One of the perks of having a backyard in a small town is the opportunity to watch all kinds of wildlife around the house. We try to keep our backyard wildlife friendly with not too frequent lawn-mowing and even preserving some parts of it completely wild, therefore we have lots of wild animals, especially insects on the property: bees, bugs and even fireflies. The bird life is also very diverse in our backyard. There are all kinds of songbirds and occasionally a red-tailed hawk visits us too. This raptor comes to feed on our abundant small mammal fauna, that includes mice, voles, gophers, chipmunks and squirrels. This summer once we saw a red fox and another time an opossum as walking along the woods. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to take photos of them. On the other hand, we see white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) almost every day and they are not too skittish, so I was able to photograph them this summer too.

An eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) also an occasional visitor of our backyard. He eats the grass and other plants he finds here, and also some insects, worms, snails and slugs. Once I was able to take a photo of him after some light rain that made our grass look uniquely pretty. A magical habitat for him.

We love every animal, but we are exceptionally fond of the cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus) that chose our backyard their home. They are so much fun to watch. These rabbits enjoy the diverse plant life around our house almost as much as I enjoy photographing them. They seem not to mind it at all. 🙂

I created these photos with my Canon EOS 5Ds camera and my 300mm f/4 and 500mm f/4 lenses.