Here in sunny London we have a veritable infestation of urban foxes. They eat out of the rubbish bins and I have a vixen living in my garden. This annoys my dog, but he’ll just have to get used to it. This is part of the change in urban wildlife that we have been experiencing here. London used to be famous for its sparrows, which have now all left, to be replaced with crows and magpies. I have also seen a heron on the wandle. It was probably lost.
But why stop at foxes? What about other animals? I would like to see urban rabbits hopping around our streets.
There are urban cows in Leytonstone, they hang around the bus station. They are proper east end cows. They probably smoke and drink light and bitter.
What would be your choice of urban animals, and why?
Whitetail deer are so so common in many suburban areas that can be a serious traffic hazard and destroy vegetation. I have never seen them downtown in a city but any decent bedroom community should have plenty.
Raccoons are extremely common in the Boston area and skunks rank up there too. Of course, there are tons of squirrels and I have seen several rabbits in the city proper.
Here in New Hampshire, the only animals I’ve seen are squirrels, chipmonks, crows, hawks, and various smaller birds. I’ve smelled an occasional skunk but never seen one.
Where I used to live in New Jersey, I saw lots of whitetail deer and squirrels, some rabbits, groundhogs, and skunks, as well as crows, hawks, gulls, geese, and small birds. I also once saw a racoon, and once a red fox. There are also possums here, although I only saw them as roadkill.
I saw a lot more animals in urban NJ than in NH, propbably because NH is mostly rural so the wildlife isn’t forced into the populated areas.
Out in the wild wild west of Las Vegas,I’ve seen a coyote,who seemed enamored of my friend’s dog.He or she would always come out of his shelter,wherever it was,to watch the dog as it sniffed the territory looking for a latrine.The dog,on the other hand,didn’t seem to return the interest.
And a flash I heard yesterday.In the new development of Lake LasVegas where C Dion, among others live,they have a rattlesnake problem.
I’ve seen a coyote on 4th avenue, maybe 300 yards from downtown.
Also, javelinas (kind of a wild pig/boar thing) are becoming pretty prevalent in the suburbs. And we recently had some suburban mountain lion sightings.
We’ve got our skyscraper hawk and the infamous Bronx Coyote. And then there are the wild jack rabbits that the Port Authority is having a problem with at area airports.
Moose have wandered into Portland, Maine (pop. 65,000) and Portsmouth, New Hampshire (pop. 35,000) a time or two. I haven’t seen them in the cities personally, but I’ve seen photos in the newspapers. I live way out in the country, and it’s no great shakes to see a moose in the back yard here.
Mostly deer, we have lots and lots of deer. We also have raccoons (neighbor told us that at 4 AM every morning a raccoon family enters under our fence to drink out of our pond - and I’ve seen them come up and go down the storm sewer grates), squirrels, crows, and lots of rabbits.
We are not really urban, about 25-30 miles from Mpls/St. Paul. It is a small, rapidly growing town.
Houston here. I live near the center of a very urban area. We have rats, mice, squirrels, possums, frogs, crows and owls in abundance. Not as abundant, but present, are rabbits. Every few years an alligator crawls out of a bayou; I saw one cross a road once. They used to get large cats (like cougars) from time to time on the north side of town, but I haven’t heard of one in a long time. I believe there are rattlers and cotton mouths in the bayous, but it’s been decades since I last saw one.
Don’t even talk to me about London foxes. There was an article in the Evening Standard a while back about a guy who was hired to capture foxes in central London (Chelsea area and suchlike) and release them into the wild. Except that his idea of “the wild” was South Norwood Lake, which is not only well within the bounds of the urban sprawl that is Greater London, but is also about a block away from my flat. Please let me assure you all that while South London may be wild by some people’s definition, it’s not wild in any sense that implies “rural”.
As a result, we are now infested by the rangy little beasts, who spread garbage around and make horrid squealing noises in the middle of the night (the cubs playing, usually, but various other activities as well). On the bright side, they eat all the snails out of the garden and are sort of cute from a distance. Given the choice, I think I’d rather have raccoons (as we did in Nebraska).
We do (surprise, surprise) have the odd sparrow in the garden along with all the crows and magpies. No cows, though.
In Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, it’s possums and raccoons, with coyotes depending on where exactly you are. Plus the requisite squirrels and pigeons.
In my area we also get rabbits, skunks, and ducks.
In an approximate order of how often I see them, we have squirrels, crows, rabbits, raccoons, possums, skunks, deer, ducks, gulls, egrit, armadillo, snakes, and foxes. **Ringo[/b} earlier this week I saw a wildcat/cougar that had been hit by a car only a couple blocks from home, in the street directly across from the elementary. Once in the last ten years I saw a gator in San Jacinto.