There are grass flats on the other side of the channel that runs in front of our dock, and we get manatees feeding in them every year. Last year we had such a treat as it appeared as though a couple of them were mating. We usually get dolphin with the outgoing tide and they happen to be here too. About 8 or so dolphin swam just outside of where the manatees were mating (or whatever they were doing), and they started jumping and frolicking about. It lasted about an hour and was such a treat to see.
An osprey frequently brings his morning breakfast to the top of our davits. My kids have named him Oscar the Osprey.
But my favorite still is the little lizards. I think they are so cute.

Hi Scarlett...we have manatees in the inlet behind us, so when you come...we'll swim with them. Just kidding. We've seen them a couple of days running as we sit out on the bench...usually just a back will hang at the surface for a while and you know it for what it is and by the way it moves. The other night that big fan shaped tail came out. Sometimes you'll just see the snout as it comes up for air. There were a group mating just out from our free standing restaurant about a week ago, causing quite a stir in the restaurant. I missed that event, but have seen it in the past in an area off the causeway. The manatees aren't every day things tho, (or maybe they are and you just don't see them) and certainly the mating isn't. It's pretty incredible...it can go on for hours! We occasionally get dolphin in the channel as well, grocery shopping for dinner.

The mallards currently have families and are all over the property. They are cute and we are very protective of them and their families, but they can be a nuisance as well. I read a review of our hotel on tripadvisor (I believe) and the reviewer was talking about the nature preserve and even seeing a family of ducks take a dip in the swimming pool. They thought it was cute...but THAT isn't!!

Osprey (Yes with an occasional fish in their talons...isn't that exciting GoTravel)

A Bald Eagle the evening of 9-11 of all things. I wrote about that here shortly after I believe. What an amazing site on that particular day!

Ibises, Snowy Egrets, Great Blue Herons, an occasional morph, and Little Blue Herons, Great Egret, Yellow Crowned Night Herons, and my favorites, the Roseate Spoonbills, which a lot of guests mistake for flamingos because they are large and pink (the birds, although occasionally the guests as well). Woodstorks and pelicans round it out.

Marsh bunnies that are so used to the guests that they rarely hop off when you walk by. Possum and raccoons. A few years ago we had an entire fox family...mom, dad, and 3 pups...all gone now. They too eventually became too tame, used to guests who of course would be a bit frightened to walk out into the casita area and see a fox standing on the sidewalk eating berries off the palm trees--and not running from them. :)

Snook hang out in the shade under the dock, though that's seasonal. And horseshoe crabs, chains of them, moving along the shoreline "doing their thing", same as the manatees. ;)

Snakes...black racers most often, big but harmless and also the occasional diamondback. I have yet to see one alive, though my husband has.
One beautiful rat snake, red and yellow, died on our back stoop--coiled...we were afraid to pass him initially until we realized he hadn't moved in an awful long time.

We get enough of a variety of birds that the Audubon Society comes out occasionally for a species count. I wasn't a birder either...couldn't have told an ibis from a snowy egret when we first got here, but it grows on you! The last GM became an amateur nature photographer in his "spare time", taking a canoe through the mangroves for his shots...some quite beautiful and used in hotel promotional literature...for a fee, (which I guess makes him no longer an amateur?)

And would you believe...this is an airport hotel?

Statia...... the tree frogs! Aren't they wonderful? One of the most outstanding memories of my childhood here in North Carolina was laying down at night, listening to the tree frogs outside my window as I drifted off to sleep. I love them still......

Do cicadas count? LOL!!

Kal - quoting Dorothy Parker! Thanks for making me happy on a Thursday afternoon.

Scarlett, I would love to see egrets in the front yard. :) How beautiful.

I used to see deer in Kentucky quite a bit, in fact, I hate to say this but they are somewhat of a nuisance causing many car accidents on those winding mountain roads. But once I was driving down a backroad and there were 2 females standing by the fence, looked as if they were just GOSSIPING, and one turned and made eye contact with me as I passed. I was mesmerized.

But we see deer here in the middle of the city in Cincinnati. What I like about Cincy are these pockets of woods inside the city that make you think you are driving in the country. Cool. You'll see raccoons, deer, rabbits, etc. Pretty weird to see IN the city.

