Evolution by natural selection is happening all around us, all the time, even in our cities. Biologist Menno Schilthuizen, author of Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution, talked with Billy about how species adapt to urban habitat, and about ways that urban evolution might be a different than what we see in more ‘natural’ landscapes.
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This year we honor World Sparrow Day with a look at how they got to North America and the Sparrow War of the 1870s that followed. Matt Halley joins us to talk about the weird but true history of exotic bird introductions in the 1800s and the Sparrow War that followed the successful (or catastrophic, depending how you look at it) introduction of the house sparrow. Tony works in another sparrow war half a world away, and we conclude with a reminder not to let dead birds go to waste (and to report them in iNaturalist!).
For further reading check out the following sources we discuss:
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What can cities do to connect kids with nature? Billy and frequent guest host Robin Irizarry of the Tookany/Tacony/Frankford Watershed Partnership (TTF) interview Richard Louv to find out.
Richard will be speaking on February 28th, 6pm at the Friends Center (1501 Cherry Street in Philadelphia, PA) as part of the TTF’s Nature Talks series, but this episode is a great look at how kids need nature, and how cities are working to connect kids with nature (including the TTF’s bad-ass watershed education tricycle).
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Pete Marra joins us for a special episode to talk about his (and Chris Santella’s) book Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer. We originally posted this for his talk last year at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Billy has an article coming out in Grid Magazine about outdoor cats, and it seemed like a good moment to post this one again. Stay tuned for our deeper dive into the outdoor cat literature.
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When is a raccoon not just a raccoon? What can a dandelion teach us about changing the world? We talk with Evan Lovett of V.U.R.T. about their Philly Local Critter series of murals, including a pretzel-eating raccoon. We also hear from San Francisco-based, globe-trotting muralist Mona Caron, whose Weeds series teaches us about the power that even the humblest among us has to break through barriers.
VURT Raccoon mural (pretzel from Wawa)
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Dr. Christian Hunold, a political scientist at Drexel University, is a dedicated wildlife photographer and wrote a paper, Why not the City?, about the hawks of Center City Philadelphia, the humans who watch and love them, and what all that says about how we regard wild animals in urban settings. Tony and Billy go hawk watching with Christian Hunold around Logan Circle in the heart of Philadelphia. As soon as you’re done listening, head on over to the Field Guides podcast for their own urban hawk episode looking at Cooper’s hawks!
Mom, a hawk of Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
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It’s the worst thing humans do, but nature fills in the scars on city landscapes. We discuss how naturalists from London to Berlin studied the ruins, and we hear from the Urban Birder, David Lindo, about the black redstart, a bird that took advantage of England’s bombed spaces after WWII. Seth Degginger joins us to talk about the wildlife he saw while in training and on deployment with the Army Reserves. We conclude Nassrine Azimi and an introduction to Green Legacy Hiroshima, a program that shares seeds from trees that survived the nuclear bomb blast.
Black Redstart (by Devid Lindo).
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This summer our frequent guest host Robin Irizarry (Philadelphia Watershed Coordinator for the Tookany/Tacony Frankford Watershed Partnership) took a trip to Rome. Lots of people see the history, enjoy the culture and food of the eternal city. Robin brought his binoculars and looked for wildlife.
Robin with Philly-style graffiti in Rome.
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It’s easy to be a birder in Philadelphia, but what about Bethlehem (not the one near Allentown) or the Gaza Strip? Learn about nature and nature loving under occupation, and hear about two organizations training citizen scientists, educating children about nature, and advancing environmental preservation where it isn’t quite as easy. We speak with Mazin Qumsiyeh of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Imad Atrash of the Palestine Wildlife Society about their programming and the wildlife of Palestine (like lesser kestrels on the walls of Jerusalem). Tony and Billy reflect on how social injustice manifests in how we experience nature, from Palestine to West Philadelphia.
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Nighthawks and bats come out at dusk to fatten up on cemetery bugs before migration and hibernation. In this special mini episode, we take a page from the Field Guides and record a full episode outside at one of our favorite urban parks, the Mount Moriah Cemetery. Tony and Billy bring along our partners and one very excited five-year-old, jacked up on hot chocolate and urban wildlife.
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Fish and mussel tanks at the Philadelphia, Fairmount Park Waterworks mussel hatchery.
