Hedgehogs because they're quite rare in towns these days. Modern wooden fencing means they can't roam around from garden to garden which they could with the old chain link fencing.
Check the images you use, a photo of a Crocodile was shown not an Alligator, you showed a Tortoise not a Turtle. It is estimated that urban Fox numbers exceed country ones as they have found life safer and easier, less likely to be shot by an angry farmer for killing his Lambs and Poultry, being chased by Hounds is no longer a problem for them. Urban Foxes are also larger than their country cousins.
You didn't mention Wombles. Very cute little animals, although quite shy and secretive. You're most likely to see them on Wimbledon Common around dusk.
The screams of foxes are usually when they are shagging. It's a blood curdling noise. I almost phoned the police one night because I was convinced that a woman was being murdered in the back garden but I looked out and saw the foxes going at it.
Yes, the blood curdling noise that urban foxes make at night in the middle of residential areas is generally to do with mating (shagging), but males also use it to mark out territory. I have a friend who is a bit of wildlife expert and I remember her telling me once that generally it is made by the female (vixen) before, and not during, the “event” and it is the vixen calling for a mate and saying she is “available”. Apparently vixens can be very assertive! Which probably also explains why male foxes can also be very good “dads”, and unlike most male mammals, do not generally clear off, but actively participate in looking after the cub until it can fend for itself. So until fox hunting was banned in the UK, it was the unfortunate case that countless supportive “fathers” were needlessly being slaughtered. Hopefully Princess Anne has had time to reflect on this.
@@johnnyuk3365the penis of the male also swells up so they get stuck together until the swelling’s gone down. This ensures no other male can come along and mate with the female and it’s only his genes that get passed on.
A man was driving along the road when he saw a suitcase full of badgers,so he pulled over and called the RSPCA. They asked him “are they moving?” He said “I don’t know,but that would certainly explain the suitcase”
( It's a herd of deer ) An American friend said their Badgers look like they want to stab you with a Shiv, whereas the European Badgers look like they want to invite you round for tea and cakes. Hedgehogs are so much fun, they have their habits and favourite places. We rescued a very young Hoglet in June 2 years ago, fed and watered her for a couple of weeks before letting her out free in our garden. She still visits every night in summer and this year she brought her own babies too. We are on the England/Scotland border so summer nights are very short and it's common to see hungry hedgehogs out before sunset and after dawn. But people are used to this and just let them do their thing. They eat slugs and snails as well as any cat or dog food left outside so gardeners love them. In remote places of Scotland wild seals will swim over to look at you. It's magical.
I know of a hedgehog rescuer and she only recommends dried food with meat as the top ingredient and not cereal as they can’t digest it. Also because wet food encourages flies which in turn produce maggots and infest the Hedgehogs eyes ears etc, and can kill them. She’s saved and rescued many by laboriously picking out the many maggots one by one with tweezers. She’s a former nurse and on twitter.
Be carefull. U.k badgers have incredibly strong Jaws. They can lock their jaws on to your ankle & you cannot shake them off. They would never usually attack. They are quite shy. However never get between a badger & it's cub.
Living in Devon I am so lucky to have hedgehogs in the garden. I always have a bowl of clean water and I put out hedgehog food every night, I was bowled over about two weeks ago, i had two adults and four babies (hoglets) out at the same time, so cute
I really like the way you can often hear rather than see them, with all the rummaging about in leaves etc and grumbling, grunty-snorting. I've always assumed that that's why they got their name. On putting out water bowls, I don't know how common it is for others but late at night, in hot/warm dry weather I quite often see toads having a soak, and comfortable enough to stay there watching you watch them even if you're quite close. 🙂
It's actually us Brits who are wrong on this one (and the Aussies are wrong in different way). Turtles is the general term for that entire order testudines. That includes sea turtles, terrapins, and tortoises. Tortoise refers to the specific family testudinidae, which are distinguished by the way they have evolved to walk (on their toes). Their are land turtles that walk plantigrade (on their soles), these are not tortoises.
I was Mountain biking in Northern England, Saw Red squirrels for the only time in my Life ,It almost brought me to tears ,Don't believe I was the only one amongst the Group. We stopped and just watched it was magical. Also had deer Cross Cross infront of us in Wales, it was in the 80s so no mobile phones. The Animal still on my Bucket list is a Pine Martin, but I doubt it will happen, ho also seen Seals I was surprised how big they were .
There is a bird hide which looks onto a country estate near the Cotswolds. Some years ago a pine marten was seen and photographed. I never thought I would see one but I was filling in a couple of hours and talking to a lady when we suddenly saw one running past very fast, pursued by a stoat, which veered off and went another way. I think it was just making the marten get off its patch.
Turtles: Normally in the UK we tend to have tortoise’s rather than turtles. In fact they were very popular in the home as a family pet and were notorious for escaping from the back garden a lot. That’s because when they wake up from their winter hibernation once the weather gets warmer they tend to be let loose on the tasty weeds in the garden area. They will however escape to the wild garden scape of next door pretty quick!!! (And down to the local village Green sometimes!!!
I saw an armadillo wandering along the road in Florida once I was told to assume even a puddle has an alligator in it! My friend in Surrey has a bunch of foxes living in a bush near her flat and they make a noise like they are being murdered!
Near where I live in Wales there is a red kite centre where they are fed each day. During the winter, you might see anything up to 150 arriving for the food. You can find terrapins in the canal in London.
For some reason I feel the need to repeat Dan Antopolski's winning Joke Of The Year at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe: "Hedgehogs - why can't they just share the hedge?"
Hedgehogs are great at keeping a garden free of slugs, every so often my security lights will trigger at night and it's a hedgehog snuffling across the bottom of the garage door. They do love compost heaps, food source and the large amount of heat generated inside, so have to be careful when poking a fork in to turn the heap Usually nocturnal but I did rescue one a few years ago on a hot sunny afternoon as it made a b-line for the deepest section of the fishpond, noticed a bloody gash on its snout and gave the SSPCA a call. Turned out there was more than just the cut I'd seen so they took the wee fella away for treatment and released after in a different area. Seeing deer when out walking depends on which way the wind is blowing and how much noise you're making. Around dusk is often a good time to see them as they tend to come down from the hillsides.
Hedgehogs are struggling as a species. It's worth looking up how to help them. It's also really important not to provide milk for them. It will kill them. I love red kites. We get the occasional one here passing through, though we've got resident buzzards in our trees. Every year, the kites seem to get closer. There's some near Bere Regis, so maybe next year. We very occasionally see a sea eagle since they were re-introduced. Apparently, they roam a lot. We sometimes get sika deer in our garden and every year we have a hare in the spring. Hares bother me because of the risk to them from hare coursing. We are on alert because the fields have just been harvested, and that attracts buzzards, barn owls and twats who (illegally) hunt hares with dogs. Perhaps my favourite local wildlife are the weasels that live in the stone walls on the farm. Diddy things, but properly deadly hunters.
Yes, we can help hedgehogs by leaving a small gap at the bottom of our garden fence so they can roam far enough to find food. And never give them bread and milk! Catfood if you must.
Hedgehogs are very common in New Zealand as well, which is unfortunate as they like to sit on the road at night because the road is warm from the heat of the day, and they always get run over.
I grew up in North Wales in a place where we have a LOT of Red Foxes and Red Kites. My publishing company is called Stygian Fox after the Fire Fox or those black foxes with red and orange tinges. In the UK urban foxes fill the raccoon niche. We also had deer, and around a nearby castle we had peacocks and tamed wolves. One of the reasons the UK and Europe share a lot of species despite us being islands is the existence of Doggerland. I won't say anymore because I'd LOVE to see you research and do a video 😊😊
Well I've never heard that term. I finished school in the 1970's and both my primary and secondary schools had blocks of temporary classrooms sitting in the grounds, due to the sudden increase of pupils post-war and onwards. We called them annexes or even the more industrial term 'prefabs.' I think my primary school took until the 1990's to finally turn those temporary classrooms into permanent state of the art new brick buildings.
@@frankbrodie5168Terrapin was the name of the manufacturer. They were based in Birmingham and made prefabs from the 50s they apparently stopped trading in 2016.
I saw a pair of them in a pet shop in Wimbledon. They were the first hedgehogs I has seen since the early 1970s, even though I live near the outskirts of London. Children used to come in to see them and the parrot that sat on a perch nearby. (The shop featured on a tv makeover programme a few years ago so I guess these attractions weren't generating vast sales)
In my garden I have a resident hedgehog, I live a few hundred meters from a country park, were there is red deer, fallow deer, muntjac deer, adders , badges and red kytes
Deer are a nuisance, especially up here in Scotland where they do untold damage to trees. They are out of control because they have no predators. They have no predators because we wiped out all the bears and wolves. They are also very tasty, if well-prepared and cooked.
