Urban Wildlife Podcast

The city can be a tough place for a little bird, unless that city has lots of pine trees and cozy places to build nests. Dark eyed juncos have adapted to Los Angeles, and we’ll hear about it from ornithologist … Continue reading →

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

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

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

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

Billy talks with Colombian biologists Sara Acosta and Rodrigo Mutis about their urban mammal coloring book, Mamíferos de Bogotá y Donde Encontrarlos (Mammals of Bogota and Where to Find Them). The episode kicks off with a summary of the conversation … Continue reading →

The trash panda of Europe is also an urban critter in North America. Billy talks about fox range expansion in in North America and urban fox evolution in England with Kate Garchinsky, illustrator of the Secret Life of the Red … Continue reading →

We take a look at one of our most humble companions in civilization, the house mouse. Michelle Niedermeier of the Penn State Cooperative Extension’s Integrated Pest Management program joins Billy as we talk about research into how mouse genetics can help us … Continue reading →

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

What happens when a snake isn’t welcome in a back yard? Billy talks with Mike McGraw about a milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum) named Lucille and how she ended up in a tank on his desk. This is a co-post … Continue reading →

How do you do an urban international bioblitz during a pandemic? Navin Sasikumar, Robin Irizarry, and Billy talk about the City Nature Challenge 2020 and how we can all take part on our own, together. (here’s that dead porcupine video) … Continue reading →

Smash invasive spotted lantern flies with Billy and Michelle Niedermeier of Penn State’s Community Integrated Pest Management program. Billy talks about the Japanese beetle invasion a century ago (working off Ken Frank’s paper about the topic), and we (joined by … Continue reading →

Our domestic pig’s wild Eurasian cousins enjoy urban living all the way from Spain to Japan. Billy and Tony talk about urban boar and the increasingly urban feral hogs on their own continent. They also discuss the research of Barcelona’s … Continue reading →

Is science a match for the pathological passions of the bighearted but monomaniacal people who maintain outdoor cats? We talk with the Urban Wildlands Group‘s Dr. Travis Longcore, whose critique of “trap-neuter-release” (TNR) is still one of the best out … Continue reading →

Urban night life isn’t just about bars, clubs, and theater. When night falls, the bugs fly. Tag along with Billy and Ken Frank (author of the Ecology of Center City Philadelphia) as they have a moth night in Billy’s community … Continue reading →

Do you like pumpkin pie? Thank the pollinators who make squash (fruit of members of the genus Cucurbita) possible. But don’t thank a honeybee, look to the squash bee, Peponapis pruinosa, a solitary bee that, centuries ago, followed the original … Continue reading →

White whales don’t have to be white. Billy and Tony talk with Brad Gates (hunter and bear wrangler extraordinaire) about the culmination of years-long personal urban wildlife quests: a black rat snake for Billy and a black bear for Tony. … Continue reading →

Research Ecologist Lara Roman and Arborist Jason Lubar try to convince Billy that London Plane Trees aren’t just taking up space better used for more interesting trees in the urban canopy.  Recording outside on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, they are … Continue reading →

Tony and Billy talk about the City Nature Challenge 2019 and hear from four other participating cities: Kelly O’Donnell from NYC, Peter Kleinhenz (remember him from Right Under Our Noses?) from Tallahassee, and John Starmer from Maui, AND we hear … Continue reading →

Tony and Angie covered a lot of topics with their guide Dominic, and we’ve split off some of the non-urban-wildlife topics in this Part 2, namely Dominic’s fascinating life growing up Samburu Maasai plus more about the Maasai’s place in … Continue reading →