All posts in UrbanWildlife

Racoons Having Hotter Saturday Night Than I Am

December 17, 2017

I have a huge backlog of things I want to post (sorry about the silence), but I thought I couldn’t do better than this little bit of urban wildlife from the Washington, D.C. blog, Popville: “Two very horny raccoons on our front porch who spent the better part of two hours making out and then forming a mini fight club with a third raccoon.”

There’s some debate in the article comments about whether, in fact, these are horny raccoons or just a playful family unit of raccoons, and whether they’re cute or terrifying, but whatever they are, they’re entertaining, at least.

Comments: 0 Posted by: BlueMotMot Categories: Article, UrbanWildlife 0

Life on the Edge

November 7, 2017

Recent research led by Newcastle University and Imperial College London shows that half the world’s forest habitat is now within 500m of a ‘forest edge’ due to the expansion of road networks, logging, agriculture and other human activity. Combining two of my favorite fields of study — spatial analysis and conservation — the researchers looked more deeply at those forest edges and discovered that 85% of species’ abundances are affected, either positively or negatively, by forest edges.

Invasion of the Mushrooms

October 15, 2017

It’s been a historic year for catastrophic weather events in many regions of the U.S., several of which are still unfolding. Here in Washington D.C., we’ve been lucky enough to avoid anything like those cataclysmic events, but we do have one odd bit of weather news to report: a really rainy, mushroomy summer and early fall. Read more…

Comments: 4 Posted by: BlueMotMot Categories: UrbanWildlife 0

St. Tiggywinkles

October 3, 2017

The world’s leading wildlife hospital is apparently called St. Tiggywinkles, and I can’t even.

OK, I would probably post the name of the place even if it had nothing to do with this site, but happily, it relates. I love these instructions on what to do if you find a baby bird on the ground, and I also love the woman who brought in a hedgehog because she noticed it was outside in the daytime, when hedgehogs are usually sleeping.

If the “people sphere” and the “wildlife sphere” end up covering each other like two condensation rings from the same glass set down in nearly the same place on an old wooden table, as I think is likely, then more education and engagement like this is needed. People and wild animals will continue to run into each other, crossing paths, lapping at each others’ habitats, causing havoc, and destruction, and even some cuteness along the way.

Comments: 0 Posted by: BlueMotMot Categories: Hedgehog, UrbanWildlife, Website, wildlife 1

Coyote Wild

September 24, 2017

Earlier this month, I found myself obsessed with this article on coyotes living in DC. I recently acquired a “camtraptions” camera trap photography gizmo to be able to (hopefully) capture animals remotely, as if I were a real scientist or National Geographic photographer (I am neither). I had planned to use the camtraption on something like raccoons or bats — maybe even a beaver if I got really lucky — but I never imagined I could potentially capture megafauna like coyotes in DC.