I live in outskirts of London and haven't seen a wild hedgehog for nearly 50 years. By contrast see urban foxes nearly every day, and can see them any time of the day. Also, one of the most common birds I tend to see are parakeets, which are not native to UK but have escaped at taken over a bit like pythons in Florida.
Those green parakeets are spreading and multiplying. Years ago I lived in Kingston and they were a fairly rare novelty in parks along the river. Nowadays Windsor Great Park, 10 miles west, has flocks of them everywhere.
@@davidpaterson2309 I think lockdown has given them a massive boost. They were rarer before then, but now seem to be everywhere. I think birds that relied on people feeding them/people dropping food left a bunch of environments, and the parrots moved in to the otherwise unoccupied areas. Not that it's totally a bad thing, I've seen them picking fights with other invasive animals like grey squirrels.
They reintroduced Red Kites back into the UK in 1990 in the Chilterns where I live, I believe only 13 were brought over from Spain having died out in the a UK many years before. Within several years I could sit in my sun deck and watch 25+ in the sky in front of me. They cruise along the ridge where I live and have been known to look in my bedroom window! They are beautiful. They have slowly spread out from the Chilterns and can now be found in many areas of England.
They didn't quite die out, there were maybe four breeding females left! There are quite a few release sites around the country, the main/first one was Mid-Wales around Rhaeadr. A really elegant bird. Hares are quite rare but round us (Nr Skipton) there are a lot. We have them running around the garden and along the lane leading to the house. We even had one come into the house by about a metre! It sat there looking around then lollopped off!!
I have bought a hedgehog house for the garden. There are loads of people with them now and most are occupied. A feeding station next to their house and they are as happy as larry.
Regarding "land" turtles. I have noticed Americans call all shelled reptiles turtles In Commonwealth English (UK Australia etc: Turtles = sea living, big flippers Terrapins = amphibious, clawed flippers, often on riverbanks Tortoises = land living, usually can't swim So many videos of Americans dropping tortoises into lakes or from boats thinking they're setting them free
Thanks for this. "You can be 100% certain you will not be eaten by a bear" is indeed a great slogan for UK tourism. Unfortunately, hedgehogs are less common than they used to be. However, my parents live in the countryside and they would sometimes see badgers, hedgehogs or even deer in their garden. Hearing owls screech at night is spooky however. I agree that red kites are fabulous birds - it is amazing to see them circling low in the sky in the Chilterns and Thames Valley. I am not a birdwatcher but could happily watch them for a long time. I am ambivalent about foxes in London - at night, they sound like someone is being attacked violently and they walk openly in the daylight without fear of people. You can find herds of deer in parks such as Richmond and Bushy Park or (more rarely) Epping Forest. I am happy that we don't have alligators or the brain-eating amoeba you mentioned in another video.
I live in a Bristol suburb . Have seen occasionally hedgehogs and badgers, less in recent years, but foxes can be seen every night in my street. I like watching the cubs play like puppies. A good place to see seals in England is Great Yarmouth, they have boat trips, weather permitting ,out to a nearby colony ; many years ago you could buy a little bucket of fish to chuck to them and they would swim alongside the boat . They don't allow it nowadays but its still a pleasant trip .
You have a lot of massive animals in the US. When I was in Florida, was in a pool and had a vulture staring over at us. I could not get over the size of it.
I grew up where badgers, hedgehogs, foxes, and hares (and even pinemartens) were common. As a preteen I'd seek out badger cetes in their sets and count their cubs. Of course I'd call them Brocks. With prickles of hedgehogs, their hognets were hard to find. Skulks of foxes were everywhere. We'd hear the tods and vixen at it every night. No wonder there were so many kits, kid Reynards were so cute!! Droves of hare were more elusive and the jacks and does guarded their leverets closely. Of course, back home we called them, respectively, moch daear, draenog, llwynog, and ysgyfarnog. 🏴
Here in Scotland we have several other native wild critters you can add to your list...weasel, stoat, polecat, red squirrel, adders (GB's only poisonous snake), grass snakes (harmless), beaver were extinct through persecution but have been reintroduced in areas in the highlands and are doing well...and of course Scotlands minature tiger the Scottish Wildcat, again persecuted to the brink of extinction but there is now a very successful breeding and reintroduction program again in the highlands. Recently there has been a problem in some areas eg Argyll with herds of Feral Pigs which are very habitat destructive and aggressive so stay clear of them! We also have otters and several native birds of prey.
There is also Wallibies, native scorpions especially in London and Wick, native turantulas, Scottish wild cats, pigeons who travel by public transport, parakeets and wild haggis that can be found on the shores of Loch Lomond and Edinburgh and have each leg shorter than the other. As for bears in the UK you have never been to Newcastle on a Saturday night
If you go to Scotland. or on your next trip to Scotland, there are a couple of animals to look for. Both live mainly in the Highlands. The first is a grouse which is a smallish bird, you might be able to find grouse further south. The second is the elusive haggis. This small animals are very difficult to find in the wild and if you do come across one then you are very special.
I like the way the noble haggi have two legs shorter on one side than on the other so they can run around mountain slopes. Of course, this can also be their downfall; if you block their path they have to turn round and when that happens they topple over - that's when you can catch them. The problem then is catching a sheep so you can boil your haggis in its stomach; sheep don't seem to like this idea much and run away, bleating.
1) I suggest you check out the New Forest in Hampshire. It´s just over an hour on the train (London Waterloo to Brockenhurst). In the New Forest there are huge numbers of wild horses (among lots of other wildlife). 2) I´ve only ever spent four days in the USA, the last nine hours of which were in Miami airport (MIA)!
I've seen a hedgehog in North America, specifically in Canada. However, this was in a pet shop which was the first time I had heard of them being kept as pets (not something you could cuddle). We do have one or two that wander about the gardens of our block of terraced houses in the UK, which we mainly detect by it's loud sniffling for worms, slugs and snails (it crunches the snail shells quite loudly). It's quite used to people and would rather run away (quite fast) rather than roll up in a ball using it's spines as protection. PS. We don't hunt deer in the UK as everybody seems to do in the US. They are sometimes shot for culling purposes when the herd gets too large.
@brianbradley6744 My brother had a pet hedgehog back in the 60s. You can cuddle them if you know how to handle them. 😁 They're using contraceptives to keep the deer population down in lots of areas instead of shooting them.
Scotland has a different relationship with deer of all varieties. There are far too many of them for the land to sustain, but they do provide the upper classes with a peculiar form of sport, I suppose.
I saw about a dozen Red Kites wheeling over a field that was being harvested in Buckinghamshire. I guess they were hanging around for a free lunch. Really impressive.
@grahamstubbs4862: They are a dwindling in numbers now, so you were lucky to see some. I am afraid that Wind Farm arrays are the cause, they get disorientated by them and killed but the CEO of the RSPB would rather have more WF that save our birds of prey😡 they are started by diesel generators anyway so they are not as environmentally friendly as people think they are let alone ecologically friendly.
Cool video. You made me think of a TV show from America that I used to watch as a kid in the UK called Gentle Ben which was about a bear living in Florida. I think he eventually got arrested at Miami Airport (!) with three kilos in his luggage.
the hedgehog snuffling noises can sound like something from a horror film, badgers do sometimes make thier sets under decking, since decking doesnt get moved much its a nice safe place. Foxes - ive sat down with them, whenever i see them i stop moving and let them carry on thier way, seems some of them started to recognise me, they stop for a second, looked at me, and carried on thier way, unhurried, where for the most part they bolt to the nearest cover You have also missed the autumn pheasants, there are certain roads you cant drive down in autumn because they flood the road
In Ukraine where I come from we don’t see much of a wild life, so you can imagine my shock when I spotted a herd of deer casually roaming the streets of the apartment complex where I lived. I’ve seen chipmunks, coyotes, raccoons (trash pandas lol), bunnies - these frequently build their nests right on people’s lawns and I’ve saved baby bunnies twice already while mowing the lawn. Skunks - these are quite annoying, one of them made himself at home under my house and it’s difficult to get rid of it. Also snakes - I have never seen a snake before moving to US, now I can name most of them in my area whenever I see them. I saw only one venomous copperhead so far the rest are “harmless” which doesn’t mean they won’t bite if you mess around with them. Funny thing is that our friends have hedgehogs as their pets in the US, so yeah I’ve seen hedgehogs here but not in the wild.
Here out on the west coast of Scotland we have red squirrels and badgers and pine martens as frequent visitors to our garden. We've had to move wild bird feeders because the badgers were standing on hind legs and hauling the feeders off the lower tree branches! We have a river next to our property and I've seen a mink on the river bank before, mink aren't native to Scotland, but are the offspring of escapees from mink farms in the past. The are voracious predators and have taken ducks and hens from our neighbour's garden.
I have had a family of hedgehogs in my back garden. One of my dogs used to freak out when she saw them and couldn't work out why they rolled up in a ball when they were threatened. It was so funny to watch them. I have video on my UA-cam channel of the juveniles snuffling about.
