This is just slightly off the topic, but I hope it's of interest.
I like to watch animals, both on the farm and in the wild, because they give me ideas for stories. For example, friends of ours (we don't live on a farm but are in farm country) have a pig which they've raised as a pet. It's big now--and utterly spoiled--and loves his "mama." It's nice to see a pig with room to roam (too big to live in the house), and it has a definite pigonality that is completely different from most pigs in pens, although all pigs are interesting (to me).
Of course, there are surly geese and spoiled squirrels.
Other friends have a hired hand who has some degree of retardation, and has difficulty with conversation, but is the greatest horse groom anyone around here has ever seen. Bill really seems to be able to talk to the animals and is the human who they want around in foaling season.
We had a cat who seemed markedly more individualistic than most cats, which is saying something. Spent almost all of his days and evenings hunting in the big, thick hedgerows, and almost never wanted to come indoors. Another cat who was beloved of a big German shepherd, like the dog and cat in The Incredible Journey.
But my favorite thing is to watch animals act nonchalant. Animals--especially birds--whom you've fed and who know you, but don't know you well enough to expect to be fed by you. Ducks, swans, dogs, cows, quails, they'll come near and act like they're looking on the ground for food, studying the distant hills, looking at passing trucks, whatever--but they're really hoping you'll give them something.
As a writer, watching birds and mammals helps give my animal characters "personality."