Tony and Billy join Robin Irizarry (Philadelphia Watershed Coordinator for the Tookany/Tacony Frankford Watershed Partnership) at his Irizarry Hillstead and hear Bryan Windmiller talk about Grassroots Wildlife Conservation‘s work with marbled salamanders and bridle shiners in the Boston area and about mussels in the Philadelphia area. Billy takes a mussel hatchery tour with Kurt Cheng of the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary.
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What’s it like to be a rattlesnake in an urbanizing landscape, keeping to your patch, dodging car tires if you leave? In this special episode we air an interview that listener and wildlife biologist Pete Havlik did with Ecologist/Conservation Biologist Matt Goode of the University of Arizona. We hear about rattlers in the Tucson, Arizona area (including the Tumamoc Hill reserve) and also about Dr. Goode’s work with king cobras (the King Cobra Conservancy) in India as they discuss how we can best get along with wild animals in an urbanizing world.
Also check out our other rattler episodes: Timbers on a Boston Island, and One Man’s Pest is Another’s Gorgeous Rattlesnake.
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Zya Levy and Kaitlin Pomerantz of the We the Weeds project join us for a weed walk in the neighborhood. Then we retire back at the Urban Wildlife Podcast studio with invasive species beverages, including a cocktail featuring utopic/dystopic bitters.
(learn about the bitters here: WTWBOOKLETDRINKSMUGWORT)
Epazote rising from a bed of lambs quarters.
Sow thistle
broadleaf plantain
Virginia Pepperweed
Tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima)
Artist Brooke Herr’s mugwort inspired tattoo (on Kaitlin Pomerantz’s leg).
Purslane growing from the edge of the curb.
Poke weed every day.
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On this impromptu, patched-together, mini episode, we present recordings in the moment: Mike McGraw, Billy, and Magnolia check out a Philadelphia black rat snake; Billy nerds out over urban short-headed garter snakes in Pittsburgh; and a red-tailed hawk picks up some squirrel takeout for lunch. Also Tony and Billy talk about the red squirrel that visited Tony’s office, Tony recounts a Bird Philly urban raptor walk with Christian Hunold, and Tony gets a promotion.
Wee black rat snake found by Mike McGraw (his photo via PARS)
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Urban wildlife is great to look at, but what about when it makes your home its home? Guest host Christian Hunold (dig his photos) joins us as we look at cute omnivorous mesofauna in this episode: opossums, possums, skunks, palm civets. In Part Two we hear from urban skunk researcher Anna Schneider and Singapore urban palm civet researcher Xu Weiting.
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Urban wildlife is great to look at, but what about when it makes your home its home? Guest host Christian Hunold (dig his photos) joins us as we look at cute omnivorous mesofauna in this episode: opossums, possums, skunks, palm civets. In part one of this episode we talk opossums and hear from researcher Jeff Foulkes and nature blogger/listener Ry Beaver about Aussie possums.
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In this mini episode Dr. Seth Magle of the Urban Wildlife Institute of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo talks with Billy about the Institute and how they’re remotely monitoring urban wildlife in Chicago and beyond.
(you might remember Dr. Magle from our Fruit Bats, Prairie Dogs, and Sausage Weasels episode)
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Irish hares dig Belfast’s airport and rare El Segundo blue butterflies persist on dunes protected by the the airplane noise of LAX. Dr. Neil Reid of Queen’s University Belfast talks to us about the hares, and we hear from Dr. Travis Longcore of USC and the Urban Wildlands Group about butterfly conservation. Mike McGraw, podcast buddy, biologist with Applied Ecological Services, and airport wildlife hazard expert, joins us as guest host.
We kick off the episode discussing why Tony was late – retrieving a dead bald eagle that lost a mid-air duel over Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood.
El Segundo Blue (Travis Longcore)
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Tony doesn’t take it easy on vacation. In December he flew to Australia to bird, herp, and explore. Of course he checked out some urban wildlife while he was down there, and in this episode we listen to his interviews with a Torresian imperial pigeon researcher with PIPwatch in Cairns (lead researcher Dr. Julia Hazel), Dr. John Martin in Sydney (who researchers basically all their urban wildlife) at the Royal Botanic Garden, and with Tony’s herping buddies on an evening excursion on the outskirts of Sydney.
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[This is a re-post of our World Sparrow Day episode in honor of… World Sparrow Day 2017!!!]
We celebrate World Sparrow Day (March 20th) with a look at Passer domesticus, a bird North American birders love to hate but that is in a mysterious decline in its native Eurasian range.
We hear from Mohammed Dilawar, founder of India’s Nature Forever Society and of World Sparrow Day, about the state of the sparrow in India and the victory of getting it declared the state bird of Delhi.