I found your web site by accident,I am enjoying it a lot,I like your humour ,you have made me realise the good things we have in the uk .the differences you shown I found very interesting.you have done a lot of travelling in the uk,probably more than me.keep up the good work,I am looking forward to more of your posts.regards Anthony page😊
I have two hedgehogs and a fox that turn up to the back patio every evening after dark for fine dining. Foxy will eat almost anything. The hedgehogs like cat food and dried insects (which I soak in water). The crows, jackdaws and magpies like monkey nuts and also dog or cat biscuits!!
This is why I love where I live.. We have NO animals or Insects that can KILL US.. Even though I'm an arachnophobe we don't have spiders that can kill us either. Plus NO earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes etc... Thankfully.
@@nathangamble125 Nah. We've never had a hurricane in the UK. Even if we did have hurricane force winds here it still wouldn't be called a hurricane. The name is region specific. In the far east they're called typhoons.
No wild animals, but every year a few people are killed by cows and so-called pet dogs. I'm just glad there are no alligators living under my garden shed!
Turtles - we don't have pet turtles in the UK but we do have pet tortoises (land reptiles) and terrapins (semi-aquatic freshwater reptiles are now illegal to sell).
By the way, we have classical deer in the UK, large animals with antlers. We also have a much smaller variety, about the size of a large dog. The smaller variety are muntjac deer from China. They were imported by the Duke of Bedford for his estate, Woburn Abbey. Some of the muntjac escaped and now seem to be all over England. We see them here near Cambridge.
Yes. Only the red deer and roe deer are truly native to Britain, but several other species have been introduced over the centuries, including fallow deer (with spotted coats and palm shaped antlers) brought in by the Normans for hunting, sika from India, and Chinese water deer. Red deer can be found in the US too.
Where I live in the east of England, there's at least one or two red kite pairs who nest close to my home each summer, and for me it's always felt like the arrival of the red kites is the first sign of the warmer months to come. They're also Just really cool birds
I remember as a child travelling from London down to the West Country for a holiday in about 1970 and we stopped at a teahouse/cafe where there was a sign inviting guests to go around the back to see a water otter. There on a rock in a pond was a kettle
Hedgehogs, full of fleas, and incredibly dim, they are really stupid bless them. But they can be really cute. Put some food out for them and they will soon find it, dried cat food is good. They bowl into each other when angry ! They can move deceptively fast but tend to freeze if they get discovered.
The question is have you seen a native British squirrel yet. There are lots of American ones around which have all but driven out the locals... Red kites were first reintroduced to England in the Chilterns above Watlington back in July 1990 over a few years. Their numbers had been reduced through persecution over 200 years, that there were only a few breeding pairs left in Wales. They were extinct in the rest of the country. A couple of the reintroduced birds were from Wales, but more came from Aragon and Navarra in Spain. That was about 90 birds released in total over a period of 10 years or so. Further re-introductions were made in other parts of the UK. They have gone from strength to strength. I used to have to drive down the M40 through the cutting of the Chiltern escarpment every couple of weeks, and used to walk in the area too. It was very exciting to see the numbers increase and to see how they spread. A few even got down as far as Heathrow, where I worked, although only as visitors. Now they can be found over much of the South East of England, and in very large numbers. It's now estimated that there are about 6,000 breeding pairs in the UK. What is often mistaken for a red kite is the common buzzard. That is a slightly shorter wingspan, but with broader wings. They are more heavily built and also lack the forked tail. There are about 7,000 breeding pairs in the UK, but in the South East are considerably outnumbered by kites. They also don't seem to congregate in numbers as much. So, if you are out in the country, looking at what you think is a red kite, then double check. If it lacks the forked tail then you will have seen a buzzard, which in may experience is no a much rarer sight where I live. Like the red kite, they aren't in the Americas either, although they can be found over most of Europe as well as in parts of Africa and Asia. nb. I am told in America that you need to look out for the elusive jackalope.
I've seen red squirrels in the Formby Nature Reserve on the coast just north of Liverpool, and even though they are hand fed each day by tourists they are extremely shy and reluctant to come down from the pine trees. Contrast that with the grey squirrels in my local park in London, which think nothing of climbing up your leg in search of snacks. There are a few more pockets of reds around England, such as on Brownsea Island and in the Kielder Forest in Northumberland, but they're more common still in the Scottish Highlands.
The reds are coming back. They are following the Pine Martens. The pine martens have discovered that grey squirrels are fatter, slower and tasty.so are eating greys instead of reds.
Badger fact! American Badgers and European Badgers are not genetically that close. They are both mustelids (the group that includes weasels, wolverines, red pandas and both badgers), but just not as close as the same name suggests. On foxes, people do tend to like them more than dislike. UK is a place of animal lovers, and foxes find food not only in scraps, but people also regularly leave food out for them. Jam sandwiches are quite common as a treat, or pet food. Deer have no natural predators in the UK. Zilch, nada, none. That's part of the reason why there are so many. The other reason...is because we have 6 different species of them (7 if you include the Reindeer in Scotland). Red and Roe Deer are native, but Fallow, Japanese Sika, Chinese Water and Muntjac are all introduced by various methods over the centuries. They all occupy different niches (Red Deer are taller browsers, meanwhile Muntjac root around shrubs for example) so they don't compete with each other.
I live in Cumbria and I was ticking off the list as you were going through them, and the only one on the UK list that I haven't seen is the Red Kite... maybe I need to look up more.
I used to work on trains and the only time I saw a red kite was probably about 20 years ago now near Giggleswick in North Yorkshire. I knew they were endangered and being reintroduced in Scotland so I told the RSPB. They were as surprised as I was.
Within the last week or so I've seen footage of a dolphin in the river Thames. Joe public as obviously been told to stay away to avoid causing the dolphin anymore stress.
Great video GGL!! Quick fact: there are now more deer now in Britain than since the Bronze Age 3500 years ago!! 🦌🦌🦌🦌Also what about manatees?? We have seals (very pedestrian) but Florida has Manatees which are really cool animals!!
There's a nature trail in Swindon, Old Town Railway Line, (disused). Has a mound facing Wichelstowe. Brilliant for observing red kites. Foxes are in my street, yelping, 3, 4 a.m. or can be seen walking back from the pub. Had many a staring contest with one. Funny things.
Some years ago, we had a house on the outskirts of Brighton, with a longish garden, slightly wild at the rear end. We discovered that we had a family of foxes , a vixen and two cubs, living there. We saw the cubs regularly, playing in the early morning. It was so nice. Now we live on the outskirts of Cambridge. Some years ago we found a hedgehog was visiting our garden and foraging. But our neighbour repaired their fence and the hedgehogs stopped coming. However, a little later I found two juvenile hedgehogs on the front lawn. I called the RSPCA who said not to worry because their mother was around somewhere. They did disappear, but I have not seen hedgehogs since.
I've always lived in the same sort of area of Essex-Suffolk and up until a few years ago I'd only seen one red kite (in about 2009). I see them all the time now.
Deers come in herds. There is a smallish patch of trees just opposite my front window which is home to a scurry of grey squirrels, yes, those pesky invaders from across the water. It is lovely to see them running around the grass, and along the tops of fences...i'd much prefer it if they were red though.
Yeah our wildlife is definitely in general of the cuter kind than that found in America. Especially when you've grown up with Beatrix Potter's Mrs Tiggywinkle, Peter Rabbit and Squirrel Nutkin. Plus you have 'Wind in the Willows', many Enid Blighton books and "Brambly Hedge" books. Great books about our wildlife and of interest to anyone who is into the "Cottage Core" asthetic.
If you've seen Red Kites then it is quite probable that you've had the chance to see the "Common Buzzard" (Buteo Buteo) - medium large bird of prey and very different from the birds called "Buzzards" in the USA.
There's a herd of deer on the outskirts of Plymouth that caused a bit of chaos last year when they got into the local hospital and decided to take a tour of the maternity ward!
Some other things that I see in the UK (not sure how common they are elsewhere): Red and grey squirrels - grey ones especially are all over the place, very common to see. Snakes, slow worms, and other small reptiles - I don't know the specifics, and these are probably a bit rarer, but I have on occasion seen a little slow worm slithering around, or other small reptiles chilling. They're pretty cool. It's nice to know that there aren't really any dangerous ones (you'd be hard pressed to find and get attacked by an adder even if you are trying). Same with spiders. I don't know the types, but I think they're pretty cool, and it's nice to know that they aren't going to kill you here, so you can hold them without a worry. Then there's also plenty of types of birds. I'm sure a lot of these are common everywhere, but I think the variety is quite appealing (I'm no expert though) - if you have a bird feeder or bird table, you'll see a huge variety of small birds with no effort at all. The pigeons are of course everywhere, but at least they are polite, unlike the seagulls which are an actual nuisance if you go to the beach. If you have a pond or go somewhere with similar bodies of water, it's fairly easy to find frogs and newts. I'm not sure I've seen any other amphibeans just out and about though. It's also easy to spot dragonflies in the same sorts of places, which are quite cool. That probably accounts for most of the other interesting animals I can imagine seeing just wandering around.
i recently saw a video about the red and grey squirrel. it said that the red one is the European squirrel and the grey one has been introduced from somewhere else. and (especially in the UK) the grey one is pushing out the red one.
