Casual Conversation

I live in a very urban area in France, in the Paris urban area. My apartment building has a small “gardeny” courtyard, with several trees and a bit of lawn, which my one and only window overlooks. I can see several balconies, but do not have one myself. Here’s a (probably non-exhaustive) list of what I can see from up here:

• two magpies whose nest is visible from my window, right at the top of a tall lime tree. They do their round from balcony to balcony every morning, looking for food or water I guess. They often get very noisy in the morning when...
• a crow tries to get close to their nest. It’s “not from around here”, we don’t get generally have crows in the building’s courtyard, but it’s been coming regularly since spotting the nest. (I’ve convinced myself that it’s always the same crow, but I don’t really know.)
• a blackbird who sings every day from the top of the building facing mine. I’ve seen blackbird nests in the courtyard in the past, but not this year.
• lots of swifts high up in the air — they don’t get close to my home unfortunately because it’s too modern for them to nest, I need to walk a few blocks to see them course each other over my head. I adore swifts and wish I could get a closer look at them.
• pigeons — of course ! Rock pigeons and wood pigeons... mostly wood pigeons. A pair of wood pigeons tried to build their nest on top of a set of shelves on a neighbouring family’s balcony, but the parents made them stop right away by removing the first few twigs and blocking the furniture with boxes. It’s a pity, I would have had a very good view on the nest.
• great tits. Like the magpies, they do their shopping from balcony to balcony from time to time… but not at the same time as the magpies.
• a redstart that I’ve only seen once from my window, singing on the opposite building, at the blackbird’s favorite spot. It’s normally in the next city block, where it can’t be heard from my house. (Unless it was a different redstart?)

A few birds that I can hear from my room, and see when going outside, but have never spotted from my window:

• robin
• garden warbler
• blue tit

Several years ago, there was a couple of jays that came every day in the garden, and toured the balconies like the magpies currently do, but not anymore. I wish they’d come back...

I’m too high up to have many insects visible from my window. If I see an insect from my house, it’s usually because it came in my house, but I won’t be listing those. I see the usual flies, of course, and moths — I’m afraid I couldn’t name them. A line of ants climbing the building’s wall; they actually “invaded” my apartment several times, but not this year. In the past, I’ve had mason bees nest in a hole at the side of my window, which was AWESOME, but it hasn’t happened in a few years. I’ve seen a few flying around this year too, they just haven’t chosen to grace my humble abode with their offspring.

Sometimes a cross orbweaver on the railing (not right now). Most spiders, I encounter inside the building.

Pets: a kitten on the nearest balcony, a large dog on the balcony below, which rarely barks, thankfully. A cat in the neighbouring courtyard, which is separated from mine by a great wall. I don’t know in which apartment the cat resides.

I probably forgot some animals, but I did my best, and let’s be honest, nobody’s reading all that.

I’m very fond of the magpies this spring, they’ve been giving quite a show, but I haven’t spotted any younglings unfortunately. :-(

Edit: I forgot the pipistrelles!

Birds- junco, cardinals, orioles, finches, grosbeaks, robins, Wilson's snipes, grackles, turkey vultures, starlings, hummingbirds, blue jays, Canada geese, blue heron, woodpeckers, red wing blackbirds, nuthatch, chickadees, killdeers Mammals - raccoons, possums, black bear, deer, fishers, stoats, squirrels, chipmunks, farm animals, rats, porcupines, skunks Reptiles - garter snakes, milk snakes, occasionally blue tailed skinks Amphibians - spring peepers, wood frogs, painted turtles, snapping turtles, toads, bull frogs. There's more I'm sure, but those are what springs to mind without putting effort into it

I live on the outskirts of an Australian city, a couple of hundred metres away from farmland and national park. Opposite me we overlook a large public open space/park.

We have a resident family of magpies. There's a few cockatoos in the large gum tree next door. There are some kookaburras living in the park who sometimes visit the trees out the front of our place. The odd eagle circling high above. Too many mynas these days. Lots of rosellas and grass parrots. A smattering of finches.

There are tons of kangaroos around. They come into the park to feed at night. During the day they retreat into the national park and we see them when out walking the dog. I've run across echidnas and red belly black snakes in the national park, but not technically seen from my window, although we were maybe 15 minutes walk from my front door.

We get the occasional blue tongue lizard visiting our backyard. I found a eastern brown snake skin in the yard once too, but didn't see its owner. One of my neighbours reported one in his backyard last spring, and my kids have spotted one in the park on the way home from school once, so we know they're around. There are rabbits around here somewhere and we regularly see them on the nature strip out front at night.

