I’ve lived in southern Ontario for fifty years, and the surge of wildlife into urban and suburban areas in the last few decades is remarkable. When I was a kid, I NEVER saw a coyote, and a fox was a very rare, memorable sighting. Hawks were an unusual sight. Raccoons, skunks and groundhogs were certainly common, but predators, not so much.
There have been times lately I’ve seen more foxes in a day than I saw in the first 25 years of my life, and coyotes are, like I said upthread, everywhere; I’ve been within six feet of them. Birds of prey are now so commonplace it’s not even worth commenting on. Most are redtailed hawks - they’re as common as sparrows - but even bald eagles and golden eagles can occasionally be spotted.
I’ve seen very few stray cats or rabbits in my area, which could possibly be related to the presence of the coyotes I occasionally hear howling at night within a short distance from the house.
One night earlier this week a stopped emergency vehicle some distance away left its whoop-whoop siren on for a couple of minutes, leading to a chorus of dogs barking/howling in concert with coyotes.
Here’s a video of a cat fighting off a coyote on the porch of a house in Texas. I’m pretty sure that the cat has been declawed but still manages to escape with its life.
My area has both coyotes and a general excess of barn cats. I expect the coyotes get an occasional cat, but they’re certainly not wiping out the barn cat population, none of whom are shut in at night. – I was patting an ex-barn cat who I’d recently taken in the other day when I heard coyote howling. The cat instantly sat upright and began to growl. I expect they learn from each other that coyote are a danger; and we have a lot of trees – coyote can climb some, I believe, but not as well as cats.
I’ve noticed the same here in suburban Chicago in the last decades. Red-tailed hawks are now tremendously common, but I also see the occasional peregrine falcon, and even bald eagles from time to time – when I first moved here in '89, those were tremendously rare.
I don’t know whether American rats are smaller than European rats, or your owls are bigger. But no European owl, perhaps with the exception of a very hungry eagle-owl, would hunt a rat. Mice and smaller rodents, of course. But rats are too vicious for them.
And a chihuahua hunting rats? Wow. That would be a mighty chihuahua there.
One obvious cause of the surge in raptors is the result of banning DDT. Took awhile for those apex predators to rebound.
Nothing is death to rats like a good terrier. Cats often won’t take on a rat, but terriers do not know fear. It also take them about a second to kill a rat. Grab, shake hard, drop, move on.
Indeed. My guys have always been couch potatoes, but they’d take on a rat or mouse or squirrel in a hot second. Amazing to watch that instinct kick in.
Barn owls, Long-Eared owls and Short-eared owls will all take rats to varying degrees if they’re available in urban areas, though they do usually tend to prefer mice. All three are of course in Europe and Tawny owls will occasionally take rats as well.
That’s indeed a big part. Also the shooting of hawks as pests has declined greatly as well. Used to be the very visible Red-tailed hawk was a common target of farmers who thought (mostly erroneously) that they preyed regularly on chickens. The Migratory Bird Act protections were extended to them in 1972. DDT (banned later in Canada than the U.S.) + not automatically shot on sight has led to a substantial rebound for most larger raptors, especially the ones that can adapt to urban or at least suburban areas.
I mostly see Cooper’s hawks around here (far NW Side) but some red tails. I had nesting pair of Cooper’s a few doors up on my block for a few years in a row, unexpected at the time and fascinating to watch. I did find a loose bird foot in my yard last weekend which was likely the end of a Cooper meal.
