Three years ago, we moved from a suburban city to a separate suburban city. Our previous suburb was more on the urban side of the equation; homes close together, retail within walking distance. Our current suburb has more in the way of wooded areas.
We saw plenty of wildlife at our old house: skunks and raccoons and groundhogs and bunnies and many, many deer.
The wildlife that visits our new house is a little more exotic.
First up, frogs. Frogs love our house. Is it because of the pool? Perhaps. The thing I didn’t know about frogs is that they can be SO LOUD. When one of them sets up a performance space near our bedroom window, it is impossible to hear anything else.
This is not my favorite type of wildlife. Even if I know it’s harmless.
We don’t typically see coyotes, especially during the day. This was an exception.
He’s a little hard to see; this is a still from a video Carla took from the car.
Speaking of Carla, she’s excellent at spotting wildlife. The other day, we were driving along, just about to turn into our development, and she said, “That’s not a hawk!”
It was not a hawk!
Any exotic wildlife spottings in your neck of the woods?
You do have a lot of interesting wildlife.
I saw a fox the other day, which is not unheard of around here, but not common either.
Fox! Such a fun sighting!
When we first moved to this house we had a lot of rabbits in the backyard. Then after I noticed more cats wandering in the neighborhood, there were no more rabbits. Nature is cruel sometimes.
We get hawks regularly (which might actually account for the lack of rabbits, come to think of it) and one year–this was delightful because it happened on my birthday–I stepped out onto the front porch and one of the hawks that had been building in a nest in our pine tree decided to swoop down at me, about a foot away from my face, before settling on our roof. I’ve never had a hawk do that before, and it was most unsettling. Then its mate ALSO swooped at me, and I decided it was a good day to stay indoors after all.
Wow! A double hawk swoop! That would be extremely cool and frightening at the same time.
These are such lovely photos!
We moved over 5 years ago and see alot more wildlife now – I love it.
The birdlife by us is awesome (we have a national park nearby) so seeing owls, yellow billed kites, buzzards and eagles are a regular thing. The Bokmakierie is a beautiful bird with amazing calls and they seem to like our garden which makes me very happy. We sometimes get tortoises wandering up our driveway or into our garden.
And snakes – puffadders, cape cobra’s and boomslang are some of the venomous ones we get here so I keep my distance when I see one (thankfully not in our garden)!!
Tortoises!!! That would be super cool!
Yes, the venomous snakes would not be ideal. But I do love that you have so many birds near you!
That’s so cool you can see eagles from your home! I have a friend in Wisconsin who has them nest on her property each year. Our house it just opossums, coyotes, deer, racoons, herons, etc. And yes a ZILLION loud frogs OMG!
Herons are my favorite!
Coyotes are very common around here and they were also weirdly common in our Calgary neighbourhood. Probably because there were a ton of jackrabbits in Calgary, and squirrels. I feel like I’m in wildlife grand central around here – deer, bobcat, a bazillion birds of all different kinds, BEARS. We also have frogs on occasion but I don’t know why – there is no water around here!
Yes, BEARS. That would be so cool and so, so scary.
I love spotting wildlife. So fun.
We have a ton of birds. I love spotting the grey herons. And we have some bird of prey circling often but I still haven’t figured out what it is.
Other than that foxes, lots of raccoons, many wild boars that become an issue in the city as well as martens, have been spotted in our development and around. Also beavers are in the river and apparently otters but I haven’t really seen those yet.
Wild boars would be really frightening! I have heard they can be very aggressive!
We’ve got it all in our backyard; deer, squirrels, rabbits, fox, random cats, you name it – it’s probably been back there at one time or another. What we do have an abundance of around here (that I really don’t care for) are turkey vultures. They are EVERYWHERE and not really pleasing to look at.
I agree that turkey vultures aren’t particularly pleasant. We have those, too, in addition to flocks of wild turkeys!
Wow!!! So cool, especially the bald eagle, how magestic. I have a soft spot for frogs ever since I was a kid and listened to Kermit singing “it’s not easy being green” on repeat.
Awww, that’s a great reason to like frogs!
Ooh I am so jealous of your bald eagle! I’ve seen a few of them flying around, but I’ve never had one sit still long enough for me to take its picture.
I live pretty much in the city, and imagine my surprise/disgust that a toad decided to camp out at my back door this summer and an opossum stopped by once to say hey. Luckily Doggo decided to stick to barking and growling at our visitors instead of trying to hunt them.
A toad and an opossum! Birchie, that sounds like the beginning of a children’s book.
