Yesterday afternoon, just before the deluge that gave us That Rainbow, the Long Ditch that connects two loops of the Charles at the Dedham/Needham line (dug by the busy-beaver colonial settlers who also gave us the Mother Brook), had overflowed its banks and was flooding the nearby marshes of Cutler Park. As it was designed to do. Read more.

Mary Ellen spotted this eagle, maybe 3 to 3 1/2 years old, across the Charles from Millennium Park today. Bald eagles go fully "bald" when they're about 4 1/2 years, assuming they don't get poisoned by rodenticide first.

A little hard to see, but there's a snake near the center of the photo, which Greg Hunt took today at Powell Island, a part of the marshy area along the Charles in Needham, near the Newton line, just across from Millennium Park in West Roxbury. And he reports it didn't like having its photo taken: Read more.

Mary Ellen spotted this deer in Cutler Park along the Charles at the Needham/Dedham line this morning.

Yesterday afternoon, an egret waded along the shallows on the Cutler Park side of the Charles in Dedham for awhile, before a duck got it riled and it began flapping its wings and tried to make the duck go away and then it walked onto a sandbar in the low river before flying the final 30 feet or so to the Millennium Park side of the river in West Roxbury.

Earlier:
Egrets, she's seen a few.

Seems there's this guy who's taken to throwing himself off the top of Millennium Park in West Roxbury, but it's OK because he has both a lightweight engine and a parachute and he flies around the Charles and Millennium Park and Cutler Park, no doubt having the grandest time. Mary Ellen captured him in flight the other day.