Grey squirrels were introduced from North America and have displaced the UK's native red squirrels which are now mostly to be found in parts of Scotland. As well as competing against the red squirrel, grey squirrels also carry a disease to which they are largely immune but which is deadly to red squirrels.
Just driving along rural roads you can see a lot of wildlife if there's little traffic. After moving from urban to rural I saw more wildlife in a week than I had in a year when I'd been urban - deer, badgers (including an albino one), stoats, weasels, squirrels, rodents, various insects, lots of birds (I'm a birder). Only a fortnight ago we saw an owl swoop down on a vole. The vole got away and ran off. But the owl followed it, landed, and we saw its back and its wing moving a lot as it dug out the vole. Last week we'd stopped to admire the view when, as we were about to head off we saw a mole ambling across the lane, then a stoat meandering after it. There was a flurry in the grass where we couldn't see. The stoat killed the mole but didn't eat it, probably a kill first ask questions later. After it had gone we went and looked at the mole to check it was dead. We've seen a buzzard carry off a rabbit. We've also stopped to watch a bird digging into a bank and seen the worms coming up to the surface pronto and legging it (well, not "legging"). Increasing numbers of owls to be seen, if you know where they like to perch, or look for them up and down field edges - tawny, barn, little, short-eared. And all that's just driving around doing ordinary normal life.
Hares were a very common sight at Altcar, in Lancashire, near where I grew up. They were chased with greyhounds until it was banned in 2004 in a sport called coursing (ancestor of dog racing on an oval track).
The animals that Europe and N America have in common are all cold tolerant species- during the ice ages there was (very cold) land between Russia and Alaska and many animals (fox, moose, brown/grizzly bear, wolf) interchanged then. Some other species crossed rather earlier and and now different species (lynx, beaver, etc. as well as forms that are now extinct in one or both such as horses, bison, lions and mammoth).
I live in St Alban's, which is north of London and we have Red Kites flying around daily. Also nesting on our 11 Century cathedral we have a bird of prey (not sure which one)
Plenty of seals and a few dolphins off the Northumberland coast. I hadn't thought about badgers. I wondered whether our robins are sufficiently different to get a mention.
We live in Somerset a few miles from Glastonbury. We have a badger sett in our gardens and feed them peanuts, they are quite friendly now. We also have a huge amount of Sloworms slithering around. Loads of hedgehogs as three pairs of foxes and some Dormice.
What about red squirrels? They used to live in the UK but I have heard they were being eridicated by the Grey squirrels that people imported from the US and then released in the UK. I live in Belgium and we have an abundance of red squirrels. We also have (I am not lying!! ) the occassional wolf in Belgium. And in the deep south in the Ardennes wild pigs and a rare lynx. There are also snakes in the UK but the average citizen does not come across them. They are way too scared of humans.
Yup, there's a seal colony at Pegwell Bay. There are boat tours from Sandwich that you can take to view them. Incidentally, Pegwell Bay is where St. Augustine landed in Britain to start spreading Christianity, and it's also where Julius Caesar landed when the Romans invaded Britain 2000 years ago.
I went the opposite way from the UK to US. Biggest surprise was the number of poisonous or deadly things out there from fire ants to scorpions, coyotes to wolves, rattlesnakes to tarantulas.
There are individual bears in the Alps, Switzerland or Austria. Or in Eastern Europe, in the Carpathians. Certainly in Russia from where individual bears migrate westward. But the animals have to stay away from people, who often shoot bears.
I'm suprised you didn't mention the European Robin. Go gardening and they'll soon be watching you, then exploring the area you just dug as soon as you turn your back. Incredibly cute and I've them eating mealworms from my hand before. The iconic photo(s) of a robin on a garden tool handle is really easy to recreate; just move 6' away and they'll happily perch there.
Pleased that you have discovered some of our wildlife. Badgers are much larger than people think and they are an amazing animal to see in their own habitat. I have seen a badger in the wild in daylight but it is a rare sight, so you've been lucky to see one. Hedgehogs are not as common in the UK as they were. Roads pose a very great danger to them. There are far more foxes in cities and towns now than there were when I was a child. Seals are everywhere around the coastline. Have you seen a stoat or a weasel yet? Snakes -Though we do have grass snakes, smooth snakes and adders. Only the adder is poisonous. One can live in the UK all one's life and never see any snake at all. We have no poisonous spiders either.
Hi Kalyn, We sometimes get groups of deer in towns and cities, can often be seen on Friday/Saturday nights. The are generally referred to as Stag does. 😊😊
We have no native freshwater turtles in the UK - although some of the hardier ones could probably survive here and escaped pet turtles exist in the wild. But we do get sea turtles like the Leatherback visiting our shores - places like the west country and Wales
You may be interested to know that the presence of the red kites in the Chilterns was due to another American who came to live in the UK. They had been hunted to extinction in most of the UK but John Paul Getty II agreed to allow a reintroduction on his estate near Stokenchurch about 35 years ago. We also have a number of species in the UK which are feral - living and breeding wild but not native. Feral muntjac are common (the only native species of dear are the red and the roe), the grey squirrel and the green parakeet.
Which of these animals surprised you the most?
Have not watched the entire video yet but will be very disappointed if Chavs are not on the list.
The fact America doesn't have hedgehogs always surprises me!! Did you know we used to have hedgehog flavoured crisps??🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔
@@jamesbeeching6138 They got banned because they didn't actually contain hedgehog.
Hedgehogs because they're quite rare in towns these days. Modern wooden fencing means they can't roam around from garden to garden which they could with the old chain link fencing.
Check the images you use, a photo of a Crocodile was shown not an Alligator, you showed a Tortoise not a Turtle. It is estimated that urban Fox numbers exceed country ones as they have found life safer and easier, less likely to be shot by an angry farmer for killing his Lambs and Poultry, being chased by Hounds is no longer a problem for them. Urban Foxes are also larger than their country cousins.
You didn't mention Wombles.
Very cute little animals, although quite shy and secretive. You're most likely to see them on Wimbledon Common around dusk.
😂
In the fields behind my house in Cambridgeshire, this morning I have seen: 3 roe deer, 2 Muntjac deer, 2 hares, and in the sky 3 red kites.
The screams of foxes are usually when they are shagging. It's a blood curdling noise. I almost phoned the police one night because I was convinced that a woman was being murdered in the back garden but I looked out and saw the foxes going at it.
lol🤣
Yes, the blood curdling noise that urban foxes make at night in the middle of residential areas is generally to do with mating (shagging), but males also use it to mark out territory. I have a friend who is a bit of wildlife expert and I remember her telling me once that generally it is made by the female (vixen) before, and not during, the “event” and it is the vixen calling for a mate and saying she is “available”. Apparently vixens can be very assertive! Which probably also explains why male foxes can also be very good “dads”, and unlike most male mammals, do not generally clear off, but actively participate in looking after the cub until it can fend for itself.
So until fox hunting was banned in the UK, it was the unfortunate case that countless supportive “fathers” were needlessly being slaughtered. Hopefully Princess Anne has had time to reflect on this.
@@johnnyuk3365the penis of the male also swells up so they get stuck together until the swelling’s gone down. This ensures no other male can come along and mate with the female and it’s only his genes that get passed on.
I've only ever heard that once and it was disturbing lol.
Not "shagging" - it's the vixens mating call, so it's them calling out to let all the local boy foxes know she's ready to mate.
An important point about urban foxes in the UK is that Rabies has been eradicated here for over a century so we don’t have the problem of rabid foxes.
A man was driving along the road when he saw a suitcase full of badgers,so he pulled over and called the RSPCA.
They asked him “are they moving?”
He said “I don’t know,but that would certainly explain the suitcase”
😂😂😂
( It's a herd of deer ) An American friend said their Badgers look like they want to stab you with a Shiv, whereas the European Badgers look like they want to invite you round for tea and cakes. Hedgehogs are so much fun, they have their habits and favourite places. We rescued a very young Hoglet in June 2 years ago, fed and watered her for a couple of weeks before letting her out free in our garden. She still visits every night in summer and this year she brought her own babies too. We are on the England/Scotland border so summer nights are very short and it's common to see hungry hedgehogs out before sunset and after dawn. But people are used to this and just let them do their thing. They eat slugs and snails as well as any cat or dog food left outside so gardeners love them. In remote places of Scotland wild seals will swim over to look at you. It's magical.
