Hello- I am writing an article for a children’s magazine about common wildlife in cities across the globe. For example, in New York City we often see pigeons on our streets, squirrels in our parks, and cockroaches in our apartments. What common wildlife can you find roaming in your city that would be interesting to share with our readers?
Foxes and coyotes are surprisingly common.
Lizards are a great group. There are anoles in many cities and there’s really good research showing how they are evolving and adapting in other ways to city life. Very charismatic with dewlap displays. Various gecko species are also found in cities worldwide.
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/10/1148150056/forest-lizards-genetically-morphed-cities
https://www.anoleannals.org/2019/03/16/living-large-in-the-city-impacts-of-urbanization-on-anoles/ (COI: my own article).
In Berlin and other large cities in Germany it is for example wild boar, foxes, martens, squirrels, hares, hedgehogs, rabbits, the introduced raccons and racoon dogs, falcons, slowworm, common toad, greenfrogs as vertebrates you migth see quite regularly… except for the racoon (it´s more a western/middle Germany thing) I saw them all roaming in cities
Foxes, coyotes and raccoons adapt very well to life in urban area as well
Merlin, Peregrine Falcon, and Kestrel. Chimney Swifts, and Nighthawks. Quite a few birds have adapted to an urban habitat.
Lot of species of bees too.
True as well
I’m from New York so can’t really help much there but I know in many Asian countries they have macaques, and Australian cities have their bin chickens…
In Fort Collins, Colorado, we have tons of Canada geese roaming around the city in the winter.
Here in the US southwest, many of the cities and towns have tons of Great-tailed grackles.
This is an interesting anomaly in various cities in Connecticut:
https://www.ctaudubon.org/2010/11/monk-parakeet-problem/
Those are probably in every city in the world. If you’re in NYC, I’m surprised you didn’t mention rats.
Inside the city itself we have lizards and parrots (Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico), which everyone who visits seems to find exciting. The lizards are often found inside, too, and they sing. We have enormous butterflies that crowd the skies at times and brightly colored bees, which delight and surprise.
We also have bats at night. Visitors seem less thrilled with those but they eat mosquitoes which is very important.
In Salzburg (Austria) there is a small hill in the middle of the city with a population of chamois. Usually they hide in the steep inaccessible cliffs but I’ve seen one in the distance a couple of times when walking up the hill at night after work. Sometimes in the early morning they supposedly even come out into the streets looking for food. Last year one of the younger ones got lost and ended up in the city park and they had to capture him (they closed the park’s ancient iron doors to trap him) then return him to the hill
The local story is that a single male chamois from the distant mountains somehow made his way to the hill in 1948 and started living there - then after a few years people felt bad about him being all alone on the hill and released a female chamois from the zoo there. Today’s population are all descendants from those two.
Mekelle, Ethiopia has spotted hyenas that clean up the streets at night.
Rats, Cockroaches, Cicadas, Squirrels are the most common things I see here in Chicago. I’m sure there are others but that’s what first comes to mind.
Seoul, South Korea:
Feral Pigeons, Oriental Magpies, Oriental Turtle-doves, Eastern Spot-billed Ducks, Mallard Ducks, Grey Herons, Great Egrets, Little Egrets, Eurasian Tree Sparrows, Brown-eared Bulbuls, Great Cormorants, Vinous-throated Parrotbills, Common Pochards …
Black-spotted Frogs, Japanese Tree Frogs, invasive Pond Sliders, Carp, occasional Mainland Racoon Dog sightings, Eurasian Red Squirrels (though I’ve only ever seen black morphs), Brown Rats …
Joro Spiders, Wasp Spiders, Carrhotus xanthogramma jumping spiders, Araneus ventricosus orbweavers, Asian Ladybird Beetles, Robust Cicadas, Eastern Horse Cicadas, Giant Asian Mantises, Chinese Mantises, Asian Jumping Mantises, Oriental Stinkbugs, Asian Commas, Pale Grass Blues, Oriental Beetles, Box Tree Moths …
Monk parakeets are in quite a few places far from their South American home, including some fairly unlikely places where they only survive in urban settings. Chicago has been home to them for decades.
Many birds live in Przemyśl (PL), mainly pigeons, sparrows and rooks, but also ducks; there are also a lot of squirrels, we have martens, field hamsters, reptiles - there are a lot of lizards; deer can also be found. There are plenty of amphibians and of course plenty of insects, mainly butterflies and wasps.
Toronto, raccoon capital of the world, represent!
We also have a lot of skunks, squirrels (including an entire lineage of leucistic ones that have coffee shops and sculptures named after them), opossums, beavers, foxes, coyotes, white-tailed deer, toads, many migratory birds (Canada geese, turkey vultures, various hawks, cardinals, grackles, chickadees, and many that just pass through).
And, of course, common invasive species such as starlings, pigeons, European house sparrows, goldfish, several species of Asian carp, etc.
You can encounter wild boar in the parks and wood inside the peripheries of Prague. When I was a student, we regularly observed them from our dorms at https://mapy.cz/turisticka?q=patkova%203&source=addr&id=8994131 Some observations are at https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=154375&subview=map&taxon_id=42134