We used to live on the bank of a rural canal, and often saw grass snakes swimming in there. They did look bigger than I remember them being when I was a kid! We sometimes get foxes using the gardens as a short cut from one wooded area to another. They just hop over the fences.
“You don’t realise how much wildlife is living in urban areas” “We humans have moved into previously undeveloped areas” is how I see things.
Sorry, I do some retired annuitant work for extra money and had a big project with a very short time frame. Worked 24 hours on it this weekend much to Tornado-dog's disappointment. He's not allowed to touch me when I am working (because he likes to tap the laptop with his feet and cause disasters). Project is done now and I have plenty of money to buy my plants at the sale this March! We not only have encroached on their habitat, but we have altered and destroyed much of what we haven't encroached on with our dams, roads, chemicals, etc.
We have the egrets year round as well as the herons. They both will find all you can eat buffets (aka backyard fish ponds) but are most often seen at our levees and rivers and lakes.
My resident squirrel is coming every day now to the one feeder. It is a smart camera feeder so I get alerted when she's there. At first, she kept climbing onto the feeder and sitting in the tray sticking her butt to the camera. So, whenever she does that I have been using the camera mic to tell her to move. If she doesn't, I open the back door so she'll run off. After not quite a week, she has figured it out. As long as she sits on the railing and reaches over for the seed, she can eat all she wants. Today she didn't even try to climb on the tray. The past week, I've caught a rat at the feeder each evening after dark. Using the mic scares him off immediately. Sunday, I talked to the neighbor and she said her dogs killed a rat. For the next two