I know of a hedgehog rescuer and she only recommends dried food with meat as the top ingredient and not cereal as they can’t digest it. Also because wet food encourages flies which in turn produce maggots and infest the Hedgehogs eyes ears etc, and can kill them. She’s saved and rescued many by laboriously picking out the many maggots one by one with tweezers. She’s a former nurse and on twitter.
Surely it should be an expense of deer.
@@KenFullman they’re herd animals, just like horses etc, so logically it’s a herd of deer.
@@KenFullman I like your play on words - I think we should seriously consider changing to your suggestion!
Be carefull. U.k badgers have incredibly strong Jaws. They can lock their jaws on to your ankle & you cannot shake them off. They would never usually attack. They are quite shy. However never get between a badger & it's cub.
Living in Devon I am so lucky to have hedgehogs in the garden. I always have a bowl of clean water and I put out hedgehog food every night, I was bowled over about two weeks ago, i had two adults and four babies (hoglets) out at the same time, so cute
I really like the way you can often hear rather than see them, with all the rummaging about in leaves etc and grumbling, grunty-snorting. I've always assumed that that's why they got their name.
On putting out water bowls, I don't know how common it is for others but late at night, in hot/warm dry weather I quite often see toads having a soak, and comfortable enough to stay there watching you watch them even if you're quite close. 🙂
This year's hedgehogs that live in my garden are the third generation of 'hogs I've happily watched grow and thrive out there 😊
When you see a Red Squirrel (as opposed to the Non-Native Grey Squirrel) the immediate reaction is "Oh God its so cute!"
Americans seem to conflate turtles (aquatic - ponds, rivers etc) with tortoises (land only)
No such thing as a land turtle - that’s called a tortoise!
where as we confuse (ninja) for (hero)
Not forgetting terrapins
Well they aren't wrong. Tortoises are testudinoidea so are turtles. In the same way humans are apes
It's actually us Brits who are wrong on this one (and the Aussies are wrong in different way).
Turtles is the general term for that entire order testudines. That includes sea turtles, terrapins, and tortoises.
Tortoise refers to the specific family testudinidae, which are distinguished by the way they have evolved to walk (on their toes).
Their are land turtles that walk plantigrade (on their soles), these are not tortoises.
Do you know the difference between stoats and weasels?
Weasels are weasily recognised, whereas stoats are stoatally different!
Excellent joke!
As a British animal lover and wildlife obsessed person, I really enjoyed this .
I was Mountain biking in Northern England, Saw Red squirrels for the only time in my Life ,It almost brought me to tears ,Don't believe I was the only one amongst the Group. We stopped and just watched it was magical. Also had deer Cross Cross infront of us in Wales, it was in the 80s so no mobile phones. The Animal still on my Bucket list is a Pine Martin, but I doubt it will happen, ho also seen Seals I was surprised how big they were .
There is a bird hide which looks onto a country estate near the Cotswolds. Some years ago a pine marten was seen and photographed. I never thought I would see one but I was filling in a couple of hours and talking to a lady when we suddenly saw one running past very fast, pursued by a stoat, which veered off and went another way. I think it was just making the marten get off its patch.
My 2 cats used to sit and watch the hedgehogs that used to come into my garden late evening, clearly knew not to get too close!
Turtles: Normally in the UK we tend to have tortoise’s rather than turtles. In fact they were very popular in the home as a family pet and were notorious for escaping from the back garden a lot. That’s because when they wake up from their winter hibernation once the weather gets warmer they tend to be let loose on the tasty weeds in the garden area. They will however escape to the wild garden scape of next door pretty quick!!! (And down to the local village Green sometimes!!!
I saw an armadillo wandering along the road in Florida once
I was told to assume even a puddle has an alligator in it!
My friend in Surrey has a bunch of foxes living in a bush near her flat and they make a noise like they are being murdered!
Near where I live in Wales there is a red kite centre where they are fed each day. During the winter, you might see anything up to 150 arriving for the food.
You can find terrapins in the canal in London.
Yes, i went see those Red Kites in Wales. They were great. They spread eastwards across the country and I believe even see in London now.
I live south of London and their everywhere but it seems to have had a negative effect on the other birds of prey, buzzards and kestrels etc.
@@juliegale3863 Apparently they were very common in towns and cities (and so especially London) up until the 19th century.
For some reason I feel the need to repeat Dan Antopolski's winning Joke Of The Year at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe: "Hedgehogs - why can't they just share the hedge?"
Hedgehogs are great at keeping a garden free of slugs, every so often my security lights will trigger at night and it's a hedgehog snuffling across the bottom of the garage door. They do love compost heaps, food source and the large amount of heat generated inside, so have to be careful when poking a fork in to turn the heap
Usually nocturnal but I did rescue one a few years ago on a hot sunny afternoon as it made a b-line for the deepest section of the fishpond, noticed a bloody gash on its snout and gave the SSPCA a call. Turned out there was more than just the cut I'd seen so they took the wee fella away for treatment and released after in a different area.
Seeing deer when out walking depends on which way the wind is blowing and how much noise you're making. Around dusk is often a good time to see them as they tend to come down from the hillsides.
Hedgehogs are struggling as a species. It's worth looking up how to help them. It's also really important not to provide milk for them. It will kill them.
I love red kites. We get the occasional one here passing through, though we've got resident buzzards in our trees. Every year, the kites seem to get closer. There's some near Bere Regis, so maybe next year. We very occasionally see a sea eagle since they were re-introduced. Apparently, they roam a lot.
We sometimes get sika deer in our garden and every year we have a hare in the spring. Hares bother me because of the risk to them from hare coursing. We are on alert because the fields have just been harvested, and that attracts buzzards, barn owls and twats who (illegally) hunt hares with dogs.
Perhaps my favourite local wildlife are the weasels that live in the stone walls on the farm. Diddy things, but properly deadly hunters.
Yes, we can help hedgehogs by leaving a small gap at the bottom of our garden fence so they can roam far enough to find food. And never give them bread and milk! Catfood if you must.
@@chocsalYou can also get hedgehog pellet food. We did get some when a hedgehog would visit the garden.
Hedgehogs are very common in New Zealand as well, which is unfortunate as they like to sit on the road at night because the road is warm from the heat of the day, and they always get run over.
Hedgehogs really need our help now, their natural habitats are slowly being removed. I hope your hometown is safe during this early hurricane season.
My street has 🦔 sign. I love those little idiots❤❤❤❤
A while ago l was riding my horse in my arena when fox came through the hedge and then sat down to watch for a few minutes.
Aw, cute!
Marks out of ten?!
I did wonder but he didn’t say!
@@lizbignell7813
Perhaps he just told your horse... 🦊🐴🤔
@bridgidsingleton, you could be right as the horse kept an ear cocked towards him.
I grew up in North Wales in a place where we have a LOT of Red Foxes and Red Kites. My publishing company is called Stygian Fox after the Fire Fox or those black foxes with red and orange tinges. In the UK urban foxes fill the raccoon niche. We also had deer, and around a nearby castle we had peacocks and tamed wolves.
One of the reasons the UK and Europe share a lot of species despite us being islands is the existence of Doggerland. I won't say anymore because I'd LOVE to see you research and do a video 😊😊
When I was a kid in the UK we called portable classrooms "terrapins" which are a form of turtle.
Oh yes, I thought that was just my school. Never understood it lol
Well I've never heard that term. I finished school in the 1970's and both my primary and secondary schools had blocks of temporary classrooms sitting in the grounds, due to the sudden increase of pupils post-war and onwards. We called them annexes or even the more industrial term 'prefabs.'
I think my primary school took until the 1990's to finally turn those temporary classrooms into permanent state of the art new brick buildings.
@@frankbrodie5168Terrapin was the name of the manufacturer. They were based in Birmingham and made prefabs from the 50s they apparently stopped trading in 2016.
@@PaulMGleeson I never knew
@PaulMGleeson: Interesting when they were always called Portakabin's.
I believe that most of the hedgehogs for the pet trade are the African Pygmy Hedgehog.
I saw a pair of them in a pet shop in Wimbledon. They were the first hedgehogs I has seen since the early 1970s, even though I live near the outskirts of London. Children used to come in to see them and the parrot that sat on a perch nearby.
(The shop featured on a tv makeover programme a few years ago so I guess these attractions weren't generating vast sales)
In my garden I have a resident hedgehog, I live a few hundred meters from a country park, were there is red deer, fallow deer, muntjac deer, adders , badges and red kytes
Metres, kites.
Deer are a nuisance, especially up here in Scotland where they do untold damage to trees. They are out of control because they have no predators. They have no predators because we wiped out all the bears and wolves.
They are also very tasty, if well-prepared and cooked.
I live in outskirts of London and haven't seen a wild hedgehog for nearly 50 years. By contrast see urban foxes nearly every day, and can see them any time of the day. Also, one of the most common birds I tend to see are parakeets, which are not native to UK but have escaped at taken over a bit like pythons in Florida.
