Have you see any unusual urban wildlife?

I don't live in the UK, but the Netherlands, and I had two fighting weasels in my garden, they woke me up around 05.00 o'clock, making a terrible noise! Their tales were brown without a black part. I think they were youngsters.

I live in a Scottish town called Carnoustie on the east coast and I have seen a Stoat running past our outside gate on the pavement and disappear into a hedge, this was about eight years ago now. I have also seen a female Merlin twice on separate occasions over the years and the second time she perched on top of our garage for a few minutes (definitely wasn't a Sparrowhawk!). Yellowhammers have come into the garden very occasionally in winter with the Chaffinches and add a lovely touch of yellow to the scene. Really looking forward to the new series ;) Regards, Nicola.

while walking my dog in the woods today i noticed lots of QUEEN HORNETS

flying round and landing on various bushes. it was scary as they were

huge can CHRIS tell me what was going on, love the show welcome back

JANICE MILLER

How about Urban Dolphins?



Between October and June groups of typically 15, although up to 40, bottlenose dolphins can be seen hunting on a near daily basis in the shipping channel at Aberdeen harbour.



This is due to the River Dee flowing though the channel and the busy harbour keeping small fast boats out of the area. They typically can be seen jumping, tail slapping and at times throwing fish. Also over the next 8 week we should start to see newborn calfs in amongst the group.



This is all viewable at around 10 to 50 meters from the land and could, with luck, be filmed by a film crew waiting for a ferry to Shetland. This activity is not widely known even locally so i would love it if you could include this in your series.



All the best



Ian Hay

We live on an estate, a couple of miles from the City centre, with no fields nearby & for the last 15 months we are visited nightly by Badgers. We felt so shocked & privileged when they started to visit, we took lots of photos & a video to prove to people we were not imagining it! We know there's more than one because they are different sizes & come from different directions & there's only usually one at a time. There's only ever been two at the same time once & that was in the early hours of the morning. ! We put banana, apples, pears, peanuts & dried fruit out which usually all disappears but they don't come as often in the Winter. In the early hours of last Saturday I was woken at 4am by noises coming from outside the bedroom window. Armed with a torch & leaning out of the bedroom window, we were surprised to see the badger standing beside our ( plastic ) greenhouse munching the peanuts he'd stolen from the bird food store inside it. Expecting to find the greenhouse badly damaged the next morning, we were surprised to find two smallish rips either side of the zip, so he'd obviously done enough to get his head & paws inside to drag them out! Needless to say, we don't leave any eatables in there now!

On the school field next to my work place I often see a large flock of crows and a couple of magpies. I am convinced that one bird is a cross between a magpie and a crow. We have nicknamed this a 'crow-pie'. We have also seen a couple of crows at atime chasing magpies into near by trees and are convinced these are breeding.



Is this common to see a 'Crow-Pie'?

One of my favourite examples of urban wildlife, and one I've suggested Autumnwatch covers before, are the flocks of Lapwing and Golden Plover that form on industrial unit rooftops over autumn/winter. I pass by them every day and you can observe them from pretty close range, which is fantastic.

My sister called me the other week because she said she had a "white stork" at the bottom of her garden. I didn't really believe her but went to have a look and sure enough there it was! See a short video clip here https://www.flickr.com/photos/naturewatched/5018502202/ This rare migrant has now been seen several times in different places around Dorset!

We live in west Wales and have are fairly certain we've seen polecats in the area. Although only spotted two or three times in the past year, we wondered if the polecat map might be comming back this year?

My daughter has seen badgers running up the road in the early hours (she's a student and therefore nocturnal..)but they've never been into our garden despite peanuts and sultanas being put out (the fox eats them, or the magpies do).



I did however see a Lesser Spotted G Buchanan in Mull during the summer ;)

I live in Chaddesden, which is a suburb of Derby, so fairly urban, but with a lot of countryside and green space around. My family and i have regularly seen bats flying around the gardens at around half seven in the evening (we watch them through the living room window!). Not seen them so much since it started getting darker, but they were definately bats!

In southend in essex ( which is a really urban area) we often get foxes but one night I saw a badger I was totally surprised. It now is not only seen in the garden but late at night can be seen walking down the road. Is there any way we can find out where its set is? We also get bats and unlike a badger we obviously can't follow them how do you find out where there roost is? It really is astonishing how much wildlife there is in a town. By the way is there any way we can stop the badgers digging up the lawn so much? Would feeding them help?

