Crittery Scenes from the Neighborhood

Having to get everywhere on foot most of the time has its upsides. You really get to know the neighborhood and its many resident critters very well. Here are a few I had the pleasure to say hello to in the past week:

I'm not familiar with the friendly Labrador pup who was hanging off the top of his owners' fence, so it was a bit startling when he kept waving his paws and barking his greetings from across the street during an evening hike. The sleepy cat in the window lives a couple of blocks away and never does anything more than blinking her sonambulic eyes at me as if to say, 'Here's lookin' at you, crab!'

Chula Vista is really quite a birdy place. A big change for me is the near absence of poopy pigeons. We have many different sorts of smart-alecky sparrows, though, and some more exotic species. These ones I've managed to capture on film are: 1. barn swallow (he is one of the clan who has built a nest right under my eave), 2. western scrub jay (close up shots are his worst nightmare, I'm afraid. The curious fellow actually looks a lot more handsome from a bit further away), 3. vermilion flycatcher (likes to bounce around the golf course like a flying red ping pong ball), 4. western bluebird (there are a bunch of them around along with some eastern bluebird counterparts. Those have white/gray belly instead of all blue), 5. red-tailed hawk (this one likes to perch on my neighbor's backyard fence overlooking Telegraph Canyon Rd), 6. acorn woodpecker (a whole family of them lives in this cottonwood tree on a golf course not far from my pad. I think the males are the red-headed).

Most of these are quite wild, though some, like this friendly little dove, aren't averse to creatures' comfort... apparently.