What local wildlife live near you?

I live in the suburbs of a big city in CA, and I'm genuinely surprised at the wildlife I've seen here.

  • Big ass butterball looking turkeys in packs, standing in the middle of the road (on my commute unfortunately)
  • Peacocks wandering around a neighborhood, including the males with the giant beautiful plumes
  • Tarantulas climbing a nearby mountain to mate en masse
  • Coyotes
  • Usual stuff like trash pandas/opossum/moles
  • An owl that sits outside of my living room and hoots all night. Still haven't seen it yet despite looking for it, so I don't know which species.
  • Legions of geese that make walking in a nearby park a shoe hazard.
I didn't expect any of these encounters when I moved here.
 
We have black bears, white tailed deer, coyotes… basically everything in the woods in Ontario, Canada that live near us or within 1 km. Of course that's on top of standard fare like squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, etc…
 
Back in NY it use to be deer

Now it's water moccasin/cotton mouths, these giant crane birds that sound like pterodactyl, parrots, lizards, coyotes, panthers and cows.

Florida
 
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The Appalachians have all kind of shit running around. Not gators though. Luckily those are further south than me.
 
They are massive.

They used to be very rare in this country. When I was a kid I'd never see a red kite as they were on the brink of extinction in the UK. However, after a successful reintroduction program there are now thousands of breeding pairs. I see at least one a day just from walking around my area.
My brother has one that seems to always be circling his house, dogfighting with the crows. i am so glad they're back, i never saw birds of prey as a kid, they are everywhere now.
 
I'm in Broken Arrow Oklahoma. In the last 5 years or so, I've seen:

  • Lots of squirrels and birds, but the cardinals, blue jays and scissortails are the stand-outs.
  • Lots of wild rabbits. If I go out at night, I will usually see at least one, sometimes 3-4. My dog loves chasing them but never catches them.
  • Foxes are sighted in the neighborhood occasionally. I only saw one in my back yard one time.
  • I've had turtles show up in my yard a few times. I put them in a box and take them down to the pond a few blocks away.
  • Not sure what species, but there are some hawks or falcons that roost on my neighbor's roof regularly. One was eating a baby bunny in my yard recently.
  • I've seen several owls when driving at night.
  • Racoons in the storm drains. I love trash pandas!
  • Supposedly there are coyotes in the area. Thankfully my dog is big enough they wouldn't try to come after him.
  • Not in my neighborhood, but I know people who have encountered copperhead and water moccasin snakes around ponds.
  • Black widow and brown recluse spiders. I have to spray several times a year to keep them out of our house/garage/shed.
 
The coolest one is probably the Puma/Mountain lion
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I've only seen one in the wild once (and it was waaay in the distance)

We also have Guanacos which are basically the OG Llama
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All sorts.. alligators, moccasins, rattlesnakes, white tail deer, bears, possum, wild cats.. you name it, it's out there hanging out, ready to eat your trash or leap across your hood in the middle of the night on a quiet roadway.
 
I live in the outskirts of a small town, so lots.

Quite a few magpies, urracas here, live in our property and come to eat in front of my house every day. I got to see their chicks and also how they learn in fly school. 😙

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Also punk birds called Abubillas, hoopoes, live here and eat just a few meters away.


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Lots of sparrows.

Hedgehogs.

We also get swallows every year and since they fancy our garage, we keep open the doors and covered in plastic the cars, so we get generation after generation of swallows coming every year through migration. We also see their flying school, were they teach their chicks, and it's beautiful. They have our cat Zipi measured haha, they divebomb her when she goes investigating in the garage and she's all mew mew leave me alone 🙀

Snakes, from a respectable size to small, but few are venomous.

Scorpions.

The usual assortment of friendly house and terrain spiders, which I taught my family to never kill them and let them live in peace, and to never destroy their cobwebs unless abandoned, since they're amazing pest control, mainly mosquitoes, but they also eat lots of mites. Since we don't kill them, we get far far less flying obnoxious bastards haha. We have quite a few of those super smart and friendly cute jumping spiders that jump out and hitch a ride or just say hello.

At sundown,, specially in warm months, lots of different bats chomping all the flying critters they can chomp.

Falcons, the odd eagle, wild boars, foxes, wild rabbits, wild cats, and during COVID lockdowns, because the outskirts were so fucking quiet and there was curfew at night so not many cars each day, an Iberian Lynx went into our chicken coop, stole one chicken and decapitated the three remaining haha. It was amazing to see one in the wild just a few meters from me because they were practically extinct here in the Iberian Peninsula, an through protection and nurture, we've slowly gotten them back from the brink of extinction. 🥹❤️😼

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We have spiders, snakes, kangaroos, brumbies (wild horses), magpies, bats, cockatoos, galahs, rainbow lorikeets, foxes, koalas, platypus', wombats, possums and that sketchy lady in the dodge house around the corner.
 
Nothing exciting.

In the burbs, so you get raccoons, bunnies, skunks, and the occasional coyote sneaking around. But you only see these animals roaming around at night. In the day, you'd think the only animals around are the occasional cat and all the birds (which one took a dump on my porch mailbox recently). But most come at at night.

For any of you ever worried about being near a skunk, dont be. All they care about is crawling around sniffing the grass probably looking for something to eat. You can walk right past one and it wont give a shit. It wont even look at you. I've had them roaming my front lawn as I was walking out the door at night to go to my garage. No issues. I even walked by a skunk leading 5-6 little baby skunks all walking in a line. Adult skunk didnt care I was beside them all.
 
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Tippy tip of cornwall, uk and mostly the same as the rest of the UK apart from the seagulls. According to the internets black back gulls have a wing span of up to 1.7 meters but my car is 2.1 meters wide and they are quite often bigger than that. They're huge and I hate them. Fucking sky pikeys.
 
Gators. Lots and lots of gators. And palmetto bugs. Do you know palmetto bugs? Imagine a really fuckin big cockroach that can fly.

In the previous place I was renting that was near a nature preserve I used to see a momma panther and two cubs. They're endangered down here so that was neat to see.
 
Family and I snorkel every summer in Australia, I always go down the back of the beach shore near the drop off and run into Banjo Sharks and Stingrays often. The latter take your bait off the bottom all the time.

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In our backyard we get Rosella and Kookaburras frequently.

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