21 September 2026

Another rainy day in Pittsburgh with yesterday’s Flood Watch lasting until noon today(*). So to take our minds off the rain …

Let’s watch wild bobcat kittens at play in Connecticut in late July 2025. By autumn they will be able to hunt alone. Though they can stay with their mother for up to a year, they’ll probably leave earlier. Ready for new adventures.

(*) Flood Watches have become very stressful in western PA this summer. Places that rarely flooded in the past have now seen repeat inundations. For example, 40-minutes from Downtown Pittsburgh these folks in Washington County, PA have been flooded over and over again.

12 September 2026

Coyotes have been in the City of Pittsburgh for at least 10 years but we usually don’t see them until autumn when the youngsters disperse from their birthplace and travel as much as 120 miles to find a new home. Pups are born in a well-hidden den in a “wild” place without humans and cars and densely packed buildings. When they disperse at around four months old they’re naive about the urban setting. That’s probably how a coyote got stuck between two walls on Atwood Street in Oakland.

Atwood Street is so densely packed that the gaps between houses are usually only wide enough for a human to walk in. A few of the gaps are even smaller, making maintenance on those facing walls nearly impossible. Coyotes are used to den openings only 1 foot in diameter so this one was probably tempted by a narrow opening. He got in but he couldn’t get out.

After the coyote’s rescue he was “relocated outside the city to a wooded area.” No problem. He was going to travel far anyway.

Read more about Pittsburgh’s urban coyotes, what they eat, where they are, and what to do if you encounter a coyote in this vintage article from October 2017: Coyotes In Town.

video embedded from Dave Bonta on Facebook

24 July 2026

It’s been my experience that, if you stand still and are downwind, wild animals might not notice you until you speak.

I would not have been brave enough to stand still for this one.

Who stood still for this bear? The video is by Dave Bonta. Self-described as “a multimedia poet from the sticks” he lives in Plummers Hollow in northern Blair County, Pennsylvania and is much more familiar with the woods than I am.

6 July 2026

There is an elusive desert wild cat that is so similar in size and shape to a domestic cat that it could be mistaken for one. The sand cat (Felis margarita) lives in disjoint areas in deserts from North Africa to the Middle East to Turkmenistan and is so well camouflaged that it is almost impossible to see in the wild. They are always in remote desert areas and possibly extinct in some of their range.

Sand cats were not found in Libya, until Mohammed Almuntasir posted this video on YouTube in 2017.

Almuntasir often received inquiries about the video but it led nowhere until Firas Hayder at Sol Plaatje University in South Africa proposed searching for and mapping sand cat locations using GPS, still shots and video.

It was a dangerous effort for humans because of armed smugglers in the region. However, the 8-year collaboration placed the sand cat on the map in Libya. I’ve hand drawn the approximate location in blue.

If you’ve seen a sand cat in a zoo I’m sure you’ve been surprised by how much it looks like the cats at home(*). These are the zoo-bred descendants of sand cats caught in southwestern Pakistan in the early 1970s and exported to zoos worldwide. Sand cats are gone from Pakistan in the current map. It is encouraging to hear they are in Libya.

Read more about the research project and sand cats in Libya at ‘No one believed it’: how a YouTube video accidentally proved Libya’s sand cat really does exist.

(*) Sand cats and domestic cats have a common ancestor.

1 May 2026

Marsupials are unusual mammals whose young are born in an undeveloped state and complete their development inside their mother’s pouch. Australia has many marsupials including kangaroos and koalas but north of Mexico, North America has only one. The Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) is the northernmost marsupial in the world.

This week Dana Nesiti saw an opossum crossing a gravel trail and published it in slow motion on Facebook. Notice how “fat” this possum appears to be. She’s a mother carrying her growing young inside her pouch.

    NOTE: If you’re viewing this on mobile and cannot see the video: A Facebook bug prevents displaying of embedded Facebook posts on some mobile devices. Until Meta fixes it click here to see Dana’s post.

When her young get larger they won’t fit in her pouch so she’ll have to carry them on her back. The caption on this Wikimedia photo says she’s carrying nine!

p.s. How did Virginia opossums get so far north? They walked from South America!