Heron, squirrel, deer and Millie the cat

We humans seem eternally curious about the Animal Kingdom, and I count myself one of those ... at least when I have a camera in my hand. 

And nowadays, thanks to the convenience and much-improved quality of cameras in cellphones, we technically have a camera at the ready at all times.

So in recent weeks, I pulled out the iPhone to capture images you are seeing in today's post. They feature yet another deer grazing in our backyard, a squirrel foraging for food on the roof of the house immediately outside my office window, the house cat, Millie, cavorting about outside and on the stairs to the second floor in the house and a blue heron that did not seem to fret when it saw me and/or other park visitors who were walking the trail around Yates Mill Pond. 

It turns out, each shoot carries a little story. I've already told you about the story about the heron -- it being unafraid of being so close to two-legged human creatures, although it did tread carefully. I'd never gotten that close to a heron before, so a part of me wished I had my DSLR with a zoom lens. That's not to say I didn't use the iPhone camera zoom for my shots; I did. But I was still closer to a heron yesterday than ever before.  

And I've seen squirrels on the roof before, but in the past, as soon they'd see me looking at them through the window, they'd bolt. It's possible that because we've had many of the limbs of a nearby crepe myrtle tree trimmed -- especially those that were falling onto the roof -- that squirrels don't have nearly the quick escape they used to. This squirrel (see photo above) even paused long enough to drop the berry or nut it was eating to look me square in the eye and, perhaps, dare me to make a first move toward it. I didn't. So it went back to its business (first two photos below), keeping an eye on me all the while.

I took advantage of this squirrel's decision to linger to get as many shots as I could with the iPhone; even though my DSLR camera case was nearby, I didn't want to risk losing any time. 

As for the deer ... well, we'd seen one in the year about two weeks ago, but it didn't hang around long enough to photograph. This time I sucked it up and shot through a house window. Unfortunately, a back deck plexiglass window stood between the house window and the deer, so many shots had two gradients of light exposure. The combination of that plus the fact that I'm pretty sure my iPhone zoom was maxed out made the resolution quality less than optimum (see photo above).

So when I had my fill of those shots, I went out the front door, quietly snuck around the house to a corner near the backside and grabbed a few more shots before the deer got wise to my presence (first photo below) and paused about 4 seconds, apparently to see if I would make a move. I didn't, so the deer decided to make one itself and bolted into the safety of the wooded land before it (second photo below). 

In an unfortunate footnote to the deer story ... residents of my neighborhood learned a couple weeks ago that a developer has submitted plans to put 253+ houses on 95 acres of wooded land that touches many of our properties. My home in particular -- which sits just outside the wooded acreage property line -- will be affected by the development. 

One of the things I enjoyed about our new home was the serenity -- and sounds of birds chirping -- that those woods gave us in the six years since we've been here. In the near future, that will all dissipate if the developer is successful in getting his high-density housing project approved adjacent to the two low-density neighborhoods (including ours) that flank the woods. 

The woods was an unofficial sanctuary of sorts for various wild life, including the deer who'd stray into our yard from time to time. But we've also seen a variety of birds and hawks, not to mention rabbits, turtles and snakes in the time we've been here. We wonder where those land-borne critters will run to after the heavy equipment comes here to start leveling the trees and creating the new homes. 

We'll have to wait and see, I guess.  

The deer and squirrel pictures are really the best of the lot, so I fill out the post with a few others of Millie and the heron below. You'll get to see Millie in various stages of her regular outdoor romp routine. I was able to photograph the heron from several angles, and unfortunately the mid-day sun did my compositions more harm than good, rendering -- at least from one angle -- me almost silhouettes. In the first heron photo below the pointing thing sticking out from the water in the background is simply a piece of driftwood. I chuckled when I first saw it; it reminded me of a shark or dolphin fin. 

Enjoy.