We have opossums (nasty creatures), gray squirrels, deer, raccoons, red tail hawks, Canada geese, doves and a variety of little birds, skinks and lizards, snakes, and we have seen dead beavers after really heavy rains.
And something likes to use the tree stump next to the deck as his own private bathroom. The stump is covered in peanut M & M size scat, I am assuming its the opposum.
Damn, it must take a lot of rain to drown a beaver!
cowgirl, not to be pedantic (ok, I love being pedantic) but if you saw a very large diurnal raptor in an urban setting it was quite likely a red tailed hawk. They are becoming quite common in cities and seem to have lost most of their fear of humans. Peregrine falcons are becoming more common in cities, too, but they really aren’t that big.
In my fairly built up town 25 miles from downtown Boston we have seen over the last few years opposums, skunks, and racoons. We also have rabbits and woodchucks in our yard. There are coyotes in the area, although I haven’t seen one yet, and both red and grey foxes, which I have gotten glimpses of at night. We also heard a fox barking at night. A black bear was in town a few years ago, even though there is no where near enough open space nearby to support a bear. I don’t believe we have deer in town, although they are in the general area.
As for birds, I have been keeping a “yard list” which I won’t bore you with, but the more interesting ones are three species of owls (screech, great horned, and saw whet, all idenitified by voice) and an American Woodcock that was doing his display flight over the wetland across the street.
I have posted this link before, but there is a guy that has motion sensitive cameras set up in three national wildlife refuges in my general area. He has some very interesting pictures: Wildlife Trails Education Project . My favorite ones are the bobcats.
I live in therural south that hasn’t quite been worked over by urban scrawl yet. So, I see lots of different wildlife.
My favorite has to be the pileated woodpecker. Which also happens to bethe largest woodpecker in north america. Goddamn, the call of this bird is amazing. Watching it fly makes me want to melt. I’ve had the splendid experince of tracking one and watching it forage for food. I’ve walked up on one and watched it hammer away at a limb, simply amazing.
There are a few pecan trees in my yard and many birds use these trees as shelter and food. We had lots of pecans this year so many went to waste. The crows love to eat the half buried left overs. Jays, mockingbirds, caybirds and other woodpeckers come to our yard. I enjoy feeding them popcorn and watching their behavior.
I also see various ants, spiders, grasshoppers and one of my favorites, the praying mantis.I kept one in a habitat for a few months. She produced several egg sacks which hatched and seemed to drive her nuts(all the babies crawled all over her). Eventually after I moved her she died. I love nature…
We also see the occasional fox, opposum, deer and squirrels.
Dallas, TX has changed drastically in the 30+ years I’ve lived here - but if you’re on the outskirts, you can still see raccoons, cougars, skunks, coyotes, huge hawks, and possums.
Let’s not forget armadillos! I am a vegetarian because at the age of 12 I was forced to eat armadillo stew.
The wildlife is slowly, but surely, being driven away from this area. It is beyond sad.
:eek: Don’t you know that those pecans are as good as gold! $6 a pound in some of the grocery stores.
I live a couple of blocks from downtown Nashville, and there are more chipmunks than people.
I am embarrassed to say that when I moved here from rural West Tennessee, though, I actually exclaimed, “Hey! Look at those baby squirrels with the stripes!” Who would have thought there’d be more diversity in the sidewalk wildlife than in my country backyard…
We have deer. Many deer. Once or twice, a moose. Bald eagles. Seagulls. Canada geese. Chipmunks. Squirrels. Possums. Woodchucks. Coyotes. Skunks. The occasional bear. Fox. Fifty bazillion kinds of birds (we have a copy of the Reader’s Digest Guide to North American Wildlife and we dogear the pages that picture birds we spot). Snakes. Raccoons. Toads. Peeping frogs. And the more-than-occasional cow on the front lawn, but then she’s an escapee from one of the many dairy farms within a couple miles of the house - she jumps the fence a lot and we have the nicest grass for grazing, I guess.
Well in our back yard I’ve seen cardinals, blue jays, a nesting pair of mallards, a red tail hawk high a top the tree in back, a chupacapra, chipmunks, squirrels, bats and many rabbits. I have also seen bald eagles flying overhead, towards the river. Just a few blocks down the street Spider Woman’s daughters saw some deer along the banks of the Mississippi.
