We’ve had threads before on your most commonly spotted neighbourhood birds… how about mammals?
I’ll go first. Here in the SF Bay area, I mostly see:
squirrels – mostly introduced eastern gray and fox in the suburbs, but in parks, sometimes western gray and almost always, CA ground.
gophers – Botta’s pocket gopher is our commonest, I think, they’re quite easy to spot if you just hover quietly near their holes for a while.
fox – native gray and introduced red, the gray is maybe a bit more common nearby, I’ve seen them in city parks
raccoon – obviously! well-adapted to suburban life, I once had FIVE in the ash tree behind our house.
skunk – similar niche, smelled more often than seen, but they do show up in the hills
rabbits – cottontails and black-tailed jackrabbits; my old work near 101 and 880 had a resident jacky who hung out in the parking lot. I also accidentally cornered one on a berm out in middle of the Bay recently!
bats – sometimes spot them drinking from our local urban creek at dusk, but I’ve never managed to ID them. Best guess, little brown or hoary.
deer – the hills are infested, and in some of the more popular parks, they’re completely unafraid of people. Mule deer, or, technically, the Columbian black-tailed subspecies of mule deer.
How about where you live? If I came to visit specifically to see mammals, where would you take me and what species would we be likely to see?
Grey squirrels (not native, but have now completely displaced the native reds in this area)
European Rabbit
Hedgehog
Wood Mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus) and several other species of mouse
Common Shrew (Sorex araneus)
Red Fox
Brown Rat
Badger
Water Vole
Red, Roe and Fallow Deer
Otter
So basically, the cast of every Beatrix Potter book, but without the waistcoats.
POSSUMS (not your ugly US opossums) we’ve got ringtail and brushtail possums, the cutest little critters ever.
BATS, mostly the smaller insectivore bats but they make a great show at dusk.
Foxes and rabbits (both vermin here in Australia).
But just down the road a bit, we have kangaroos, wallabies and koalas…in the wild.
We’ve also got monotremes here within a half hour of where I live (echidna and playtypus) but only the echidnas are seen on a regular basis. The platypussies are a bit more elusive, and I’ve never seen one outside a zoo.
We also have wombats, native rats, antechinuses, and other weird and wonderful mammalia all around this country. But you have to be very clever to see any of them most of the time.
OP should add Virginia Opossum, and I’ve never seen that gopher in the East Bay or nearby. Also muskrats are uncommon but present in wet areas.
It’s pretty much the same here, add cottontail rabbit, blacktailed jackrabbit (a type of hare; both lagomorphs in the Bay), Pronghorn antelope, some sort of kangaroo rat. Other species like black bear and bighorn sheep, but I haven’t seen any.
In urban and suburban areas, introduced Grey Squirrels are common, and in southern areas, Chacma baboons.
In nearby Table Mountain and various small nature reserves, mongooses, (Cape Grey and Water) are fairly frequently seen, as are Grysbok. (a species of small antelope). Rock hyrax are less numerous then they used to be.
Some larger antelope have been reintroduced into the Cape Point area, such as Red Hartebeest and Eland. Two subspecies with an extremely limited range have also been introduced, namely Bontebok (antelope) and Cape Mountain Zebra. All can be easily seen on a casual drive.
Caracal, genets, foxes, otters, porcupine and several other species of small antelope are all present but rarely seen.
Evidence of the presence of molerats and golden moles are all over the place.
Western Pennsylvania rural area.
Walking in the woods I see:
[ul]
[li]Virginia Opossum[/li][li]raccoons[/li][li]rabbits (eastern cottontail)[/li][li]whitetail deer[/li][li]foxes[/li][li]skunks[/li][li]squirrels (grey, fox, red, black)[/li][li]chipmunks[/li][li]coyotes (rare)[/li][li]porcupine (rare, we are right at their southern boundary)[/li][li]muskrats[/li][li]mink (rare)[/li][/ul]
But above all - RACCOONS! Toronto is the Raccoon world capital. They are everywhere here, roaming the streets, mugging grandmas, voting in elections, etc.
The occasional fox.
I saw an opossum, once.
Edit: there are mice too, but you don’t see them frequently - only their terribly abused corpses when the cat is through with them.
White-tailed deer
Red fox
Possibly coyote
Groundhog
Virginia opossum
Raccoon
Black bear
Gray squirrel
Red squirrel (is this the same thing as the fox squirrel?)
Small brown bat
Large brown bat
Flying squirrel
Deer mouse
House mouse
Norway rat
Black rat
probably numerous species of voles, moles, and shrews
Cottontail rabbit
Muskrat
Beaver
Bobcat
Otter
A Chesapeake Bay website says we have nutria, but I’ve never seen them.
I don’t know if we have martens or weasels, but it seems plausible.
Definitely feral cats. Stray dogs are rounded up pretty constantly here in the northern part of Virginia, so I would be surprised if we have a feral population.
Funny story: my brother’s wife visited Canada for the first time. We were walking down the street one night when she said ‘oh look at that adorable striped cat’ and went as if to pat it - I quickly intervened, and no harm was done!
Apparently, she had never seen a skunk before. (she’s English)
Arlington, VA, relatively urban, and just about a 20 minute walk from Washington DC:
I see rabbits and squirrels every day around my neighborhood. Occasionally I see deer, foxes, and raccoons. The raccoons and deer are usually in small groups, and the foxes are always alone. A few days ago a limping fox, only walking on three legs, relatively fearlessly came near me and a few other pedestrians as I was walking to the subway station, before crossing a parking lot into a small forested area. A few years ago almost the same thing happened, down to the limp. Kind of worrying, because I think such abnormal behavior means the animal is sick.