We have the usual assortment of crawlies around. Ants. Spiders. Geckos. Midges. Flies.

There are a couple of horse ajistment places nearby and a pony club. It's not uncommon to see horses being exercised through the park. Two of our neighbours own horses and ride them home occasionally.

Lots of different birds - mockingbirds, ibis, woodpeckers, blue jays, crows, hawks, vultures. Night heron.

Sometimes bats, always squirrels, sometimes a possum or raccoon.

Little lizards everywhere, sometimes a snake.

Wasps, bees, butterflies, dragonflies.

At work - beautiful great blue herons, great white herons, tricolor herons, cormorants, ducks, and the occasional alligator all come to the mitigation pond at the office park. ETA also at some time in the year there are these big storks that look prehistoric.

Pacific banana slugs, phantom crane flies, orange stripe bumble bees, mule deer, white tailed deer, black bears, crows, raven, bald eagle, turkey vultures, chipmunk, gray squirrels, bobcat, coho salmon in the river behind my property… a lot of very cool things to see, and we also have cougars but I’ve never personally seen one in the wild

Right this second, I can't see anything other than a chicken. It's dark and she's next to me.

The front yard is kinda mid. Occasional squirrels, some cardinals, wrens, and finches. Basic songbirds usually, but not in numbers or constant.

But the back yard? That shit is lit.

Years ago, I started planting all native stuff to let it go meadow style. While it was not entirely successful in staying native, and it's gotten outgrown since I have trouble maintaining it all, we have all kinds of stuff.

More butterflies than I can identify, rabbits, squirrels, woodpeckers, chickadees, thrushes, swallows, bluebirds, cardinals, crows, the occasional hawk, all kinds of flying critters.

We got bumblebees all over, isopods, millipedes, ants, spiders (more species than I can recall, a damn book's worth), and that's just the stuff you can see from the window. Hell, some of the spiders are right on the windows lol.

It isn't all stuff you want to see, and there's critters you don't usually see out the window, but sometimes do like mice and rats. The chickens usually keep those away from the house, but they sometimes find their way in. They're beautiful, but not welcome inside. That's the price of things being wildlife friendly, you don't get to pick what moves in. You just have to control access.

We have a blacksnake that lives near one of the oaks that sometimes shows up and suns itself where you can see it from the one window. Other than that, the other reptiles stay out of sight. We have lizards, but they stay far away from the chickens, and they're so small you can't see them.

My dad actually moves his chair in his room so he can watch outside instead of the TV.

We have gotten possums coming through. One tried to set up housekeeping in the far section, but got tired of our shit after the fifth or sixth time it would creep into the coop at night and piss off the rooster. You'd see it sometimes though, when the moon was uncovered and full, piddling around in the brush.

We've seen foxes, coyotes, and raccoons as well, though none stay. I've finally fixed the fence, so the big critters like that can't get im casually any more. But we used to see them creep up towards the house, kinda sniffing after chickens. Before we had chickens, they'd just be passing through at the far end of the yard, so you'd have to be watching to catch them.

While it's beyond what you asked about, if you go outside, it's even crazier. Because all those birds know they're safe, so they do not give a fuck if you watch them. I can sit down in my chair, and they'll just be flying around, singing and fighting and being birds. The squirrels will sit on the fence waiting for me to drop something when I'm giving treats to the chickens. The birds don't even wait. We've got a family of cardinals that hops right up outside of reach and sings/chirps at us for handouts.

There's all that song, and the rustling of things in the remaining grass and brush. The bees and butterflies and regular flies and gnats and mosquitoes are all dancing in the air (until the birds get them lol). And there's always something blooming. It's worth the damn mosquitoes to sit there.

The longer you sit, the more things stop caring you're there. The one rabbit will come out and do his thing, just pausing now and then. The non cardinal songbirds will visit in little waves, doing whatever it is they're doing. There's a robin that will park on a branch maybe four feet from where I park my butt. It'll just sit there for five or ten minutes at a go, then flit away for a while, then come back.

There's some wrens that hop their tiny butts into the pecan tree and tussle around while whistling and fussing until I laugh, then they kinda squeal squawk and act all offended.

Alas, there was a cat that used to come for visits. The bluejays ran it off with the help of some crows. Poor thing didn't know what to do, and eventually stopped coming back.

Earlier today, just as the sun was going down, I could hear the shift change as some of the night birds came out. There was about fifteen minutes where all of the birds were singing so loud, the neighbor's radio got drowned out by it.

