So fun find!
Merlin Bird ID app thought a northern mockingbird was both itself and a house sparrow! I was staring right at it in Los Angeles. I read on their site that this bird is the most mistaken one.
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Found a Great Horned Owl feather in the yard a few days ago after hearing the owl at night. Apparently it is illegal to keep the feather so just let it be and it eventually got swept up with the wind.
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Stepped outside to water my container plants by the front door, and this lovely nature was literally outside my door. 
ETA: I welcome garters but when they try to look for a place to start a family inside my garden boots - that is being quickly discouraged!
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I would be moving ASAP!
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lol! I used an Amazon envelope to help them move faster. They are pretty quick little things. I think they like to hang out in the planters. It is nice and cool in there. 
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Oh my gosh those are gorgeous.
We had an alameda whipsnake literally whip past us at one stage - lovely thing. Apparently they are rare, so we felt quite honored!
Our neighbors across the road have had a couple of rattlesnakes- we haven’t seen in our yard - I would be less charmed by those, needless to say.
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I’m with @FallGirl. Time to call a realtor. Or my brother who has a rather permanent way of removing such things.
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You haven’t lived until you had to shake a scorpion out of your boot in the morning. Ask me how I know.
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One of my husband’s former coworkers moved to an area where scorpions are common. They quickly established an SOP of checking their shoes for scorpions if the shoes were left outside.
Thankfully, garters are not poisonous, so no major disasters if one did get in my boots, but they can bite and cause infection. And they are so stinky!! My husband would catch one occasionally just to take a pic. The stink… ewwww.
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Barred owls? Their owlets make cute sounds.
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We have a large covered front porch, and my spouse had absentmindedly set a birdbox on the railing where it meets one of the posts. So it wasn’t anchored with anything, but was secure in the crook.
Well, some grackles recently decided to have babies in it. And it’s right by our front door. So every time someone went in or out of the house, the parents freaked out, flying from tree to tree to roof to basketball hoop, etc., shrieking all the while. We were amused (if slighly annoyed), and curtailed our morning porch coffee ritual to give them some peace.
One morning there was a massacre. The box had been knocked onto our cement driveway, and there was a nasty scene that we pressure washed off our porch. We’re nearly positive it’s the neigbor’s cat that roams at night terrorizing all the small creatures. It was especially sad because they were getting close to fledging. We miss our obnoxious helicopter parent grackles 
We live peacefully with our groundhog, Leviathan, who has lived here since before we bought the house 10 years ago. We drew the line with the chipmunks living in our porch eaves and set out traps (which worked). Now we have a delighful townful of critters in a large backyard brushpile, away from the house, which we leave undisturbed.
We nurture our milkweed and have allowed clover to flourish in our lawn for the insects. We don’t treat our lawn with anything (though we spray a perimeter outside along the house for ants). Seeing all the life makes us happy during morning coffee time – just saw some deer last week.
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I’m all for what lives outside is allowed to live outside. We’ve been entertaining lately with doors open. Then saw evidence of a rat 
in my home office. Zapped it with an electronic trap that worked very quickly. Going to be more careful about keeping doors closed, especially after dark.
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Hard to tell from the photos… but we learned that barred owls babies make very distinctive sounds.
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Barn Swallow at a rest stop in Utah two days ago. The mother went crazy as we were sitting on a bench below it.
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Thanks. They were looking straight at me when I went out to water the tomatoes, but I didn’t have my phone with me to take a picture then. I had to get my DH’s attention and have him bring a phone out. By that time, the owls were not looking straight at me. But their faces definitely look like what you posted.
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Lots of amazing photos!
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Probably barred owls. They are very common. When a family was living in the woods behind our house, we had zero issues with mice or gophers. Hope yours stick around!
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