Happy first day of summer!!!

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MRS QUACKERS

She is sitting peacefully by Turtle Lake, enjoying all the "scratch" feed she can eat and watching the sun go down. It's a beautiful late spring evening here in Florida.

SUPER FAST TURTLE OMG

This is an example of a typical Florida soft shelled water turtle.  You're not going to believe how fast these big turtles move!  We see this all the time... this video captures the SHOCK of seeing this perfectly (so why bother videoing it again LOL).

We have A LOT of these guys in our magical P2 pond.  They're a blast to watch swim around all day long with their "lovely snouts" sticking up in the air out of the water...

FLWOMP!

Mark called me over to tell me he heard a wet "flowmp" on the window.....turns out when froggy jumped on the window his tummy hit and made a wet sound.  LOL

look who is looking in the window

BIG FLUFFY IS AT IT AGAIN

This time he's eating all the Peafowl food, they're looking on in horror. They've seen Big Fluffy's teeth, me too, I would not want to mess with him. He would be a raccoon honey badger and we all know what those are, right?

BIG FLUFFY CAUGHT EATING DUCK FOOD BY POND

There is a reason Big Fluffy is so big, here he is chowing down on food I put by the pond for a crippled duck. He is always looking for food, eating and napping in trees, he's a good boy.

my favorite Peacock is sitting right next to me outside the window. I was rolling him blue berries earlier this morning until I ran out.

He continues to become more friendly towards me, he will now take a slice of bread from my hand, awwwww he's a good boy, he's Captain Hook!

RED HEADED DRAKE DUCK

This big guy stopped by to visit the P2 buffet, he is looking kind of rough as his feathers are molting. Sorry I was not fast enough to get video of him walking, he had a great waddle.

BABY CARDINAL FLEDGE

This little female cardinal is brand new. She just recently fluttered down from her nest in the tree above the P2 buffet. She is only 2/3 the size of an adult, note her beautiful head plumage, so perfect and erect. She has a very perky erect stance, very lit up and taking in her new world.

Flying is still complicated so she has spent a lot of time on the ground today, hopping around eating seeds and investigating things. Such a pretty little innocent new creature, up against the world.

It's Captain Hook, one of our big tail Peacocks, he is shedding his tail for the summer

FRICK AND FRACK ARE BACK

It is sundown at P2 and a favorite pair of Florda Mottled ducks came by for a snack, it's Frick and Frack

MARY SAVED HIS LIFE

We first spotted this little frog Saturday evening, he was sitting by the bush next to the pool. While we were having a Sunday morning swim Mary found his exhausted little body drifting in the pool :-(

Amazingly, upon close examination he was still breathing. Mary held him for half an hour until he warmed up and hopped back to the safety of the bush by the pool. Hopefully he learned NOT to jump IN the pool. Another happy ending, we love those :-)

Baby raccoons eatin' bread

Momma raccoon spots cameraman

Raccoon eating cottage cheese from little container

Big Fluffy, our favorite raccoon, up close eating bread

New zoom lens!!!  Awwwww

Beautiful Blue Heron Checking Out Food At P2

Baby Raccoons Picking Donuts Out of Puddle

BIG FLUFFY RACCOON up close eating bread, very nice teeth

Check out those canine teeth, easy to see why raccoons have reputation for mean biting, those would definitely hurt

One of our favorite Peacocks, peeking in the window, looking for a blueberry treat

BIG FLUFFY THE RACCOON CAME FOR AFTERNOON SNACK

Can you tell why we call him Big Fluffy? He loves black oil sunflower seed. Raccoon spend most of their daytime hours sleeping in trees. We try as hard as we can but have not been able to spot any up in the tree asleep.

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE BLUE HERON

We rarely see these guys when the pond is high, he normally likes to fish in shallows. Today he circled the entire pond looking for food at the shoreline

FIND TEENY

He is hiding in plain sight

Getting closer

There he is, on the side of the cactus, he's a good boy

MEET "TEENY", OUR NEW BROWN ANOLE LIZARD

That's him on the Tiki head. He's about 2" in total length and his body is about 1/8" in diameter. He was really easy to catch, Mary caught him, out by the swimming pool. Like Liz, Teeny is a very good jumper.

BYE BYE TO LIZ THE LIZARD

She was only with us for a day before Mary spotted our next guest Brown Anole lizard. This is Liz free in the weight room, she looks a lot happier :-)

BIG FLUFFY REVEALED

Can you see why we call this raccoon BIG FLUFFY

NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM....

