Indigioness animals to your area

[TribalRats]

In another thread where a friend lost some beloved pets I learned about the wildlife indigioness to her part of the world who snuck in and harmed her animals. The bandits appear to be endangered....and I had never heard of them.

So I thought this might be a fun way to get to know not only our fellow members a little better but also the animals of the world....

[Spiritus]

I have heard of cougars climbing into kennels and taking dogs.... scarey.

Indiginous animals to our area? Do you mean predators? There is a reason we have livestock protection dogs. That reason is not only to protect our cattle and horses, but to keep predators out of our yard, away from the Belgians. We have cougars here. A neighbour's horse was attacked by one a few years ago. Coyotes are a BIG problem.... then there's fox and weasels and porcupines and badgers. We're too far south for bear. Tank chased a deer out of the pasture just the other night.

We just added Tank to the LPD part of the family last spring. Winter of 2005/06, we had one VERY bold coyote hanging out. Abby, our original LPD, knew she couldn't catch him, so just stayed between him and our yard. He was ever so curious. I got pictures..... What got me is that he didn't run when Abby came out. Yes, he was a beautiful animal, but it is scarey when coyotes get this bold.

[britishbandit]

I live in the city, so I don't see as many wild animals as I used to out further in the county. But we get skunks, raccoons, possums (friggin ugly buggers...haha), squirrels and deer. I had the "pleasure" of having a skunk spray my bedroom window when I was younger, and OMG, took FOREVER for that smell to go away.......YACK.
We have other animals too, I saw a coyote (just the once), and I'm sure I've misses some...LOL.

[calgal]

Wow, those are really great pictures!! Your Coyote's put ours to shame. Ours look a lot smaller. Even our deer are really small. We are in a little community outside of town called Vandenberg Village, and we are totally surrounded by woods which house mountain lions, badgers, skunks, coyote, deer, raccoon, opossum, and numerous other wild life, but not often do they venture into the housing area. There are many hiking, walking trails that people go on every day, some with their dogs or horses, and occasionally a mountain lion will be spotted, but they quickly run from people. Never been an attack here.

[TribalRats]

Not just predictors but any animal that you have in your neck of the woods that intrigues you.

[britishbandit]

Ohh, we have a lot of bats too, it's really creepy when they "buzz" your head....haha. And I don't see them here often, but out back with the bins at work I see rats all the time, big suckers too! I think they love the factory environment, which is strange cause it's really really loud at my plant, we even have to wear earplugs in there by law.

[Spiritus]

Okay, animals in general.

Skunk, racoon, porcupine, badger, weasel, martin, beaver, lynx, cougar, coyote, a sparse smattering of moose, deer, gophers , hawks, great horned owls, snowy owls, the odd bald eagle, various breeds of ducks, geese, cranes, crows, ravens, magpies and sand pipers (just to name a few birds).

There's much more, but these are off the top of my head

[britishbandit]

We have some pretty cool hawks here too! And eagles athough not as frequent. I always marvel at them when I see them. I'll have to get down to the lake where they have the eagle posts set up and maybe get some pics if they're around!

[SmilingDogs]

Wow, phenonimal Pics, Spiritus! He is beautiful...shame they're such scoundrels sometimes :>(

Many suburbs, as well as here in Pa. -- houses are being built where all these critters used to live and I just read about a Cyote stealing a lady's toy doggie out of her yard a few days ago. They're getting rampant in Chicago's west suburbs as well. Have also read about Bald Eagles prone to stealing little dogs from the ground up in Maine.

TribalRats, I don't know if we have any critters unique to our parts besides maybe Dolphin. There are almost 40 different species (including Orcas) and it's a different species wherever you go around the world :>)
We have Atlantic Bottlenosed; Japan has Spotted ones, CalGal'll see a totally different one on her coast :>)

Hey, they did an article in our paper about Vultures and how nice they are (I've never seen one :>(.
People may have a bad perception of them, but they only eat carcasses, clean up the "yucky" stuff, and generally won't bother a live creature. We have big Hawks up in our trees and they swoop down & grab rabbits and other small critters running around. The Vulture article was certainly an education, as this was the image I've always had of them.. Does everybody have Vultures?

[rmci]

Wild Boars, Hawks, Barn Owls, Oppossums, field mice, bats, ground squirrels, and I think I saw a fox or small coyote once.

A small possum somehow found his way into the trunk of my hubby's car a couple of summers ago. He opened the trunk to take the battery out and was greeted by lots of snarling. It was extremely hot out so we couldn't leave the ugly thing in there to die. I came up with the idea to make a loop/snare using some drip irrigation & PVC piping that we had just torn out of the yard. Boy, was the possum upset that we were disturbing his sleep!

[TribalRats]

Originally Posted by SmilingDogs

TribalRats, I don't know if we have any critters unique to our parts besides maybe Dolphin. There are almost 40 different species (including Orcas) and it's a different species wherever you go around the world :>)
We have Atlantic Bottlenosed; Japan has Spotted ones, CalGal'll see a totally different one on her coast :>)

I think this is a GREAT example of what I started this thread about.How interesting to have the different types in different regions.
We sometimes tend to be short sighted and think that everyone has virtually the same scernary that you (not you but me, we all of us) do and that is so far from the truth. Linnie's post really made me see that when I had no idea about the critters she was referring to.

[Shadowkins]

We have pretty much the same predators as Spiritus does. We have a small valley not to far from our place and there is a cougar that likes to hang out down there. So I don't walk Shadow anywhere down there.
Coyotes are very common too and they are not afraid of humans , like one would expect them to be.
Those are fantastic photos, Spiritus! I'm always amazed at how brassy they can be close to a farm with guard dogs!

[Cassiepeia]

Wow, we don't have any thing like that. That Coyote was beautiful.

We have mostly birds here. Galahs, Lorikeets, Rosellas, Magpies, Native and Indian Mynahs, crested pigeons, some sort of native dove, Kookaburras and the occasional black cockatoo (which I can hear screeching as I type this ...I love them).
Mammals...we have possums (ours look NOTHING like American ones...ours are cutie pies ), probably kangaroos somewhere around although I've never seen them and you don't even see 'roo roadkill in my town. Never see Koalas either but we probably have one or two.

That's about it. I'm sure there are more, I just never see them. We might have bandicoots. Problem with our wildlife is they're small and mostly very shy little mammals who you can forget even live around you because you never see them.

Cass.

[TribalRats]

Kookaburras that is exactly what I'm talking about! I certainly do not have Kookaburras here in good ole California!

[Cassiepeia]

I tell ya what...I'll catch the ones that sit outside my bedroom and laugh at full volume at 5am and ship them over to you.

Cass.