I live in inner city Birmingham and I have 2 Tawny owls that regulary visit my garden. We also get alot of bats...The tawny owls at the moment are very noisy and seem to scare everything else away!! Its amazing to think that I live in the middle of a city and I can still have beautiful creatures like these visiting my garden

URBAN BADGERS - While we were on holiday in Fishguard in Pembrokeshire this summer we were visited by a badger every night. We fed him bread and jam and peaunuts and he came right up to the door as we were throwing peaunuts towards him. It was the highlight of a lovely holiday, only matched by the baby seal pups near Skomer Island.

We often see bats on the field behind our house and when walking our dog at dusk they fly around our heads to get from tree to tree. I am not sure which species they are but are quite large. During the summer the noise from the colony is immense with guaranteed sightings on a daily basis. The field is surrounded by roads on all sides and is a great urban oasis for many other animals. The large population of rabbits has attracted many birds of prey.



It is amazing how location can change the type of wildlife seen. I moved to the North East of England 8 years ago being used to seeing grey squirrels frequent my parents back garden. To this day I have not seen one grey squirrel in Newcastle, South Shields, Durham and Northumberland! I am sure they exist just do know where? I am beginning to miss them. On the flip side I have seen Puffins and Seals to take their place.



Love the new show.



Vic.

We live in a residential street and put peanuts out regularly for 'our' badgers who come every night. Always one, very often three, sometimes four and at the start of the 'babies' first outing' we have had five. On several occasions we have had badgers eating the nuts and two foxes hanging around waiting for an opportunity to steal any they don't find - a thankless task, we have never known them leave anything!

I live in [Personal details removed by Moderator] on the south coast and behind our garden is a large house and grounds called Courtlands and I have noticed Little Egrets roosting in the trees there. One morning last week during stormy weather I saw eight roosting in the trees. Is this unusual??

Hi, when I was young (about 30 years ago!!) I used to regularly see Elephant Hawk moth caterpillars on willow herb on a common my family own. I havnt seen them since until my neighbour found one in her garden and didnt know what it was. Have these been rare and are now making a return?

So enjoy Country File and Autumnwatch Unsprung. It was mentioned on the show tonight (7.10.10) that a family walking a path saw a big black cat. So have I, my son and his friend. I was taking my son's friend home one evening from Cheltenham to a farm in Winchcombe. We were on the farms grounds a long winding road, it was dark, headlights were on and we were going slow because of the humps in the road. Ahead of us we saw two big yellow eyes in the middle of the road, we all said oh my god what is that. I slowed down further then stopped and this big black cat came into view, when it got in front of the car it turned left in front of us and sprung up the bank on our left and out of site. It was a huge black shiny cat with big bright yellow eyes and a long tail almost on the ground turned up like a hook at the end. The muscle and power in its back legs when in sprung up the bank was unbelievable. The boys and I sat there amazed, couldn't quite believe what we had actually seen.

When we arrived at the farm house my son's friend mother and father said to us that, yes, several sighting have been reported in the area. It was a great talking point between us and friends for sometime but why I didn't report it I don't understand, I should have but didn't quite know where and my husband on arrival back in Cheltenham didn't believe me or our son. But, the three of us really did and I can still see the picture in front of me to this day. This took place approx. 14 years ago when the boys were at Cheltenham Boys College. We still talk about it today sometimes. Carol McClements

In 1990 whilst walking my wolfhounds (who were behind me) at dawn in a pine wood, I was aware of movement in the bracken to my left. 50 yards ahead. Then to my amazement a very large cat-like animal meandered across my path.

It was approximately 80/90cm in length, 50cm in height, and was dirty beige in colour. Tonal colours were true throughout. The head was round the ears small and close in to the crown. The tail was long and thick, and did not taper. It continued very straight from the backbone. This animal had very powerful hind quarters with large pads.

I had a perfect view for the entire time it took to amble across a path 20 feet wide.



My wolfhounds picked up the scent and the bitch took off, following it. She returned 10 minutes later, no worse for the encounter.

FOXES IN PLAY ~ We're in the Wimbledon area of London and recently have had our local foxes take over our front garden as a playground! Most mornings we wake up to find a random chewed up item left on the grass, first it was a flip flop, then part of a sheep skin rug, a gardening glove and various items from recycling boxes. We've not been able to spot them yet unfortunately but it is nice to know that such a wonderful wild animal is so close and would love to see them in their play (despite the fact that we've lost two t-shirts to them from the drying line!) x

Paul Rees wrote:

On the school field next to my work place I often see a large flock of crows and a couple of magpies. I am convinced that one bird is a cross between a magpie and a crow. We have nicknamed this a 'crow-pie'. We have also seen a couple of crows at atime chasing magpies into near by trees and are convinced these are breeding.