Those green parakeets are spreading and multiplying. Years ago I lived in Kingston and they were a fairly rare novelty in parks along the river. Nowadays Windsor Great Park, 10 miles west, has flocks of them everywhere.
@@davidpaterson2309 I think lockdown has given them a massive boost. They were rarer before then, but now seem to be everywhere.
I think birds that relied on people feeding them/people dropping food left a bunch of environments, and the parrots moved in to the otherwise unoccupied areas. Not that it's totally a bad thing, I've seen them picking fights with other invasive animals like grey squirrels.
They reintroduced Red Kites back into the UK in 1990 in the Chilterns where I live, I believe only 13 were brought over from Spain having died out in the a UK many years before. Within several years I could sit in my sun deck and watch 25+ in the sky in front of me. They cruise along the ridge where I live and have been known to look in my bedroom window! They are beautiful. They have slowly spread out from the Chilterns and can now be found in many areas of England.
They didn't quite die out, there were maybe four breeding females left!
There are quite a few release sites around the country, the main/first one was Mid-Wales around Rhaeadr.
A really elegant bird.
Hares are quite rare but round us (Nr Skipton) there are a lot. We have them running around the garden and along the lane leading to the house. We even had one come into the house by about a metre! It sat there looking around then lollopped off!!
@bobwightman1054 Harewood nr leeds also reintroduced red kites . The first time I saw them there, I was awestruck.
I have bought a hedgehog house for the garden. There are loads of people with them now and most are occupied. A feeding station next to their house and they are as happy as larry.
Hope you're not paying for their electric, too.
"Alligators are not necessarily the most friendly" - you seem to be getting good at British Understatement! 🙂
You’re doing very well if you’ve seen a badger. I’m 34 and only ever seen two living badgers in the wild, both at the same time, when I was about 12.
Regarding "land" turtles.
I have noticed Americans call all shelled reptiles turtles
In Commonwealth English (UK Australia etc:
Turtles = sea living, big flippers
Terrapins = amphibious, clawed flippers, often on riverbanks
Tortoises = land living, usually can't swim
So many videos of Americans dropping tortoises into lakes or from boats thinking they're setting them free
Yeah, came here to say similar things, I wonder if the Roald Dahl story 'Esio Trot' ever made it in the states!
And in Mustique they call their large tortoises Land Turtles.
Thanks for this. "You can be 100% certain you will not be eaten by a bear" is indeed a great slogan for UK tourism. Unfortunately, hedgehogs are less common than they used to be. However, my parents live in the countryside and they would sometimes see badgers, hedgehogs or even deer in their garden. Hearing owls screech at night is spooky however. I agree that red kites are fabulous birds - it is amazing to see them circling low in the sky in the Chilterns and Thames Valley. I am not a birdwatcher but could happily watch them for a long time. I am ambivalent about foxes in London - at night, they sound like someone is being attacked violently and they walk openly in the daylight without fear of people. You can find herds of deer in parks such as Richmond and Bushy Park or (more rarely) Epping Forest. I am happy that we don't have alligators or the brain-eating amoeba you mentioned in another video.
I live in a Bristol suburb . Have seen occasionally hedgehogs and badgers, less in recent years, but foxes can be seen every night in my street. I like watching the cubs play like puppies.
A good place to see seals in England is Great Yarmouth, they have boat trips, weather permitting ,out to a nearby colony ; many years ago you could buy a little bucket of fish to chuck to them and they would swim alongside the boat . They don't allow it nowadays but its still a pleasant trip .
I remember seeing a seal in a Cornish harbour that used to beg fish from the boats that took holiday makers out mackerel fishing.
If you go up the coast a bit further to Horsey Gap you see loads of seals on the beach. If you go around xmas you'll see them with their pups.
@@louhunter7115 Wow I wasn't aware of that 👍
You have a lot of massive animals in the US. When I was in Florida, was in a pool and had a vulture staring over at us. I could not get over the size of it.
I grew up where badgers, hedgehogs, foxes, and hares (and even pinemartens) were common. As a preteen I'd seek out badger cetes in their sets and count their cubs. Of course I'd call them Brocks. With prickles of hedgehogs, their hognets were hard to find. Skulks of foxes were everywhere. We'd hear the tods and vixen at it every night. No wonder there were so many kits, kid Reynards were so cute!! Droves of hare were more elusive and the jacks and does guarded their leverets closely. Of course, back home we called them, respectively, moch daear, draenog, llwynog, and ysgyfarnog. 🏴
Here in Scotland we have several other native wild critters you can add to your list...weasel, stoat, polecat, red squirrel, adders (GB's only poisonous snake), grass snakes (harmless), beaver were extinct through persecution but have been reintroduced in areas in the highlands and are doing well...and of course Scotlands minature tiger the Scottish Wildcat, again persecuted to the brink of extinction but there is now a very successful breeding and reintroduction program again in the highlands. Recently there has been a problem in some areas eg Argyll with herds of Feral Pigs which are very habitat destructive and aggressive so stay clear of them! We also have otters and several native birds of prey.
Remember the Pine Martin.
There is also Wallibies, native scorpions especially in London and Wick, native turantulas, Scottish wild cats, pigeons who travel by public transport, parakeets and wild haggis that can be found on the shores of Loch Lomond and Edinburgh and have each leg shorter than the other. As for bears in the UK you have never been to Newcastle on a Saturday night
Wild haggis are sometimes mistaken for bagpipes. The difference is that bagpipes scuttle away faster than the wild haggis can.
If you go to Scotland. or on your next trip to Scotland, there are a couple of animals to look for. Both live mainly in the Highlands. The first is a grouse which is a smallish bird, you might be able to find grouse further south. The second is the elusive haggis. This small animals are very difficult to find in the wild and if you do come across one then you are very special.
I like the way the noble haggi have two legs shorter on one side than on the other so they can run around mountain slopes. Of course, this can also be their downfall; if you block their path they have to turn round and when that happens they topple over - that's when you can catch them. The problem then is catching a sheep so you can boil your haggis in its stomach; sheep don't seem to like this idea much and run away, bleating.
1) I suggest you check out the New Forest in Hampshire. It´s just over an hour on the train (London Waterloo to Brockenhurst). In the New Forest there are huge numbers of wild horses (among lots of other wildlife). 2) I´ve only ever spent four days in the USA, the last nine hours of which were in Miami airport (MIA)!
I've seen a hedgehog in North America, specifically in Canada. However, this was in a pet shop which was the first time I had heard of them being kept as pets (not something you could cuddle). We do have one or two that wander about the gardens of our block of terraced houses in the UK, which we mainly detect by it's loud sniffling for worms, slugs and snails (it crunches the snail shells quite loudly). It's quite used to people and would rather run away (quite fast) rather than roll up in a ball using it's spines as protection.
PS. We don't hunt deer in the UK as everybody seems to do in the US. They are sometimes shot for culling purposes when the herd gets too large.
@brianbradley6744 My brother had a pet hedgehog back in the 60s. You can cuddle them if you know how to handle them. 😁
They're using contraceptives to keep the deer population down in lots of areas instead of shooting them.
Scotland has a different relationship with deer of all varieties. There are far too many of them for the land to sustain, but they do provide the upper classes with a peculiar form of sport, I suppose.
I saw about a dozen Red Kites wheeling over a field that was being harvested in Buckinghamshire.
I guess they were hanging around for a free lunch. Really impressive.
they're so beautiful!
@grahamstubbs4862: They are a dwindling in numbers now, so you were lucky to see some. I am afraid that Wind Farm arrays are the cause, they get disorientated by them and killed but the CEO of the RSPB would rather have more WF that save our birds of prey😡 they are started by diesel generators anyway so they are not as environmentally friendly as people think they are let alone ecologically friendly.
Cool video. You made me think of a TV show from America that I used to watch as a kid in the UK called Gentle Ben which was about a bear living in Florida. I think he eventually got arrested at Miami Airport (!) with three kilos in his luggage.
The bear got arrested?
@@marekohampton8477 Yeah, I think they couldn't nail him though as the animal interpretor didn't show up for two days out of the three day trial.
A group of deer, usually twenty or more, is called a herd.
the hedgehog snuffling noises can sound like something from a horror film, badgers do sometimes make thier sets under decking, since decking doesnt get moved much its a nice safe place.
Foxes - ive sat down with them, whenever i see them i stop moving and let them carry on thier way, seems some of them started to recognise me, they stop for a second, looked at me, and carried on thier way, unhurried, where for the most part they bolt to the nearest cover
You have also missed the autumn pheasants, there are certain roads you cant drive down in autumn because they flood the road
Speaking of hare's. Pipkins was an other 70s or 80s TV show, featuring Heartley Hare. That was one hell of a creepy puppet.
