Wildlife in your area?

[blinc]

Just wondering what are some of the common wildlife creatures in your area? Some you see only rarely? We have wild turkeys (only saw them a couple times), BEAR, (yikes) deer, red foxes and lots of opossums. We saw a few bears right after we moved to this area... one BIG 'UN and a few smaller ones. Thankfully, they've never strayed over into the yard or anything. They keep across the road in a pine forest over there. Thank goodness, thank goodness, thank goodness!! {toothy}

[jamesglewisf]

We have cottontail rabbits, possums, mice, rats, skunks, roadrunners, squirrels, birds, and foxes.

[kezzer]

Hmm, let's see. I've seen deer, squirrels, chipmunks, skunks, opposums, mice, moles, foxes, coyote, bobcats, muskrats,beavers,otters,turkeys,woodchucks, geese, swans. I'm sure there's more but my brain isn't functional right now!!

[Anat]

Wow... I thought you all lived in urban surroundings. Bears??? deer??? foxes????? Sounds like a lovely zoo!:)

I love'd love to see some wild animals like these. Where do you think would be the best place in the States for that (When we get to visit there - we'd like to, but somehow end up travelling to the UK every year...:))

BTW, I thought possums were Australian animals. Sounds like you have those scattered all over the place.

[blinc]

Gosh, I don't know the best place Anat. It seems like Kezzer's area has the best assortment. Coyote and bobcats too... wow! I know in Michigan there were lots of bears too. Just so much growth has occured, think you'd have to hit the countryside big time to find anything. I love it out here in the boonies, just because I love wildlife so much... that and the peace and quiet! Yum! :)

[fuzzy]

In my area we have deer, bobcats, skunk, opposum, ground squirrels as well as plain old squirrels, wild turkey, coyote, foxes, mice, rats, moles, groundhogs, ferrets, a whole slew of snakes of different varieties, lizzards, eagles, raccoon, mink, muskrats, as well as the occasional snapping turtle. There are alot more but my brain isn't at top notch right now.

[kezzer]

Hey thanks for helping my brain to think abit! We too have snakes, salamanders, frogs, turtles, including snappers, newts and raccoons. That's all I can think of for the time being, but I'm sure my brain will get triggered again!

[In_His_Shadow]

Down here we have alligators that get in our drainage ditches from time to time. Snakes: copper heads, rattlers. We have tons of armadillos, possums(we trap about 2 a month under our house wow they stink). We of course have turtles of all kinds crossing roads continually, squirrels, hummingbirds(love those),then of course at the beach is the alliagors, dolphins, jelly fish, sting rays, sharks, sea gulls etc... We live about 20 minutes from the beach so we go all the time. Up at the lakes that we camp at the last time we were there was gator season and they pulled in a 13 foot female. We also have the occasional bob cats up there. Oh yeah owls.......

CJ

[Anat]

sharks! alligators at the beach and the lakes!

Do you actually get in the water CJ?

I just thought I never told you what wildlife we have.

Well, Tel Aviv is a city so the wildest thing around here would be the feral cats :)

In Israel as whole you could find - leopards (a few around the dead sea), wolves (in the Golan Heights), deer and gazelles, jackles (sp?), hayeenas (sp?), wild cats, boars, and a variety of frogs, turtles, hedgehogs, mice, snakes etc. Almost forgot the marine life - Eilat has an incredible coral reef with amazing fish, dolphins, sharks and whales (small ones). Oh and there are the birds! Being on the route between Europe and Africa we get to see the migrating birds passing here twice a year. The flocks of storks are really beautiful to watch!

As I said, we don't see any of these on a daily basis... But it being such a small country, you don't have to drive more than 2 hours to any nature reserve (except Eilat -that's a 4 hours drive).

[Karenluvs6]

we have lots of deer...especially in the park where Beezwax and I take our walks. We see tons of them there.
We also have racoons....they come and tear up our trash at night...I believe they come from the railroad tracks up the road.
Rabbits...squirrels I hate these little rodents! They live in the tree outside my bedroom window. They tear up the garbage, eat my plants, eat my pumpkins..etc..