Is this common to see a 'Crow-Pie'?

My unsusal wildlife rather a lack of. Here in Swindon about three weeks ago all the Seagulls vanished. They are still absent. Normally there around 15 or more black backs on the roofs. Now none.



At the same time they vanished from Stroud (Glos).



I have never known not being able to see Seagulls.

is it normal for starlings to have young in the nest now as i just found a starlings nest in next door neighbours roof

'Crowpie'

"were there any other features of the 'Crow-Pie' that made you think this was the cause?"



It's smaller than the other crows but is with the flock and not the pair of magpies. It's feathers/texture, if you know what I mean are more crow like but its size is more magpie but its shape is more crow! I saw 2 crows chase one of the local pair of magpies the other day. I thought they were just chasing it away from their flock but they followed it into the conifer the magpies often frequents and the activety from the bush made me think they were breeding which in turn convinced me even further that 'crowpie' was a Crowpie!

WELL-TRAVELLED SPIDER:



A spider made its home behind the wing mirror of our car some weeks ago and it's still there. Wherever the car goes it goes too, spinning a new web and catching flies whenever it can. It came with us on holiday to Pembrokeshire last week and visited various parts of the coast and Pembroke Castle. It survived torrential rain on the way back to Derbyshire. It retreats behind the glass to eat its prey and shelter from the weather.

cycling through water-mead country park in Leicester at dusk I saw approximately 50 cormorants imitating starlings. they whirled around for around 10 minuets before going down to roost in the trees. I had to stop the bike to take a second look at the spectacle.they looked for all the world like giant starlings in the way they behaved. is this common behaviour?

My sister and her family have a caravan on a holiday park in Angelsea. Although the surroundings are rural, several badgers visit the caravans most nights. They don't appear to be afraid of the dogs who go to stay there and will come REALLY close to you if you sit very still with peanuts by your feet. Meeting them on the caravan decking completely made our holiday!

in the summer we had a strange bird visit our garden.

it filed a hloe in the trellis and had a light brown head, body and tail, but had very dark brown / black wings (looked liked it was waring a dark cape) can anybody from autumnwatch help

In the past week or so when driving home from work, I have had one or two glimpses of an 'oddly' coloured magpie. Today I decided to try and track it down and maybe take a photo. To my surprise I found not 1 but 2 brown,fawn and white magpies. I did manage to get one half decent photograph but they are tricky beasts to creep up on. Is this a common colour form? and will they retain this colouring after their first molt?

I have seen a tarantula crawl through a gap in a wall in the street beside mine....thats fairly unusual i should think, and i saw something odd a couple of weeks ago too. I work evenings at a petrol station, and we've got some trees and bushes just to the side. Always plenty of birds, but one night a robin sped across and 'attacked' the rear light of a car that pulled in before it could reach a pump. The bird then dropped to the floor and waited for the car to move off before disappearing back to the trees.

I'm new to this site - how can I upload a couple of humorous fox pictures from Redland, Bristol

HORNETS "NEST" IN NORTH KENT. We have a very active colony of HORNETS living in a tree stump in the garden. They are massive; about 4 times bigger than a wasp and buzz when they fly. They were first seen in August and have been going about their business ever since.

How many HORNETS have we got?

Are they dangerous?; should they be destroyed?

Will they return next year?

Do they sting without provocation?



Any ideas as to what to do with them? or can we just leave them alone?

Tuesday morning i had a visitor to my pokie, 18 x 24 foot, back garden. It was a lovely Kestral, with no rings, sitting on the washinhg line post for a good 10 minutes. During that time it sat and surveyed the other back gardens and the narrow grass bank behind them. Then, whoosh, down into my shrubs it went and, flew off with the mouse who had only had breakfast an hour before! Have i witnessed something unusual?

i live in gateshead and i saw a bird of prey that had attacked a pidgeon, the bird was smaller than a red kite much smaller it was about the same size as the pidgeon itself, i didnt get any pictures but if i see it again i will get some pics. this bit of woodland is ringed by suburbs and the A1 motorway, and you can see birds of prey, what looks like wildcats and all number of birds, this is wildlife haven in the middle of the urban jungle !

i was in Derwent valley woods where i saw 4 cormorants in the middle of a lake. is this common. Any thoughts...?