Mary Ellen spotted a pair of black-crowned night herons keeping an eye out for coppers, or maybe just a big fish, at Millennium Park yesterday.

Ben Walsh shows us the grim scene at a Fort Hill playground this morning.

Cambridge Day reports how Cambridge firefighters, DPW workers and Animal Control teamed up - with the help of an olive-oil donation by a nearby resident - to free a raccoon that somehow got stuck in a sewer grate on Harvey Street in North Cambridge today.

WBZ reports on the terrifying tom on Cummings Road in Brighton.

Hugmajesty spotted our rare fly-in brown booby hanging out near Carson Beach with one of the local cormorants, in sharp contrast to yesterday's attempt by some of the meaner gulls to chase it off. Also note its feet are yellowish - you're thinking of blue-footed boobies, which are a different species altogether, one found in the eastern Pacific.

Ryan spotted two huge deer in the Arnold Arboretum yesterday, one less camera shy than the other.

Mary Ellen reports admission was one buck at Millennium Park this morning: Read more.

Mary Ellen spotted something a little different the other day on one of her walks around Millennium Park in West Roxbury: A slime mold. Read more.

GBH reports on efforts to help the peregrine chicks born atop Boston skyscrapers - like at the Christian Science Center. By the GBH reporter who has already made his name for stories like this: Craig LeMoult.

Bobby Boyd went for a walk along the Neponset River Greenway in Mattapan and Milton the other day. Among the things he saw was a snake resting in a tight space on the Milton end of the Harvest River Bridge, a goose of the non-Canada variety near that and a pair of deer on an islet in the river between Central Avenue and Capen Street. Read more.

Bonnie Rovics was at the Franklin Park Zoo the other day when she noticed one of our local turkeys had gotten into the pen where the ostriches live - and that when an ostrich came after it, it mounted a counter-attack.