You wanna talk about a zen experience, there's nothing like just sinking into all that life for a while.

Rural france :

So many different birds, I used to know their names but did not keep up with the knowledge ;

Two cats, because they live here, but also probably the rest of the cat neighbourhood at night ;

Depending on the time of day : hedgehogs, snakes, deers and fawns, bees, wasps, mosquitoes (😡), snails, slugs, caterpillars, lots of beautiful butterflies ;

Can't see them but they're very close : frogs and mice ;

On the other hand, I see spiders everywhere, don't even need to look outside...

Very rarely the neighbours' dog(s), we do hear them throughout the day lol ;

Seldom a boar or hog and their offsprings, but they usually keep to the forest.

Right now, cicadas are having noisy orgies in the trees. Normally, it's deer, squirrels, possums, snakes, spiders, no end of other bugs in the warm months, turkeys, raccoons, the rare bobcat, coyotes, birds of all sorts, owls, hawks, turkeys...I happen to live in the Appalachian woods. A doe dropped a newborn fawn near our fence this week. We watched it for a few hours until she came back for it. Don't get me started on ticks.

Ospreys and buzzards and Coopers hawks and Mourning doves. I can hear the osprey in the big snag outside the office window right now.

The big snag in particular is a gathering spot. Bald eagles, and a rare Golden eagle last week. A peregrine, occasionally. Ravens and crows and Stellar jays, and woodpeckers, including Pileated and Flicker.

Hummingbirds, local and migratory. Blackbirds and different kinds of thrushes, plus all the little birds, so many species in the summer.

The Barred owls are really intense sometimes.

A large bevy of quail.

Rafts of ducks. Cormorants, when it's stormy.

Deer are constant. Otters rarely.

Bats and dragonflies. The clouds of midges etc. are not typical anymore. We work hard to encourage pollinators but the total insect population has crashed somewhat. Fewer swallows this year.

[edit- they are so constant I forgot, we have a cottontail problem -- maybe more raptors can feed here, so OK I guess?]

We have a family of melanistic foxes in the area. Thankfully the locals leave them be.

I have a small yard on the edge of a wooded area. We regularly get deer grazing just twenty feet from where I'm sitting. Occasionally we get groundhogs but I don't have a good photo.

If I was to just look out my window?

Cats. Maybe a bird if it flew low enough. My window faces the wall of another part of the apartment building. Don't see much looking out it.

Excluding livestock; white tailed deer, wild turkeys, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, weasels, black bears, hawks, turkey vultures, black rat snakes, rattlesnakes, and copperhead snakes.

The neighbor's cat which makes my dog lose his mind.

Birds: rufous horneros, rufous thrushes, kiskadees. Including a kiskadee fight, it was fucking hilarious - picture two males encircling each other, as if they were in a ring, surrounded by females. (Picture a 40yo surrounded by two cats, watching them fight through the window. It was like this.) Once in a blue moon I see a hummingbird, they used to visit me more often before the hail killed my fuchsia.

Cool arthropods: a silver argiope once, I "adopted" her but she had children and passed away, RIP Kumoko. My basil is always gathering some native bees. I guess for most people gaucho spiders count?

Mammals: only the usual. Cat, dog, cat, human, cat... ...my neighbourhood has a lot of cats, including uninvited guests.

I can't recall the last time I saw a toad. When I was a kid I had fun splashing them with water - it's harmless to the critter, but if you startle them they jump.

For reference, this is in urban South America, Cfb climate.

Canadian geese, crows, squirrels.

I live in a small town. When I was a kid, my window faced an open field. Now it's just more buildings.

Lots of insects, birds, during covid a few rabbits wandered the streets. Cats and dogs. That's all, unfortunately.

Can see Foxes from my parents home.

I live about 20 miles away from where I grew up. I never saw a wild snake in all my years of living at my parents house.

It all started when I once ran over a baby snake with my lawnmower a few years ago. It went under the wheel and was maybe 3 inches long with two yellow stripes. It was fine and I picked it up for a picture and let it go. In that same area in my yard this year I have seen a bigger version of that snake, maybe the same one. I haven't seen more than one snake at the same time but I suspect there is more than one based on the sizes I have seen. One of them hangs out in a crack in my garage foundation.

One time I was moving around laundry and heard what sounded like a nerf vortex football with the whistlers on it being thrown. Went outside and spotted a red tail hawk in a tree a few doors down.

