I have seen a raccoon in a tree outside Philadelphia's City Hall, as urban a setting as you can imagine, and a dead opossum on Vine Street while walking to Chinatown for lunch. A peregrine falcon has visited my bcak yard a couple of times, and when I lived in the Germantown section, raccoons could often be seen in the middle of the night walking down the street and climbing the trees. The burgeoning urban wildlife population is another of those stories the media seem unaware of.
Here on the north side of Chicago we've had a coyote in the cemetery behind our condo, possums and raccoons everywhere, and a pair of peregrine falcons who've nested on the fire escapes of the 1920s movie palace across the street each of the past eight summers, raising two or three offspring every summer. It's glorious to watch.
ReplyDeleteI have lived till very recently in a house in a city of 30,000 people. The house had a big back yard, surrounded on two sides by woods and a river. In the past year, in our backyard, we've seen: red fox; a mother deer suckling her fawn; a family of fearless woodchucks; a great blue heron working the river; two families of cardinals; redtail hawks in the trees, occasionally stopping on a vole or mouse in the grass; a mother opossum crossing the deck at night, and having a starting match with me through the window; occasional deer herds of up to a dozen members; a flock of wild turkeys that roost in our trees every night, and gobble at dawn; and a whole lot more.
ReplyDeleteThe coyote is the biggest success story in North America. The attempts to eradicate the species from the Southwest basically pushed the coyote out into the world. Now coyotes live in every one of the contiguous 48 States, including Maine. I have heard them howling at night in Minnesota as well as in New Mexico. There's a pack that lives in Chicago.
The Smithsonian had an article about urban wildlife a few years ago, thereby proving once again how far ahead of the mainstream media their magazine really is.
As I understand it, the coyotes that have spread east across the country are actually a cross between coyotes and gray wolves. They are larger than the usual coyotes. They are also predators and have been known to kill people's pets. I am as fond of wildlife as anyone, but it is useful to remember that it is wildlife.
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