There are SO MANY turkeys in Madison. SO MANY. They just walk around in packs blocking the road– it’s so weird. Also toads! Old Testament amounts of toads.
I feel like toads could quickly go from charming to unpleasant, based on their numbers. One toad, fine. Five toads, no thank you. Ten toads, time to move.
Wow- good eye, Carla! I see some interesting wildlife on my trail runs, and one of the trails I run on is not that far from my house. Like, there are wild pigs living a couple miles from me! They never venture off the trail though. Same with deer- I never see them in the neighborhoods. I’ve seen coyotes on the trail, and people in the neighborhood warn that they’ve seen them nearby, but I’ve never seen them that close to us.
I’m envious of these people who see foxes! I’ve never once seen a wild fox. I wonder if they just don’t live in Florida???
I remember seeing a photo on your blog of a wild pig! Scary!
Oh ! I forgot the sandhill cranes– lots in our neighborhood and they are so cool and dinosaur-y.
Ooooooh I love a sandhill crane.
We mainly have deer and foxes. Possibly a possum once in a while, but not frequently.
That eagle was judging you HARD.
We have coyotes, really really stupid wild turkeys, squirrels, skunks, raccoons and …. I can’t think of anything else. We don’t see deer often, but I did see one the last time I drove Eve back to Hamilton. And YES, frogs are freaking deafening sometimes, all out of proportion to their tiny slimy bodies.
We have an uptick of coyotes. No idea why. It’s wild. I’ve seen them running through our yard, and I’ve seen multiple running together like a little pack. We’ve seen a fox run through our yard off and on. Nothing beats the baby racoons that were swimming in my blow up pool on my deck during covid. I’m thinking the frogs are drawn to your pool. We don’t see very many frogs in our yard, and I’m not sad about it.
The Eagle!! whoa. And those are big frogs! At our house the frogs are smaller but we also have tons of chameleons. And hawks, deer, sometimes rabbits. Once a fox. Once a coyote. I’m glad those 2 are less frequent!
We have lots of wildlife. Some of my favorites are blue herons, sandhill cranes, geese, deer, antelope, and foxes. Less enjoyable are skunks, raccoons, and lately moose. Moose terrify me! They’re getting way too tame and they’re so unpredictable – and huge! I’ve known several people who’ve had very bad run-ins with moose. We occasionally get bears, and they scare me too. We have lots of turkey vultures, which are creepy-looking, but I understand they serve an important purpose in the wildlife world as “cleanup crew.”
I love the bald eagle photos! Good eye, Carla!
I have a coyote story and an opossum story…which to tell you first. Years ago, like in the distant future, the year 2000, I used to work near an open space that had a very steep hill, and I used to walk over there and hike up the hill on my lunch hour. It was very satisfying to find it get easier. When I first started I huffed and puffed and had to take breaks. Eventually I could just walk up with a little heavy breathing. There were cows on the hillside, and one day I was followed by 3 coyotes. People say they are not dangerous, they will avoid you, but to have 3 of them following me made me nervous, let me tell you! I didn’t stop walking that hill, but I did buy a whistle to carry around my neck just in case it might scare them off.
Long before Mulder, we had a sweet dog named Genevieve. She was a Keeshond/Sheltie mix. For some reason that I do not understand now, we would let her go out in front of our townhome to pee before we went to bed. Perhaps because there was grass there and there was not in our back yard? It makes no sense now. Anyway, one night I let her out to do her bedtime business, and she went around the corner of our fence, saw something, and LUNGED for it, growling. Uh oh! I thought. Then I went over and saw a dead animal lying there, and she lost interest. Had her pee and went back inside. I swear that animal was so ugly, it almost had little X over its eyes, like a cartoon. Its tongue was hanging out in a grotesque way. I didn’t know what to do, when it quietly opened its eyes, rolled over, and tiptoed away. It was playing possum! That was the first time I had ever seen one. Very cool. They are great to have around, they eat ticks. I’ve only seen one more, on a walk with Mulder one morning, but he didn’t chase it. What else have we seen around here…deer, turkeys, hawks, turtles (at the park), geese, crows (of course). No eagles, sadly enough.
Ooh, a bald eagle! I hear coyotes in the green belt at night but have rarely seen one. Frogs are SO LOUD. How can such a small creature emit such noises?
I love the bald eagle photos. I miss seeing wildlife around my home. When I lived in a populated area of town I always saw deer, but that’s about it. Now we’ve moved further out in the county but still in neighborhood and we get no wildlife at all. A few birds, maybe a frog or two. But that’s about it.