While we’ve got a few other critters, such as the rare cougar and even rarer alligator, and hawks and owls and, of course, coyotes, squirrels, rats, dogs, cats, mice and the odd snake, and deer on the north side, I must say it strikes me that possum and ‘coons appear to be ubiquitous in North American urbana. A couple of very close friends live about eight blocks away from me, in the center of a this very big city, and they’ve trapped six possum in a few months at their house (I know, I know…, opossum - while it looks like I’m writing, I’m really just talkin’, and possum is what we call’em around here).
I see’em from time to time, but they had one move in to the attic. Maybe that marks a place (by scent or some such?). Or maybe I’d be surprised if I put out traps.
There’s a hawk that lives in the little neighborhood across the street from the building where I work. This neighborhood appears as an oasis of treetops amongst the skyscraper outcroppings surrounding it. From my just elevated enough fifth floor vantage I sometimes watch him (her? I don’t know) on lunch CAP - he’s got a definite patrol sequence and a CP at the northeast edge of the development, in a tall tree.
Now, I don’t know diddely about this from an academic standpoint, and I’m sadly getting away from this because I no longer (three months and counting folks) smoke during the day, but I did spend years observing the smaller, less remarkable, part of our avian urban population pass their day. Man, there’s a lot of’em. A knowledgeable sort could probably disabuse me of my notions, but it sure seemed to me that I’d observed things that I didn’t previously know about birds:
• most birds are social, they gather in huge groups in the morning and the evening, and during the day they roam in small groups or, sometimes, obvious pairs;
• man, I’m surprised at how much walking they do - a pair’ll land in the parking lot and walk all over the damn lot checking it out;
• while they seem aware of cats, they’ll act nonchalant until it becomes critical;
• the smaller the bird, the more the airhead it is (might this have something to do with cranial capacity?);
• you know how they always seem to flee from your car at the last moment? Well, not always;
• nature isn’t all the feeding and breeding of the DNA machine - birds fart around; they play. I’ve many a time seen, “OK, you be the F-105 and I’ll be the MIG-21” and watched’em play death-to-the-loser chase only to suddenly pull up and share a french fry;
• unless the really heavy iron is around, crows (sorry brachy, educate me) are the bad boys of the urban parking lots. They’re bigger than most, their call has an aggressive horn honk sound to it, and I lived with one for a couple of years who aggressively attacked his reflection in my mirrored office window (I’m convinced he was quite daft from concussions by the time I left).
Well, I live right next to the Botanical Gardens/Zoo so we have:
Orangutans, chimpanzees, gibbons, a pair of crocodiles, a python, some annoying endangered Australian parakeets, around three leopards, squirrels, some radiated tortoises, a flock of flamingoes and this small kangaroo thing.
I’m getting wildlife envy. So, I shall include animals spotted in town but not necessarily in our dog-patrolled yard.
Red-tailed hawks are the coolest to watch. They seem to be very fond of the light poles above freeways… good vantage point, I guess. There’s a standing joke in the family about the neighborhood turf wars between the Gangsta Crows and the Bad-Ass Squirrels 
Crows are smart… my dad got a slingshot and started shooting at them to get the cawing to stop. Now they recognize him. If Dad shows his face outdoors, all cawing stops immediately. Lets see… we’ve seen the usual lizards, frogs, occasional garter snake. Spotted the odd burro on the outskirts, and a bobcat once. Oh, and bats! 
Wow, aren’t animals great? Armadillos … deer … bears ! Fantastic.
Lagomorph, what I saw wasn’t that big (it was only the legs) - but it was bigger than any of the other birds around - gulls, pigeons, sparrows etc. Where do red-tailed hawks hang out? This one was right in front of the government buildings …
koeeoaddi, I love your racoon story. They’re clever bastards, huh ! There was one in my parents’ neighbourhood that would come out at night, roll up the sod on the lawn, pick the grubs out of the ground, and roll the sod back down, patting it into place, leaving the lawn just as he found it … and another one discovered that if he disconnected the filter system in my boss’s fish pond, the pond would drain and make the fish easier to catch !
One night there were about ten of them hanging out on my balcony … I was worried they were plotting some sort of scheme to take over the city. I stepped slowly back inside my house. “As you were, fellows …”
We have a hawk or two in our neighborhood. They like to fly around doing their hawk squawks.
I was sewing the other night, and looked out the window to see a widdle biddy bunny wabbit creep across my front porch.
The other day was apparently Colorful Bird Day in Duluth, GA. We had a blue bird and a goldfinch(!) in our yard at the same time. I can only think of a few other times I’ve seen goldfinches in Georgia. The bright yellow was very striking.