Tony talks to urban researcher Jessica Burnett about her house sparrow research and how the Unholy Trio might not be so… unholy.
Robin Irrizary, Philadelphia Watershed Coordinator for the TTF Watershed Partnership and avid urban naturalist joins Tony and Billy to talk about sparrows and about how someday his children will be able to carry out all the citizen science projects he never had time to do.
So plug us in, step outside your front door, and raise your binoculars to celebrate the house sparrow.
West Philly House Sparrow across the street from Billy’s house
And here’s that anti-sparrow piece from 1917 that we mentioned.
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European wall lizards are spreading, and we’re gonna talk and sing about it. Dr. Russell Burke from Hofstra University tells us about the wall lizards of New York, and Dr. Kenneth Petren of the University of Cincinnati talks about his city’s “Lazarus lizards.” And what wall lizard discussion would be complete without a song? Dig the release of Tony and Matthew Halley’s latest hit, “Wonder Wall Lizard.”
(and if you see a Cincinnati wall lizard, report it here: http://www.uc.edu/lizards/)
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Pete Marra joins us for a special episode to talk about his (and Chris Santella’s) book Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer. Pete will be speaking on Thursday February 23rd at 6:30 pm at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia.
featuring an interview
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Urban wildlife isn’t just on land, especially in the world’s biggest port cities. In this episode we hear about what happens when turtles navigate the urban/ocean interface. We hear from Umair Shahid from WWF Pakistan about Karachi’s sea turtles, Dr. Russell Burke from Hofstra University talks about the diamondback terrapins (brackish water turtles) of New York, and Cassandra Davis of the Aquarium of the Pacific talks about the green sea turtles of the channelized San Gabriel River in Long Beach, CA. Matt Halley joins us as guest host and reminds listeners that he and other ornithologists would love to get their hands on dead birds you find on the sidewalk.
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Urban biodiversity explodes as you shrink your view. Explore urban invertebrate biodiversity projects in Los Angeles (BioScan) and Boston (Boston Harbor Islands All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory). Guest host Isa Betancourt (remember her from Season 1?) joins us to share her own urban bug research and education work.
And here’s a link to some info about the featured beetle Bembidion nigropiceum. See some pics here.
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White bellied green pigeon, Shanhai, by Craig Brelsford
What is urban birding like in the biggest city in the world? Join Tony as he interviews Craig Brelsford, the birder behind Shanghai Birding. They discuss birding in a city of 24 million souls, all while racing rampant coastal development and fighting dense smog.
And here’s Billy’s favorite Shanghai Birding post, White-bellied Green Pigeon! (or, How We Slogged Our Way through the Shanghai Smog and Picked Up a Lifer).
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How do you bring biodiversity to urbanites? Guest host Joan Blaustein of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation joins us to talk about preserving urban parks biodiversity. We also listen to Dr. Nigel Reeve tell us about the effort to save the hedgehogs of London’s Regent Park. We conclude with Billy’s recent trip to NYC to see some monk parakeets and the humpback whales we covered in our very first episode.
Hedgehog seen through thermal imaging (Royal Parks Foundation).
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Sometimes the artificial IS natural. Helena Van Vliet of BioPhilly (of the Biophilic Cities network) joins us as guest host to envision cities as habitat. Of course several species already use cities as habitat:
This was too much for one episode, so split it into two parts.
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Sometimes the artificial IS natural. Helena Van Vliet of BioPhilly (of the Biophilic Cities network) joins us as guest host to envision cities as habitat. Of course several species already use cities as habitat:
This was too much for one episode, so split it into two parts.
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Learn more about your cute, furry, smart, and sometimes destructive mesopredator neighbors. Christian Hunold, political scientist and urban wildlife photographer extraordinaire, joins us as guest host has we hear about German (not exactly Nazi) raccoons from researcher Ulf Hohmann, about clever urban raccoons from researcher Susanne MacDonald, and Tokyo’s palm civets and tanuki (a.k.a. raccoon dogs) from Matt Alt. And yes, we talk about the tanuki’s magical scrotums.
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Get wild right down the street. This episode we podcast from the Wissahickon Valley in Philadelphia and talk about the wild parks right next to or right in our cities. We hear from Akshay Vishwanath of the Friends of Nairobi National Park in Kenya and Cora Rimaldi, who birds the Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Billy fondly remembers the tegus. What are the pressures facing wild lands next to growing cities? What does “wild” mean when it’s post-industrial? Let’s talk about it.
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