We used to get diamondback rattlers in our little square of grassy yard in South Dakota. My grandfather's pack of dogs were QUITE adept at the disposal of snakes. We would also see coyotes among the canyons on the horizon of the ranch near the Badlands. Amazing. And eagles on Eagle's Nest Butte behind Wanblee, a small town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where I lived for a while. Wanblee is Lakota for eagle's nest butte. Pretty cool.

duh........... in my first post on this thread, I MEANT Great Blue Heron............

bonnie, A Great Blue Egret <i>really</i> would be a special sighting wouldn't it? lol I like it without the correction. :)

Hi Scarlett. I've seen egrets on the front lawn at my Mother's in Boca. :o

We had a wild turkey at our front door a few years ago on LI. I called animal control only to find out they're indigenous. Who knew. My boy ((&amp;)) went crazy. It was at that point I started calling the house Green Acres and referring to myself as Ava.

For Beatchick's benefit, I must add the natural wonder of a &quot;moonbow&quot; to my list.

Have a pair of mountain bluebirds building a nest on our property as I type.... Since moving to Colorado I've seen birds that I'd never seen before, and to me that's fun. For example, I had never seen a Lewis woodpecker until it visited our feeder, nor a kestrel, phoebe or gray jay until they visited the bird bath. Also had rufus hummingbirds visit, can't believe how incredibly tiny they are, and so colorful -- bronze orange and ruby red.

BTW, got a huge kick out of seeing wild pelicans decide to build their nests and raise their young on top of the enclosed bird sanctuary near St. Pete -- why not? Plenty of food and lots of neighbor pelicans.

Scarlett, depending upon what part of JAX and who's driving, I am anywhere from 2-3 hours north.

If you and the Yankee get a chance, take a drive up US 17 and drive through the ACE Basin. Unreal.

I always keep mixing up the Heron and the Snowy Egret and I think they are closely related.

Last fall husband and I were out on the boat going through the marsh. We rounded a corner and came up on what had to be a 5 foot tall Blue Heron. He spread his wings and his wingspan had to be 12 feet.

OO-those Osprey are cool birds. The certainly don't socialize like the Pelicans!

Scarlett, forgot to add, if you can get close enough to the pelicans, try and stand under one (in flight) and check out their wingspan.

It is almost as thought they have not evolved from the terydactle (sp).

The glass doors going from my pool to the house seem to be a favorite place for tree frogs as big as 6&quot; with their little suction cup toes -- I can watch their little undersides with their slick bellies and tiny heart beats.

If you spend a lot of time in the mangroves in Florida, be sure to look for the elusive mangrove cuckoo. It's not a particularly pretty bird (sort of crowish) but it has a great bird call, a loud sort of bursting rattle. To locate one, birders take a tape-recording of the birds call into the wild, usually gliding quietly through the mangrove habitat in a canoe, play the tape and hope for a reply. The birds will trill hoping that it's their lady love (what a bunch of sneaks those birders are). Once they spy a bird, birders mark it in their bird book. They spend a lifetime sighting one and all.

Scarlett, I'm not sure whether you will see hummingbirds. When I was in high school in Lakeland in the 60s I recall seeing one sucking at a bottlebrush. But that was the last one I saw. Maybe someone else knows what their territory is, possibly they are inland in the lakes and swamps.

Seems like we used to see lots of lightning bugs but no more, thanks to malathione, most likely. Once you kill those mosquitoes then you lose whatever feeds on them. But beats itching to death.

I mostly see the hummingbirds in the fall.

Scarlett, go to your local Home Depot, Lowes, etc and look for a Hummingbird feeder.

A bowl of sugar water will also work. They are indiginous to the area.

It is so hard to beleive how tiny they are!

Did you also know that Venus Flytrap is also indiginous to the Low Country?

Gotravel, are you sure of that? Local stores in Tampa will sell the feeders but I'm not so sure the birds are here.

TG, they should be around JAX because I'm about 2-3 hours north of there and we get them.

