempts to save a toad that is in a snake’s mouth. She’ll get the toad out and it still dies, plus the snake misses a meal and will grab another toad later.
In our shade garden we place all of our broken flower pots, half burying them to create little caves for toads.
Aww, I knew I liked you.
Or bodegas, as the snakes like to call them