Birds of a Feather

One of the coolest things about my office is that the parking lot backs up to a huge field that surrounds the local arena. There is a ton of wildlife in this field. I've seen pheasants, rabbits and hawks, in addition to the standard local birds - most commonly crows, blue jays and mockingbirds.

One morning, I had to go back out to the van to retreive something I'd forgotten. I park in the back of the lot, pretty close to the field. I noticed there were a few birds pecking around in the parking lot, which wasn't really unusual. And then I noticed one bird had an unusually bright coloring. I looked a little more closely, and discovered it was a parakeet!


I know that it is not uncommon for people to lose parakeets out the door, out the window, out the cage, but I don't recall ever having seen one just hanging out "in the wild" with his bird buddies.

I've also started noticing that, if I watch through the gap under the bushes as I'm walking out to my car in the afternoon, I can see the young rabbits playing. I also realized yesterday that, from my chair in my cubicle, I can look out the window and see the rabbits playing in the field. Not well. They're just bunny shapes romping here and there. But it's still cool, and certainly makes me happy.


This guy was at the ranch where MonkeyDo's Horse Camp is. He was maybe two feet from me when I took this, and had been checking out his reflection in the shiny van. It really did take everything I had to not look him in the eye and go "AFLAC!" But I figured that would make it harder to get good pictures of him.