I wouldn't know about Tampa but I bet a google search could tell you.

Here in Honolulu, I just saw egrets on the highway divider yesterday. they were following the landscape guys.

We get Golden Plovers for the part of the year that they aren't in Alaska...first sightings are always noted in the news.

Visitors are always excited to see mongoose...they are very active at my daughthers' school. The kids ignore them, but I think they're really cute to watch, especially the mothers with the little babies following behind like duckling!

We have tiny little poisin arrow frogs in our yard..brilliant green with black spots and no bigger than a walnut. Something about them makes me smile when they hop by! They aren't many places on Oahu, so I really feel blessed to have these voracious mosquito eaters.

We also have a huge colony of finches in our trees- the little grey ones with red cheeks and bills. Look like they're wearing business suits! They have the cutest peeping sounds.

Friends are delighted by the variety of skinks, geckos, salamanders, and chameleons in the yard, but I prefer to admire them from a distance!

Egrets &amp; herons &amp; plovers, OH MY!!

I still love the blue egrets!!

This is an amazing thread - I'm loving all these answers with birds &amp; things indigenous to different parts of the county.

Yes, Statia, I see you over there making me ooh &amp; ahhh over your phantasmagorical &quot;moonbows&quot;!! :)

This is a great thread! I live in a suburb outside of Chicago and I love the variety of wildlife we have. Skunks, possums, lots of racoon families, bats, woodchucks, a coyote once, and of course deer. My husband has even seen a red fox. My favorite sighting of the deer was one night a few winters ago it started to snow and so around midnight my husband and I just decided to take a walk - it was so beautiful with the falling snow and the quiet, and cutting through the park by our house we came across a herd of around 9 deer, snow coating their backs. It was like a Christmas card! :)

Then just recently, it was around dusk and my husband called me out of the house because he spotted a horned owl sitting in our tree - you could just see the outline of his head against the night sky. Then when he flew away, the wing span was pretty big. It was really cool!

Over here in the Panhandle, on Pensacola Beach, we have all the usual sea birds - terns, skimmers, pelicans, a couple of types of gulls, sandpipers, green herons, you name it - but my favorites are the great blue herons. Such beautiful creatures. Every year we have one that hangs out on our dock whenever we're out catching bait, hoping for a handout. He's also there when we come back with the boat from a fishing trip to the Gulf. He knows we always save him something. He'll even eat bits of the fish my husband cleans. We call him Mooch. I think you can guess why. One of my neighbors actually buys cigar minnows just to feed him.

Across the road we often see porpoises in the Gulf. Always a delight for company, as is Mooch. Certain times of year we also can see sting rays &quot;surfing&quot; along close to the shoreline.

I was amazed when we moved out to the Island how many &quot;land&quot; birds we have since tree aren't exactly abundant in the residential areas out here. Mocking birds, crows, doves, red-wing blackbirds, purple martins, finches (some really cute pinkish ones that have the sweetest song, and drive my poor indoor cats crazy), and hummingbirds. There are others I'm sure but I don't know my birds all that well. Tons of butterflies, especially monarches during the migration. Certain times of the year the dragon flies are so thick you wonder how they avoid running into one another.

We sometimes get a oppossum all the way up on the third floor rear porch. That's where the grill is and I guess the smell attracts him. Talk about excited cats. Not to mention my excited hubby the first night he stepped out the door to see what the cats were going on about and had a rather large oppossum run at him hissing and baring it's teeth.

One neighbor met a skunk along the dock one evening. Needless to say, the skunk was given control of the dock for as long as he wanted it.

The thing we don't have out here, even down the road in the National Seashore where there are lots of trees, are squirrels. What does nest in the dead trees and on every other suitable place are ospreys. I've also seen a hawk or two. Once saw what I swear was an eagle but haven't ever seen another, so I can't be sure.

All this just adds to my reasons for saying I'll leave this island when they put me in a home.

Scarlett,
I've lived in FL all my life, but I'll never forget watching a Heron, standing right next to our front window, eat a black snake. My boys were very young at the time and were in awe. We had just moved into this house and I'm they thought they'd moved to the coolest place ever--you know how boys love those things.