This was a few blocks away by a pond. I saw a great blue heron. Not too big of a deal. You've seen them standing in water. You may have seen them flying. But have you ever seen them in a tree? They have every right to be in trees but seeing one in a tree was just so unusual.

Deer, black bears, raccoons, opposums, squirrels, chipmunks, king snakes, blue-tailed skinks, and lots of different types of birds. I haven't seen, but have heard, coyotes and owls.

We live next to a strip of woods in South Limburg with a brook and close to a nature reserve. We see Squirrels, Marten, Blue Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Blackbird, Great Tit, Buzzard, Jay, Song Thrush, Nuthatch, Crow, Dove, Goose when migrating, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Magpie.

Hummingbirds year round, parrots in the "spring", sea gulls, tits, egrets, rabbits, and the occasional squirrel. Also tons of neighborhood cats and dogs.

Besides birds, I've only seen red squirrels and hares.

But on my bike rides, it's been an exceptional year for animal sightings: two moose, a fox, a badger (twice), a hedgehog, a white-tailed deer, an otter, and a rat.

The very occasional cat, lots of birds like hummingbirds and owls, rabbits, deer, and dogs.

The weird thing is is I live very close to the city in a very normal suburb, but there's a small forest in my backyard and they just are all there, and it's kind of cool.

Lots of birds - sparrows, doves, quail, blackbirds, magpies, crows, orioles, finches, flickers, starlings, robins, wrens, hummingbirds, hawks, eagles, owls, ducks, geese, turkeys, seagulls, herons...

Plus rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, deer, foxes, coyotes...

Well... technically I almost never see the owls or the coyotes - I just hear them after dark.

There are also skunks and porcupines around, but I almost never see them either, though I do sometimes smell where a skunk has gone by. There are bobcats around too, but nobody ever sees them.

All year round, magpies ravens and crows during the day, and it's pretty common at night to see ugly (in a cute way) tiny bats zooming around. Of course there's also the local fat cats inspecting their turf.

During summer, there's these huge grasshoppers the size of my hand that just can't shut up and are loud as hell. And often at night, I can see ferrets or weasels climbing walls. Oh, and there's a insect hotel right outside my window that hosts bumblebees every year.

Stink Beatles and spiders, this time of year :p

Squirrels, birds, deer, owls, hawks, fish in the pond, dragonflies. My chickens in their pen. Sometimes we find luna moths. Lots of lizards, blue tailed skink. Grasshoppers over the spring months. And mosquitoes... those bastards

I see a lot of birds. I'm on a hill and I look down on a valley with many thermals. There are storks, herons, buzzards, red kites, black kites, crows, rooks, jackdaws and magpies. I hear a green woodpecker sometimes but I never see it. There's also a blackcap, loads of sparrows, blackbirds, a tree creeper, blue tits, great tits and black redstarts. And the neighbour's two ridgebacks and their cat.

It's not my window, but a bald eagle has taken to observing the lake from a dead tree near where I moor my boat in the summer. It showed up two years ago, IIRC, as a juvenile, and I got to see it become white-headed. I usually see it in the morning when rowing to shore from the boat.

It's absolutely amazing to me to see one in the city, since they were so rare when I was a kid. It used to be that you'd have to go to the Prairie du Sac dam on the Wisconsin River in the winter to try to see a bald eagle, as they'd fish in the open, flowing water there when the rest of the river was iced over. Even then, it wasn't guaranteed you'd see one. Now, I see them as a part of my daily routine!

Can confirm, too, they use the hawk scream for bald eagle calls in movies and on TV, because their real call isn't intimidating. It sounds kind of like strangling a seagull.

Too many cats, the odd pigeon, a shit-tonne of ladybird larvae, maybe a woodlouse if I move a brick or slab.

opposum, racoon, fox, squirrel, chipmunk, deer, bats, frogs, toads, copperhead, rattlesnake,etc turtles, lizards, newts, woodpeckers, bluejays, finches, chickadee, crows, hummingbirds, hawks, eagles, owls, buzzards, hornets, carpenter bees, ants, paper wasps, termites, cicadas, black widow, orb weaver spider, and countless other birds and bugs. Most interesting bug might be the bumblebee moth.

Red-eared slider turtles, smooth shell turtles, stupid huge snapping turtle, four species of duck, coots (aka chicken ducks), many species of heron, hawks, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, lots of butterflies, and the occasional bobcat.

I live in Dallas, but got lucky and found a house with a tiny bit of nature in the concrete sprawl.