In Ukraine where I come from we don’t see much of a wild life, so you can imagine my shock when I spotted a herd of deer casually roaming the streets of the apartment complex where I lived. I’ve seen chipmunks, coyotes, raccoons (trash pandas lol), bunnies - these frequently build their nests right on people’s lawns and I’ve saved baby bunnies twice already while mowing the lawn. Skunks - these are quite annoying, one of them made himself at home under my house and it’s difficult to get rid of it. Also snakes - I have never seen a snake before moving to US, now I can name most of them in my area whenever I see them. I saw only one venomous copperhead so far the rest are “harmless” which doesn’t mean they won’t bite if you mess around with them.
Funny thing is that our friends have hedgehogs as their pets in the US, so yeah I’ve seen hedgehogs here but not in the wild.
I’ve got hedgehogs in my garden. They just amble around doing what they like.
Here out on the west coast of Scotland we have red squirrels and badgers and pine martens as frequent visitors to our garden. We've had to move wild bird feeders because the badgers were standing on hind legs and hauling the feeders off the lower tree branches! We have a river next to our property and I've seen a mink on the river bank before, mink aren't native to Scotland, but are the offspring of escapees from mink farms in the past. The are voracious predators and have taken ducks and hens from our neighbour's garden.
I have had a family of hedgehogs in my back garden. One of my dogs used to freak out when she saw them and couldn't work out why they rolled up in a ball when they were threatened. It was so funny to watch them. I have video on my UA-cam channel of the juveniles snuffling about.
I found your web site by accident,I am enjoying it a lot,I like your humour ,you have made me realise the good things we have in the uk .the differences you shown I found very interesting.you have done a lot of travelling in the uk,probably more than me.keep up the good work,I am looking forward to more of your posts.regards Anthony page😊
I have two hedgehogs and a fox that turn up to the back patio every evening after dark for fine dining. Foxy will eat almost anything. The hedgehogs like cat food and dried insects (which I soak in water). The crows, jackdaws and magpies like monkey nuts and also dog or cat biscuits!!
This is why I love where I live.. We have NO animals or Insects that can KILL US.. Even though I'm an arachnophobe we don't have spiders that can kill us either.
Plus NO earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes etc... Thankfully.
Well, we have had hurricanes a couple of times before, but it's only once every few decades.
@@nathangamble125 Nah. We've never had a hurricane in the UK. Even if we did have hurricane force winds here it still wouldn't be called a hurricane. The name is region specific. In the far east they're called typhoons.
We do have earthquakes and tornadoes in the uk.Just not very big ones.
Adders are potentially deadly.
No wild animals, but every year a few people are killed by cows and so-called pet dogs. I'm just glad there are no alligators living under my garden shed!
Turtles - we don't have pet turtles in the UK but we do have pet tortoises (land reptiles) and terrapins (semi-aquatic freshwater reptiles are now illegal to sell).
By the way, we have classical deer in the UK, large animals with antlers.
We also have a much smaller variety, about the size of a large dog.
The smaller variety are muntjac deer from China.
They were imported by the Duke of Bedford for his estate, Woburn Abbey.
Some of the muntjac escaped and now seem to be all over England. We see them here near Cambridge.
Yes. Only the red deer and roe deer are truly native to Britain, but several other species have been introduced over the centuries, including fallow deer (with spotted coats and palm shaped antlers) brought in by the Normans for hunting, sika from India, and Chinese water deer. Red deer can be found in the US too.
Red deer are mainly found in the Highlands. Round here in West Yorkshire, it's invariably roe deer that we see.
Where I live in the east of England, there's at least one or two red kite pairs who nest close to my home each summer, and for me it's always felt like the arrival of the red kites is the first sign of the warmer months to come. They're also Just really cool birds
I remember as a child travelling from London down to the West Country for a holiday in about 1970 and we stopped at a teahouse/cafe where there was a sign inviting guests to go around the back to see a water otter. There on a rock in a pond was a kettle
Hedgehogs, full of fleas, and incredibly dim, they are really stupid bless them.
But they can be really cute.
Put some food out for them and they will soon find it, dried cat food is good.
They bowl into each other when angry !
They can move deceptively fast but tend to freeze if they get discovered.
The Hedgehog in my backgarden can chew through The Times crossword in 30 minutes. Hungry little critter!
Believe best food for hedgehogs is dog food, no doubt a web site has more information.
Hedgehog fleas are, however, species specific so they won't do humans any harm.
@@Brian3989
You can buy tins/foil trays of hedgehog food in pet shops and some supermarkets
The question is have you seen a native British squirrel yet. There are lots of American ones around which have all but driven out the locals...
Red kites were first reintroduced to England in the Chilterns above Watlington back in July 1990 over a few years. Their numbers had been reduced through persecution over 200 years, that there were only a few breeding pairs left in Wales. They were extinct in the rest of the country. A couple of the reintroduced birds were from Wales, but more came from Aragon and Navarra in Spain. That was about 90 birds released in total over a period of 10 years or so. Further re-introductions were made in other parts of the UK. They have gone from strength to strength.
I used to have to drive down the M40 through the cutting of the Chiltern escarpment every couple of weeks, and used to walk in the area too. It was very exciting to see the numbers increase and to see how they spread. A few even got down as far as Heathrow, where I worked, although only as visitors. Now they can be found over much of the South East of England, and in very large numbers. It's now estimated that there are about 6,000 breeding pairs in the UK.
What is often mistaken for a red kite is the common buzzard. That is a slightly shorter wingspan, but with broader wings. They are more heavily built and also lack the forked tail. There are about 7,000 breeding pairs in the UK, but in the South East are considerably outnumbered by kites. They also don't seem to congregate in numbers as much. So, if you are out in the country, looking at what you think is a red kite, then double check. If it lacks the forked tail then you will have seen a buzzard, which in may experience is no a much rarer sight where I live. Like the red kite, they aren't in the Americas either, although they can be found over most of Europe as well as in parts of Africa and Asia.
nb. I am told in America that you need to look out for the elusive jackalope.
I've seen red squirrels in the Formby Nature Reserve on the coast just north of Liverpool, and even though they are hand fed each day by tourists they are extremely shy and reluctant to come down from the pine trees. Contrast that with the grey squirrels in my local park in London, which think nothing of climbing up your leg in search of snacks. There are a few more pockets of reds around England, such as on Brownsea Island and in the Kielder Forest in Northumberland, but they're more common still in the Scottish Highlands.
The reds are coming back. They are following the Pine Martens. The pine martens have discovered that grey squirrels are fatter, slower and tasty.so are eating greys instead of reds.
Badger fact! American Badgers and European Badgers are not genetically that close. They are both mustelids (the group that includes weasels, wolverines, red pandas and both badgers), but just not as close as the same name suggests.
On foxes, people do tend to like them more than dislike. UK is a place of animal lovers, and foxes find food not only in scraps, but people also regularly leave food out for them. Jam sandwiches are quite common as a treat, or pet food.
Deer have no natural predators in the UK. Zilch, nada, none. That's part of the reason why there are so many. The other reason...is because we have 6 different species of them (7 if you include the Reindeer in Scotland). Red and Roe Deer are native, but Fallow, Japanese Sika, Chinese Water and Muntjac are all introduced by various methods over the centuries. They all occupy different niches (Red Deer are taller browsers, meanwhile Muntjac root around shrubs for example) so they don't compete with each other.
I live in Cumbria and I was ticking off the list as you were going through them, and the only one on the UK list that I haven't seen is the Red Kite... maybe I need to look up more.
I used to work on trains and the only time I saw a red kite was probably about 20 years ago now near Giggleswick in North Yorkshire. I knew they were endangered and being reintroduced in Scotland so I told the RSPB. They were as surprised as I was.
Maybe you just need to come down South.
@@andyalder7910 Maybe. Lived in London and Portsmouth for a while back in the seventies.
Within the last week or so I've seen footage of a dolphin in the river Thames. Joe public as obviously been told to stay away to avoid causing the dolphin anymore stress.
I have hedgehogs living in my garden - they are funny and make some pretty strange noises at times :)
Great video GGL!! Quick fact: there are now more deer now in Britain than since the Bronze Age 3500 years ago!! 🦌🦌🦌🦌Also what about manatees?? We have seals (very pedestrian) but Florida has Manatees which are really cool animals!!
There's a nature trail in Swindon, Old Town Railway Line, (disused). Has a mound facing Wichelstowe. Brilliant for observing red kites.
Foxes are in my street, yelping, 3, 4 a.m. or can be seen walking back from the pub. Had many a staring contest with one. Funny things.
Obviously had a few too many if they're yelping on their way home from the pub!
A walk after dusk you can hear them snorting or loudly eating, if you're lucky.
I just saw my first baby squirrel running out onto the path then quickly retreating under a car.
Some years ago, we had a house on the outskirts of Brighton, with a longish garden, slightly wild at the rear end.
We discovered that we had a family of foxes , a vixen and two cubs, living there.
We saw the cubs regularly, playing in the early morning. It was so nice.
Now we live on the outskirts of Cambridge. Some years ago we found a hedgehog was visiting our garden and foraging.