We have birds of all kinds, snakes, box and painted turtles, alligator snapping turtles, crawfish, deer, moles, groundhogs, rabbits, that we have seen. There are also possums around here, but neither Dave nor I have seen any live ones - and these are all in our yard.
Squirrels galore, rabbits, ‘possums, raccoons, the odd fox, and several months ago I saw a small wildcat that had been hit by a car near an elementary school. For birds I’ve seen, gulls, egrets, too many crows, cardinals, jays at least one woodpecker, two owls, and other birds I haven’t learned to identify. We’ve had snakes on the lawn, particularly during or after a flooding rain (our house is on a rise). There are bats, I happen to like them since they eat insects. Lake Houston is about five minutes from our home and between here and there you are as likely as not to see deer. The boys camp on a sandbar in the river and have hear a gator getting what they imagined was a deer (from the baleful frightened noise it made). Kids regularly go crawdadin’ in the bayou between our house and the area pool. Earlier this week there was a turtle the size of a dinner plate that had fallen off the curb into the road near the park and ride. We have armadillos here, but I rarely see them live. Usually they are road pizza. It’s a shame they are quite fun to watch walk. There are cattle, horses, goats and poutry on some acreage out by where the youth sports complex is located, but they are domesticated so maybe they dount for this thread. A nearby neighbor had a pond added to his yard a few years ago, it’s got quite a fun assortment of frogs now. Another neighbor is trying to get a butterfly garden going. A few years ago we saw a pair of small coyotes trotting on the backside of the airport land (the area that is now being turned into freight recieving). Finally, yeah, we have skunks. Ugh but it’s horrid when they are hit by a car.
I think hearing the gator take the deer wins the prize.
Oh, and for you bird-spotters - I’m sure I saw a buzzard in Muskoka, picking away at some road pizza. I’ve never seen or even heard of buzzards in S. Ontario. Could this be possible?
… off to find websites that provide this sort of information …
We’ve got…uhhh…lizards, pigeons, the odd snake, and lots of mean-ass insects.
When I lived in Nebraska, we had raccoons, deer, birds (cardinals, blue jays, orioles, and other major league baseball teams; finches, robins, etc.), squirrels, rabbits, and others. In town!
In southern AZ, the only thing we got in town that hasn’t been named yet was roadrunners. Those things are snazzy. Unfortunately, they never said “Meep Meep!” loud enough for me to hear.
What the crap?! An insect wing just fell onto my desk from no discernable source (not like the goldfish crackers that intermittently hit me) while eating lunch (me, not the insect wing). Luckily my dish was off to the side a little!
I live near a Cook County Forest Preserve. The area I walk in is bounded by a semi-major street on the east and a river on the west. I see relatively tame deer near the trails on about half of my walks on the average. A few times I’ve been walking along not particularly paying attention and suddenly saw a deer or two right on the trail. Twice I saw a young male (with bumps/small horns on his head) in one particular area. On the first weekend of this April I drove past the preserve and saw about 10 deer in each of two clearings adjoining the street.
On one occasion I left the main trail to follow another path and approached some bushes and low-hanging branches. Suddenly something big jumped. I jumped. I then saw a deer I hadn’t noticed which had now retreated about 10 feet from me. From the sound of the jump, it had been about two armlengths away.
I’ve seen ducks and Canadian geese on the river.
One time sightings: an opossum; a hawk of some kind circling. Today I saw a dead raccoon.
One summer I was working in Itasca near the Ned Brown Forest Preserve. A number of times for lunch I would pick up a sandwich, drive to the preserve and picnic there. One day I saw some kind of fairly large bird with a dark body and white head and neck flying over the lagoons. I’m saying it was a bald eagle until proven otherwise. Very unusual, I know; but there are a handful of eagle sightings in Chicago and nearby suburbs every year, so it’s not impossible.
I don’t know how many pounds went to waste(not waste really, deer and birds love em)but I imagine quite a few. We made a couple pies outa the pecans which were quite good.
I took my daughter and 10 month old son on a hike two days ago. I was telling her about a groundhog hole I saw and we came upon a black snake. I enjoy seeing this animals, they seem so odd. i’ve tried to teach her not to be afraid of snakes. I hate when people kill snakes just becasue they are afraid. I’d like to bash them with that hoe or shovel.
Imagine how many garter snakes bite the dust becasue they look like they may be full of poison.