MORE BIG FLUFFY (the raccoon) HANG'N WITH THE PEAFOWL

Big Fluffy loves hanging around with the Peafowl, it is one big happy family :-)
Big Fluffy really loves bread, fresh or stale, it's all good

BIG FLUFFY, THE RACCOON, and the PEAFOWL

Big Fluffy, one of our favorite raccoons, eating amidst nine Peafowl

ALL THE PEAFOWL ARE DOING IT

Outside our window all the male Peafowl are wooing a single female, who herself was displaying just moments earlier.

Female Peafowl Display

OMG, Female Peafowl display?
We've got some Googling to do on this

"BIG FLUFFY" one of our favorite wild Florida Raccoon

Big Fluffy, like all raccoons, is a tree dweller. They don't move as fast as a squirrel but raccoons can move up or down a tree, like it's a staircase

LIZARD TANNING BOOTH

Liz our wild Brown Anole lizard loves tanning her stomach by the UVB bulb

FLORIDA LIZARD HABITAT

We had a lot of fun putting our lizard habitat together. On the left is UVB light and on the right is the "basking" light. It took six pet store visits and one Amazon order to acquire all the goodies. Mary saved $8 by catching the first resident on the porch where we lift weights.

MEET LIZ

Mary found her in our weight-lifting room. Liz is a Brown Anole Lizard, about 5" in total length (tip to tip). She will be residing in our new lizard habitat for a few weeks as a guest of P2. Welcome to the blog Liz!

i love the improved resolution of YouTube videos vs Blog-compressed old versions

BABY SQUIRRELS EATING BLACK OIL SUNFLOWER SEED

These little baby squirrels are hungry endlessly, the adults rarely visit when the babies are eating.

Meet little Crunch, the world's best brown anole lizard

Crunch is a magical anole lizard... he literally yells at us in lizard language until we feed him dried mealworms.  And yes, he eats from our hands.  Awwwwwwww

This visit was special... Mark's birthday, 2015.  "Hey guys, I heard there's a party here today...?"

Finally got the mini bike

You gotta have a mini bike to zip around P2...

Immature male peacock practicing his display

Red Headed Duck in Florida

Beautiful Wild Peafowl in Florida

And the male peacock call....

Fledgling Cardinals

The Magic Frog in the Sink

Mark's Favorite Florida Mottled Ducks at P2

Possum Eating Seed At P2

The possum mom and baby came out in the early morning...  watch as the baby runs off at the end, rat-like tail wiggling as he runs.

Raccoons at P2!

This is not the baby raccoon's mom.... this is a DIFFERENT bigger raccoon, clearly eating well.  So fluffy!

Babies eating.... nom nom nom

Raccoon mom eating bread

Baby Raccoons!

RACCOON AFTERNOON VISIT

She ignored a large pile of bread nearby and chowwed down on Black Oil Sunflower seed

FLEDGING BABY CARDINALS
The little Cardinals fluttered down, crash-landing into the wood-chip mulch and then followed Dad for some personal training and feeding.

Another Spring newborn, this time a freshly fledged Cardinal. His flying speed is slower than Dads because he's still a baby.

Another Spring newborn, this time a freshly fledged Cardinal. His flying speed is slower than Dads because he's still a baby.

Another Spring newborn, this time a freshly fledged Cardinal. His flying speed is slower than Dads because he's still a baby.

I miss the Ravens of Lancaster but today a pair of Florida Fish Crows, also Corvids, came to our wildlife buffet.

The pair circle the area until there are no humans, then they sneak in for grapes and some seed.

Possum mom having some breakfast, NOM NOM
their Rat tails are freaky looking

Our first baby Possum sighting,
awwwwwwwwww

Today I saw my first snake here at P2, I think it was a "Black Racer" which are non-venomous and common here in Central Florida. It was black in color and fairly thin in diameter (less than an inch)" with a small head, about four feet long.
He was laying in the shade by my back door, we startled each other and he departed very quickly, like a black hose rocketing across the yard. He covered the 20 feet to my lawn shed in a second or two (oh great, now the snake is in my lawn shed).

This is the Pea Cock we call "Art Deco", named for his unique dual layer "comb" (the feather decoration on his head)

Art's vocalizations have a raspy, reedy, saxophone-like character that we can now pick out of a crowd of males bellowing.

Baby Peafowl

It doesn't get cuter than four brand new little Pea Fowl chicks trotting around after a very proud mother