Billy and Tony sit down with Rich Conroy of the Militia Hill Hawk Watch and of the Dresher, PA Wild Birds Unlimited to chat about the joys of hawk watching and lots of other birding topics in the conversation. Topics covered include bird feeding, how raptors migrate using updrafts, raptor kettles, the hawk watching spectacle of Veracruz in Mexico, the year Tony was a sandpiper, Kirtland’s snakes and Billy striking out at finding urban Kirtland’s snakes, and how you can be pretty old and still be considered young at a birding club.

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Billy talked with author Scott Weidensaul about the wonders of bird migration and how urbanite humans can make their city habitats better for avian visitors. Topics include shorebirds, songbirds, raptors, outdoor cats, dogs, urban parks, window collisions, artificial light at night, and why bald eagles aren’t trash birds.

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Tony and Billy talk with one of their urban wildlife heroes, Stan Gehrt, who has been studying Chicago’s coyotes for more than 20 years. Dr. Gehrt has just authored a new book Coyotes Among Us: Secrets of the City’s top Predator. We talk coyotes, mange, how to pronounce “coyote,” coyote predation on deer and woodchucks, which is cuter: fawns or coyote pups, coyote monogamy, how foxes and woodchucks will tell you whether there are coyotes around, urban coyote diets, why coyote attacks (rarely) happen, why coyotes can’t keep away from airports and why they should, why Philadelphia doesn’t have coyotes like Chicago does, the coywolf silliness, and much more.

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Tony and Billy talk about one of their favorite critters, the (urban) woodchuck (a.k.a. groundhog, monax, whistle pig, etc.) and its marmot relatives around the globe. Other topics include yellow-bellied and hoary marmots; when iNaturalist makes it look like a critter has an urban distribution, but it’s really just a park next to a city; WTSHTF hobbyists who kill ratsnakes for no good reasons; groundhog day, eating woodchucks, and coyotes and woodchucks.

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Tony and Billy got together ostensibly to talk about urban beavers (Castor canadensis), but the conversation wandered far and wide, touching on such subjects as hunting and conservation, rowhouse rednecks, groom cakes, Coleman coolers, the absurdity of private land ownership, and how Tony introduced “your mom” jokes to Brazil.

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The biggest animal in Philadelphia (and other port cities) isn’t a deer or a coyote, it’s a fish. We talk with biologist Shannon White about Atlantic sturgeon and her research into their depressingly reduced populations. We talk about how the caviar boom of the late 1800s devastated sturgeon populations, and about how their slow life history, channelization, boat traffic, anchor dragging, and exotic species (like blue and channel catfish) work against their recovery. We talk about how people might accidentally or intentionally introduce captive stock of sturgeon into the wild and why that is a terrible idea. Tony blames America’s dysfunctional health insurance system on shad (and how they fed George Washington’s troops at Valley Forge). We also talk about snorkeling in rivers (are smallmouth bass really cuddly?), how fish ladders work, and Billy’s dreams of spear fishing flathead catfish to examine their stomach contents, even though they are too toxic to eat.

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In memory of Scott McWilliams, who passed away from brain cancer recently, we are reposting this episode from 2015. Scott was a great Philadelphian, physician, Billy’s herping buddy and close friend, and an endlessly inquisitive naturalist.

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Andrew Budziak traveled from Vancouver to St. John’s and four cities in between to photograph Canadian urban wildlife for his video series Edge of Frame. Billy and Andrew talk about the wildlife he saw and the humans too.

You can watch the videos at his site or on Narcity’s YouTube channel.

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The San Francisco garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia) is shockingly beautiful and sadly endangered. It’s small range lies within the San Francisco Bay Area (no surprise there), one of the most densely populated regions of the United States.

Billy is joined by Dr. Brian Halstead of the US Geological Survey to talk about the snake and the efforts to keep it from going extinct.

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You might only think of them as paths from here to there, but roads are vast structures whose density largely defines urban areas and determine what can survive in them. Darryl Jones, author of A Clouded Leopard in the Middle of the Road, joins Billy and Tony to talk about the environmental impacts of roads and solutions to them.

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Seattle naturalist and author David B. Williams talks with Billy about the urban nature world of Seattle, including the geology of building stone, backyard eagles, and mountain beavers.

(and if anyone out there wants to do a full episode about urban mountain beavers, consider yourself invited)

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There are too many white-tailed deer for forests in much of eastern North America to regenerate. Should we put them on birth control? Should we let hunters take care of the problem? Is more-intensive culling the solution? Can wolves and other non-human predators handle the problem? And how many deer is too many? Billy talks with Bernd Blossey of Cornell University about what to do about deer. Blossey and his colleagues have tested solutions in the field, and his recommendations might surprise you.

(And of course, don’t forget to get Billy’s new book! Exploring Philly Nature: A Guide for All Four Seasons.)

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Billy’s book, Exploring Philly Nature: A Guide for All Four Seasons is out! Buy your copy ASAP! (go ahead, this podcast episode will still be here when you’re done).

Tony’s got some book ideas too (and a R.A.M.B.O. album due out soon), and we talk about our book projects, recording projects, and about projects to come.