[In_His_Shadow]

Anat,

Our beach is not clear water it is rather mulky looking. We are to the west of the Mississippi River and she spills out all her mud on us. There is a picture from a spaceship that was taken that you can actually see the Ole Miss. River flowing to our beach. If you go about 5 hours south it becomes blue water again, or if you go out about 15 miles it is beautiful. So with not having clear water you don't really see whats in there with you. I do go in the water but only if the water is rough (no jellyfish or sting rays then) or if I have seen dolphins( no sharks then). You do however never get away from the fish and crab nipping at your toes. :)

CJ

[41mama]

We live in a city of about 50,000 in the Pacific Northwest. I occasionally see a bald eagle fly over our neighborhood. Deer come and eat my neighbor's yard periodically. We can't leave our cats out at night because of the coyotes. We don't have any wildlife dangerous to adults although cougars are seen here and there throughout the state.

[jamesglewisf]

I've seen bald eagles about 70 miles east of Dallas. The first time it was a real shocker. They sure are majestic looking when they fly.

[blinc]

Oh gosh, I haven't seen a bald eagle since I was a liittle girl in Michigan. They really are a beautiful sight. We have snakes here too, copperheads, water mocassins and they say rattlesnakes... although I've yet to see a rattler! We also have black widow spiders, lots if 'em. What kind of poisonous creatures do you guys have?

[kezzer]

We have copperheads and timber rattlers. We supposedly have black widows, but I have yet to see one. Actually I 'd rather not see one anyhow. But that's it as far as we know of.

[kezzer]

*bump*
I saw a little muskrat tonight on the way home, he was in the road, I had to slow down so I didn't hit him.

[Nise]

BUmp*
We have deer, red fox, coyote, opossum, groundhogs, all kinds of snakes, skunks galore, snapping turtles, owls, eagles, buzzards, supposedly panthers, bobcats, turkey, squirrels, moles...I sure there are many more but can't think right now. PR and PR's Mom help me out here.

[raybeck]

Ditto, Nise, except for the panthers (thank heaven). We also have many beautiful birds. Cardinals everywhere and yesterday I took pictures of green hummingbirds eating at the feeder, hope the pics turn out good. We have raccoons, too. They are so cute, but can be destructive. We love watching the deer, but may not love them so much when I am putting in my yard at the new house next Spring (surely it will be completed by next Spring). We have armadillos (sp?), too. Man are they weird looking. We have 4 ponds and 2 of them are stocked with catfish and bass. I caught a 16" bass the other day, that was so fun. Of course, I let it go (or my husband did, I'm not gonna touch it...ha). So far, we have only seen good snakes (if there is such a thing) the kind that keep rattlesnakes a way, but they are still scary looking to me. The ranch across the road has antelope and rams, the ranch to the east of us raise buffalo, we have black Angus and registered long horns...sounds like we live in a zoo, huh?

[raybeck]

Oh yeah, tons of rabbits!

[jamesglewisf]

We've got mice, rabbits, squirrels, armadillos, possums, and skunks that I've seen in the past year.

[raybeck]

Our red heeler has had numerous encounters with skunks! You would think she would learn to leave them alone, but she gets a bath every time...she really doesn't like that. We had more skunks the beginning of this Spring than I have ever seen, lately they seem to have disappeared (answered prayer)!

[raybeck]

Oh, yeah, funny you should mention mice! I moved a log the other day to toss it into a brush fire pile and a little bitty mouse ran out....I screamed and went back to the house. My husband thought I had seen a rattle snake. Hard to believe I can get out there with those longhorns and their giant horns and not be frightened, but a mouse....eeeek!

[raybeck]

Thought of some more after riding around on the land today. Turkey's, turtles and so many kinds of birds, I need to learn more about birds so I can identify them. As our house is being built I am doing a memories scrapbook. I want to include pictures of our cows, and all the wildlife, too. That way when someone else is looking at it, maybe it won't be so boring as looking at a pile of lumber going up! ha Kind of like our cows, my husband and I love to ride our gator out and check on them and be among them, but our kids only like the cow part for about 10 minutes, I told him isn't it funny how other people don't love our cows near as much as we do. We both had a good laugh about it. I think looking at a book of pictures of someone building a house will be about the same! lol

[raybeck]

Everytime I am out on our land I see something else I didn't think of before, quail and dove (how could I have forgotten them)? Took a couple of pictures of some deer today, too. Ya'll have really gotten me to looking, never really thought about all the critters we encounter almost every day!

[theyeti]

Speaking of the mice, this was in my birdfeeder a few days ago - keep in mind this is a good 4 or 5 feet off the ground!

