Urban Wildlife Tales

[Hot Pepsi]

I forgot to mention. I had to slow down to avoid a porcupine on the Benner Pike the other week. He/she didn't seem too worried about traffic. I honked my horn at it. It decided half way across the road - which is usually very fast and busy - to go back where it came from. On my return trip - I was headed out with Tonka to walk in the Spring Creek Canyon - I took a different route, because I dreaded having to see it dead on that road. But I've been through there since and saw no signs of a massacre so maybe it made it back off the road alive.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Before noticing weird bloke with camera.

[Toby Gymshorts]

After noticing weird bloke with camera.

[Sits]

Great pics Toby. There’s a bit of attitude in that second one.

[ursus arctos]

Squirrel does De Niro

[Sits]

Squirrel does De Niro

Yes! That’s exactly what it made me think of.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Presumably the screech was "are you lookin' at me?".

[Nocturnal Submission]

The area in my garden where small birds enjoy taking a dust bath is exactly the same patch as where the next-door neighbour's cat likes to take a dump and then politely cover it up afterwards.

The birds seem...unconcerned.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Say hello to Vinnie, neighbourhood celebrity. He is undeniably beautiful, and also more than a bit dim (one of his favourite sleeping spots is the middle of the road past our car park).

He is captured here mid-meow as he realises it's me, and makes his way over for the usual fussing.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I mentioned it on the Mundane thread, I think, and I've no photo or owt, but we were dead excited to see a hedgehog the other night, while housesitting in Romsey.

My first for many, many years.

[S. aureus]

Some exciting squirrel action!

[Hot Pepsi]

We've seen a lot of mother deer with fawns in the woods near where I grew up. They all look very healthy.

[Lang Spoon]

Saw a rat on our path to the beach yesterday, didn't have two fucks left to give, took his sweet time to scurry into the undergrowth.

[Third rate Leszno]

Saw a whopper rat in the shrubbery at Costco last week, thankfully the puppy didn't spot it and make a lunge cos I think the rat was big enough to win any pagger that ensued.

[Cal Alamein]

We have an arroyo about 3/4 mile away w/ a decent stock of rabbits, but this morning a cocky coyote wanted to check out our neighborhood.



Later today a small bull snake was sunning itself right in the middle of the bike path.

[Sits]

When you say small...

[Cal Alamein]

About 3 feet I’d say, they do get a couple of feet bigger.

[caja-dglh]

Toby's Vinnie looks like an older version of the stray that is hanging about my yard (and a few neighbors). It seems more successful at managing the bunny population than the squirrel population, sadly.

[Reality Checkpoint]

Yesterday lunchtime we noticed a hedgehog in the garden which doesn't bode well as they normally don't come out until the evening, it was dragging its back leg and being tailed by a neighbour's cat so we chased off the cat and managed to get the hog into a box. We took it to the vets where we had to leave it as they were in the middle of an operation, and they phoned back a couple of hours later to say that they had given it a bit of gas so that they could safely unroll it and unfortunately not only was the leg badly broken but the bone was sticking out of the skin. We agreed that it was best to euthanise the poor little thing as there was no way they could fix it.

The garden suddenly feels very empty.

Bloody cats.

(apologies to all the cat lovers on here)

[Balderdasha]

Found this little one in the park today. Escorted it back to the grass (without touching it) so it was less likely to get trodden on. I think it's a newt. Can anyone confirm?

[Balderdasha]

[Third rate Leszno]

Not sure if it's a Smooth Newt or a Palmate Newt. Presumably it was pissed?

[Toby Gymshorts]

Here is Vinnie living his best life.

[Artificial Hipster]

Found this little one in the park today. Escorted it back to the grass (without touching it) so it was less likely to get trodden on. I think it's a newt. Can anyone confirm?

Having recently done some extensive research into British amphibians (I looked them up on Google) I can narrow it down for you to either a smooth or a palmate newt. There are only 3 types of newt native to the UK, the other being the great crested which can be seen here having moved in with one of our party at a festival this weekend. There are also a couple of much smaller palmates or smooths on the picture but we couldn't work out which they were.

My boy with blue hair incidentally.

[KingsburySaint]

Second back garden ant swarm of the summer. Things I don't miss about London: Walking into thousands on the way to the shops on those days. Couldn't get a shot of the wasp making its way along the washing line picking some off.