(usually our episodes aren’t explicit, but in this case Billy’s book is so f-ing good Tony had to swear about it)

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(English/Español) The City Nature Challenge starts on Friday, April 29, and in this episode Billy talks with Angel Mario Hualpa Erazo of Ecuador’s Green Jewel, based in Loja in southern Ecuador. We get to know Loja, hear about Green Jewel’s conservation and environmental education programs, and talk about the City Nature Challenge. This episode is in English and in Spanish. We start with a shorter English summary and continue with the full discussion in Spanish.

El City Nature Challenge empieza el Viernes, 29 de Abril, y en este episodio Billy habla con Angel Mario Hualpa Erazo de Green Jewel, basado en Loja, en el sur de Ecuador. Conocemos Loja, aprendemos de los programas de conservación y educación ambiental de Green Jewel, y hablamos del City Nature Challenge. Este episodio es en inglés y español. Empezamos con el resumen en Inglés y seguimos con la conversación entera (a los 11 minutos y 50 segundos) en español.

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Urbanites are starting to learn to live with predators like coyotes, bobcats, and hawks, but what about their rodent prey, like rats? We talk with political scientist and human/wildlife researcher Christian Hunold about his paper looking at rodenticide bans and what they say about how we regard rats and the animals that eat them.

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Troy Bynum (@tb_wildlife_photography on Instagram) is Philly naturalist, wildlife photographer, and a new urban hunter. Troy talks with Billy about the experience of hunting for the first time, and they discuss issues of race and hunting.

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Local wildlife lovers and cat lovers can all feel outgunned and overwhelmed when the national, multi-million-dollar organizations that push TNR come to town. Tulsans for Public Safety shows how one community has organized on a grassroots level to promote sound policy for unowned cats.

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Billy and Tony chat about a summer spent doing urban environmental education together.

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Learn about the neighborhood galagos and the red-banded rubber frogs of urban Zanzibar with Jonathan Richard Walz. Billy and Tony talk with Richard about the urban wildlife of this corner of East Africa as well as the impact of the pandemic.

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Inspired by a conversation with past podcast guest Brad Gates, Billy, who has been vegetarian for over 25 years, is thinking about taking up urban hunting. Tony and Billy talk about the implications, ethical and ecological.

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The city can be a tough place for a little bird, unless that city has lots of pine trees and cozy places to build nests. Dark eyed juncos have adapted to Los Angeles, and we’ll hear about it from ornithologist Samuel Bressler who talks with Tony about his research.

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Tony and Billy talk with Tony Lee, film producer and author of The Cat that Changed America, the story of Los Angeles’ P22 mountain lion.

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Tony and Billy talk with Singapore nature guide Ivan Kwan about wild boar, huge water monitor lizards, introduced myna birds, and what it’s like to explore nature in one of the world’s greenest cities, Singapore.

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Philly naturalist Robin Irizarry and Billy talk with their antipodean urban bioblitz colleague Stephan Fricker about the Great Southern Bioblitz, the fall (or spring if you’re down under) counterpart to the City Nature Challenge.

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Wherever you live, it’s time to start looking up! Billy brings his lawn chair and watches some West Philly peregrine falcons with local birder Schubert Sweat. He then talks with Peter Green about his Providence Raptors blog and book.

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Billy talks with Colombian biologists Sara Acosta and Rodrigo Mutis about their urban mammal coloring book, Mamíferos de Bogotá y Donde Encontrarlos (Mammals of Bogota and Where to Find Them). The episode kicks off with a summary of the conversation in English followed by the full conversation in Spanish. You can check out the coloring book here, and to get a printable copy you can email Rodrigo at rmutis@unal.edu.co. 

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The trash panda of Europe is also an urban critter in North America. Billy talks about fox range expansion in in North America and urban fox evolution in England with Kate Garchinsky, illustrator of the Secret Life of the Red Fox and Christian Hunold, wildlife photographer and political scientist whose work looks at how humans and the animals we live with regard each other.

We read from Audubon and Bachman’s Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (p. 269-270) and look at two papers, one using genetic analysis to settle the question of where newer fox populations came from, and the other looking at how foxes in English cities are starting to look a little more domestic.

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We take a look at one of our most humble companions in civilization, the house mouse. Michelle Niedermeier of the Penn State Cooperative Extension’s Integrated Pest Management program joins Billy as we talk about research into how mouse genetics can help us learn about human history . We spend some time with John James Audubon’s fabulous mouse chapter from the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (v. 2, p. 277). Just for kicks, we’ve included a reading from the last episode in which we discussed mice: Lawrence Crawford helps us wax poetic about mice (in Scots, so read along and click on the unfamiliar words) with the immortal Robert Burns.

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Tony talks with Dr. Joshua Moody of the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary about living shorelines, which work for us (fighting erosion, helping us cope with the effects of Global Warming) while working for nature.

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What happens when a snake isn’t welcome in a back yard? Billy talks with Mike McGraw about a milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum) named Lucille and how she ended up in a tank on his desk. This is a co-post with the new Wildlife Observer Network podcast Herpin’ Ain’t Easy. We talk about previous snake rescue episodes: “One Man’s Pest is Another’s Gorgeous Rattlesnake,” and “Where to Put Toilet- and Backyard Snakes,” part one and part two.

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