[Grimey]

That's a definite downside to feeding the animals. You attract others that you might not want.

[theyeti]

Oh no, I don't mind at all. I enjoy seeing whatever weird things come to my yard once in a while :) Some people up here try to do everything possible to keep squirrels away, for example, but we gave up on that a long time ago - it's actually really funny watching them try to cling onto the hanging feeders upside down and every which way. {dizzy}

[Alec]

Can we call you MouseBoy from now on?

[theyeti]

It's better than MouseGirl I guess {rolleyes}

[theyeti]

Today there was a hairy woodpecker and a downy woodpecker in our feeder at the same time. Actually at one point there were two hairies but we didn't get a picture of that. Btw, those loaves sticking up there were supposed to be banana bread but my mother forgot to put baking powder in it... {rolleyes} and in the background you can see one of those little circles of real grass scattered throughout the lawn I was talking about in another thread :)

[kezzer]

Wow! They are beautiful!

[Berta]

Nice pics theyeti, but I can't look at them it makes me feel like I'm sitting in my dentists chair.

[raybeck]

Wow, theyeti, cool pictures! I took some of hummingbirds at the ranch feeding and they turned out awesome. I didn't use my digital camera and my scanner has never worked right so can't share them. I am trying to get pictures of all the wildlife on the ranch to put in a scrapbook with all the house building pictures...now whether they ever make it in a scrapbook is the question here!!! lol

[theyeti]

We saw seven turkeys strutting around the block this morning! Cool! We've lived here like 13 years and never seen turkeys in town before - just a block away from main street! And seven of 'em! They were huge!

[theyeti]

Here's a preliminary picture. After I realized the digital camera wasn't too hot I took a bunch with the good real zoom camera... when I get those developed they'll be a lot better....

[DeltaDawn]

Let's see, I have seen mom and baby manatees, dolphins swimming through on many occassions, had a ten foot alligator sunning himself under our dock, and just over the weekend saw a sea otter and a bald eagle, all from my backyard. In the front, we had a peacock taking a walk thru the neighborhood one time.

I've got pics of the manatees, dolphins, and the alligator. Unfortunately, the otter and eagle left before I could grab the camera.{palmtree}

[India-Ink21]

Around my house I've seen rabbits, opossums, squirrels, turtles, ducks, blue herons, armadillos (dead), raccoons (dead), snakes. Once there was a small dead fish outside my door (hopefully dropped by a seagull)

[Noseypoo]

Not too much wildlife around here ... just the regular ... possums, squirrels, deer, foxes, water-mocassins (sp?), gartersnakes, a couple of herons, blacksnakes, turtles, crawdads, hummingbirds and loads of other birds. That's about it. :)

[KalenElendil]

We had a large family of wild pigs runnin around in our yard. It was slightly crazy because I have seven siblings and keeping them from being skewerd was quite very difficult. They kept on wanting to pet the pig.

[jamesglewisf]

We've got a pretty little cardinal that has been hanging out in our back yard. They aren't rare or anything, but I have seen one in a while. Maybe I just wasn't looking.

[theyeti]

We just one saw in our tree too a few days ago too. We almost never see them in the yard, even though they're pretty common in the area.

Last weekend all the warblers came up. Magnolia, Tennessee, Orange-Crowned, a Northern Parula, Yellow-Rumped, and a few others. And we've got the oranges out for the orioles and the grosbeaks. But no hummingbirds yet.

[theyeti]

Okay, finally scanned in some turkey pictures! Ooh.

[theyeti]

And....

[theyeti]

And flying - really good altitude for a turkey. It was just kind of a blob at first but blown up you can definitely see it's turkey-shaped.

[theyeti]

And finally this squirrel had the right idea yesterday when it was 90 degrees and humid out...

[Grimey]

That squirrel one is funny.

[CuriousG]

One of these days I'll have to get some pictures of the alligator in my back yard. He's fairly small and stays in the lake for now, but if he gets too big and starts coming into people's yards, they'll probably get rid of him. He was stalking a duck on Tuesday, but the duck wised up before it was too late.

[theyeti]

Hehe - now that would be fun to watch! I don't know if it would be more fun if the duck didn't wise up, hmmm.. ;)

[CuriousG]

That's kind of what my sadistic mind was waiting for, but alas, survival of the fittest, eh?