Times like this it's nice living in Florida

Without even leaving my house this morning, I saw a red-tailed hawk, a black vulture, at least two red-crested woodpeckers, a few scrub jays, a crow, a couple of pigeons, and I I heard what I think was a mockingbird. The scrub jays and the woodpeckers were competing for prime courting locations around my house.

On the way to work, I saw wood storks and sandhill cranes, and there was probably an anhinga in one of the bigger retention ponds I passed.

If I eat lunch in the park behind the closest fire station, I'll probably see more wood storks, ibises, seagulls, anhingas, muscovy ducks, mallards, a couple of geese, a great egret and/or a great blue heron, an osprey, and possibly even a migratory bird or dozen. The last time I was at this park, I was buzzed by a bald eagle who caught a thermal and soared off into the sun before I could put down my food and get my camera to bear.

If this is what you can find in a moderately-sized city without even trying, what happens when you actually try? Maybe that's what I'll do this weekend..

Update -- A friend commented that the photo of the hawk looked fake-ish, and I agree, it is a little odd -- but when I took this photo, I was standing on my porch wearing nothing but a bathrobe with my hair in a towel. I wasn't feeling too inclined to run across the street to get closer... To give a sense of scale, that hawk is approximately 1.5-2 feet tall, beak-to-tail.

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