But our neighbour repaired their fence and the hedgehogs stopped coming.
However, a little later I found two juvenile hedgehogs on the front lawn.
I called the RSPCA who said not to worry because their mother was around somewhere.
They did disappear, but I have not seen hedgehogs since.
I've always lived in the same sort of area of Essex-Suffolk and up until a few years ago I'd only seen one red kite (in about 2009).
I see them all the time now.
Deers come in herds. There is a smallish patch of trees just opposite my front window which is home to a scurry of grey squirrels, yes, those pesky invaders from across the water. It is lovely to see them running around the grass, and along the tops of fences...i'd much prefer it if they were red though.
Lol, you may not see bears but we do have big cats (leopard size)) roaming the countryside !!
Recently there has been reports of a Leopard/ Panther roaming anywhere between Wiltshire/ Buckinghamshire and the Midlands.
Don't forget dragons. I know that they exist because I was married to one.
Yeah our wildlife is definitely in general of the cuter kind than that found in America. Especially when you've grown up with Beatrix Potter's Mrs Tiggywinkle, Peter Rabbit and Squirrel Nutkin. Plus you have 'Wind in the Willows', many Enid Blighton books and "Brambly Hedge" books. Great books about our wildlife and of interest to anyone who is into the "Cottage Core" asthetic.
If you've seen Red Kites then it is quite probable that you've had the chance to see the "Common Buzzard" (Buteo Buteo) - medium large bird of prey and very different from the birds called "Buzzards" in the USA.
There's a herd of deer on the outskirts of Plymouth that caused a bit of chaos last year when they got into the local hospital and decided to take a tour of the maternity ward!
Beatrix Potter books must have been read in America, she featured many British animal characters, including hedgehogs and badgers.
The American badger looks like it's been hanging out in Maccys far too much.
Some other things that I see in the UK (not sure how common they are elsewhere):
Red and grey squirrels - grey ones especially are all over the place, very common to see.
Snakes, slow worms, and other small reptiles - I don't know the specifics, and these are probably a bit rarer, but I have on occasion seen a little slow worm slithering around, or other small reptiles chilling. They're pretty cool. It's nice to know that there aren't really any dangerous ones (you'd be hard pressed to find and get attacked by an adder even if you are trying).
Same with spiders. I don't know the types, but I think they're pretty cool, and it's nice to know that they aren't going to kill you here, so you can hold them without a worry.
Then there's also plenty of types of birds. I'm sure a lot of these are common everywhere, but I think the variety is quite appealing (I'm no expert though) - if you have a bird feeder or bird table, you'll see a huge variety of small birds with no effort at all. The pigeons are of course everywhere, but at least they are polite, unlike the seagulls which are an actual nuisance if you go to the beach.
If you have a pond or go somewhere with similar bodies of water, it's fairly easy to find frogs and newts. I'm not sure I've seen any other amphibeans just out and about though. It's also easy to spot dragonflies in the same sorts of places, which are quite cool.
That probably accounts for most of the other interesting animals I can imagine seeing just wandering around.
Ongar in Essex also has a colony of scorpions that is slowly spreading further afield.
i recently saw a video about the red and grey squirrel.
it said that the red one is the European squirrel and the grey one has been introduced from somewhere else.
and (especially in the UK) the grey one is pushing out the red one.
Grey squirrels were introduced from North America and have displaced the UK's native red squirrels which are now mostly to be found in parts of Scotland. As well as competing against the red squirrel, grey squirrels also carry a disease to which they are largely immune but which is deadly to red squirrels.
Just driving along rural roads you can see a lot of wildlife if there's little traffic. After moving from urban to rural I saw more wildlife in a week than I had in a year when I'd been urban - deer, badgers (including an albino one), stoats, weasels, squirrels, rodents, various insects, lots of birds (I'm a birder). Only a fortnight ago we saw an owl swoop down on a vole. The vole got away and ran off. But the owl followed it, landed, and we saw its back and its wing moving a lot as it dug out the vole. Last week we'd stopped to admire the view when, as we were about to head off we saw a mole ambling across the lane, then a stoat meandering after it. There was a flurry in the grass where we couldn't see. The stoat killed the mole but didn't eat it, probably a kill first ask questions later. After it had gone we went and looked at the mole to check it was dead. We've seen a buzzard carry off a rabbit. We've also stopped to watch a bird digging into a bank and seen the worms coming up to the surface pronto and legging it (well, not "legging"). Increasing numbers of owls to be seen, if you know where they like to perch, or look for them up and down field edges - tawny, barn, little, short-eared. And all that's just driving around doing ordinary normal life.
Pegwell bay is getting added to the funny names list.
Hares were a very common sight at Altcar, in Lancashire, near where I grew up. They were chased with greyhounds until it was banned in 2004 in a sport called coursing (ancestor of dog racing on an oval track).
Kites go right down to Reading / Earley and out to Faringdon, so far. Deer? Drive down a tiny lane and have a big one bounce off your car!
I live in Plymouth, and we have herds of deer in the city itself, they love hanging around the industrial estates, especially evenings and weekends
The animals that Europe and N America have in common are all cold tolerant species- during the ice ages there was (very cold) land between Russia and Alaska and many animals (fox, moose, brown/grizzly bear, wolf) interchanged then. Some other species crossed rather earlier and and now different species (lynx, beaver, etc. as well as forms that are now extinct in one or both such as horses, bison, lions and mammoth).
I live in St Alban's, which is north of London and we have Red Kites flying around daily. Also nesting on our 11 Century cathedral we have a bird of prey (not sure which one)
Plenty of seals and a few dolphins off the Northumberland coast. I hadn't thought about badgers. I wondered whether our robins are sufficiently different to get a mention.
We live in Somerset a few miles from Glastonbury. We have a badger sett in our gardens and feed them peanuts, they are quite friendly now. We also have a huge amount of Sloworms slithering around.
Loads of hedgehogs as three pairs of foxes and some Dormice.
What about red squirrels? They used to live in the UK but I have heard they were being eridicated by the Grey squirrels that people imported from the US and then released in the UK. I live in Belgium and we have an abundance of red squirrels. We also have (I am not lying!! ) the occassional wolf in Belgium. And in the deep south in the Ardennes wild pigs and a rare lynx. There are also snakes in the UK but the average citizen does not come across them. They are way too scared of humans.
Yup, there's a seal colony at Pegwell Bay. There are boat tours from Sandwich that you can take to view them.
Incidentally, Pegwell Bay is where St. Augustine landed in Britain to start spreading Christianity, and it's also where Julius Caesar landed when the Romans invaded Britain 2000 years ago.
I went the opposite way from the UK to US. Biggest surprise was the number of poisonous or deadly things out there from fire ants to scorpions, coyotes to wolves, rattlesnakes to tarantulas.
There are individual bears in the Alps, Switzerland or Austria.
Or in Eastern Europe, in the Carpathians.
Certainly in Russia from where individual bears migrate westward. But the animals have to stay away from people, who often shoot bears.
My local chippy is on the harbour so I can get chips and watch the seals play.
I'm suprised you didn't mention the European Robin. Go gardening and they'll soon be watching you, then exploring the area you just dug as soon as you turn your back.
Incredibly cute and I've them eating mealworms from my hand before. The iconic photo(s) of a robin on a garden tool handle is really easy to recreate; just move 6' away and they'll happily perch there.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the little lizards, I remember seeing them everywhere when I visited Florida
Pleased that you have discovered some of our wildlife. Badgers are much larger than people think and they are an amazing animal to see in their own habitat. I have seen a badger in the wild in daylight but it is a rare sight, so you've been lucky to see one.
Hedgehogs are not as common in the UK as they were. Roads pose a very great danger to them.
There are far more foxes in cities and towns now than there were when I was a child. Seals are everywhere around the coastline.
Have you seen a stoat or a weasel yet?
Snakes -Though we do have grass snakes, smooth snakes and adders. Only the adder is poisonous. One can live in the UK all one's life and never see any snake at all. We have no poisonous spiders either.
Hi Kalyn,
We sometimes get groups of deer in towns and cities, can often be seen on Friday/Saturday nights.
The are generally referred to as Stag does.
😊😊
All stags, no does!
@@philroberts7238 Yep I meant Dos.
And the female Stags, in this instance are Hens, weird, init?
We have no native freshwater turtles in the UK - although some of the hardier ones could probably survive here and escaped pet turtles exist in the wild. But we do get sea turtles like the Leatherback visiting our shores - places like the west country and Wales
You may be interested to know that the presence of the red kites in the Chilterns was due to another American who came to live in the UK.
They had been hunted to extinction in most of the UK but John Paul Getty II agreed to allow a reintroduction on his estate near Stokenchurch about 35 years ago.
We also have a number of species in the UK which are feral - living and breeding wild but not native.
Feral muntjac are common (the only native species of dear are the red and the roe), the grey squirrel and the green parakeet.