Nature, nature everywhere

This weekend was Nature weekend at our house. We live on the outskirts of a fairly large city, in a neighborhood that has a number of undeveloped areas that are quite wooded. Creatures abound, though are usually stealthy. Not so this weekend.

In the wee hours of the morning on Friday, we were alerted by our dogs that Weird Creatures were in the yard! The Creatures? A small herd of deer, who I assume the dogs think are just weird-looking dogs. Lovely, though I'm not sure we really needed to be alerted to their presence at 3 a.m.

Saturday afternoon, I looked out the living room window to see three pheasant run across the back yard. (Here's a question: Why are pheasant always running?)

Sunday morning, Darling Husband got up to refill his coffee, and exclaimed, "Oh, wow!" This time, it was eight turkeys. Very cool.

We hear coyotes regularly, though we haven't seen any. And there are owls, and hawks, and falcons, and various and sundry other birds. All in all, it's delightful.