Back yard critters

Hey, I’m a City guy what is that.

Hey, I’m a City guy what is that.

Green Cricket

New Guinea ?? Impatience too…

Rats, flying rats (Pigeons), and Lantern Flies - Wild Kingdom NYC!!!

[HEADING=2]We Went on a Lanternfly-Killing Rampage. They’re Still Here.[/HEADING]
The spotted lanternfly, an invasive pest that ecologists have urged the populace to squish on sight, is back, infesting the New York City area.

[IMG alt="The invasive lanternfly can hurt plants and trees, but not people or animals. Scientists have encouraged people to stomp them on sight."]
The invasive lanternfly can hurt plants and trees, but not people or animals. Scientists have encouraged people to stomp them on sight. Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Last week, a pretty moth on a flower outside a window caught this reporter’s eye. Closer inspection confirmed suspicion: It was a [spotted lanternfly,]('https://agriculture.ny.gov/news/new-york-state-announces-confirmed-finding-spotted-lanternfly-staten-island') an invasive insect that New Yorkers are [under scientists’ orders]('https://www.nycgovparks.org/trees/spotted-lanternfly-infestation') to [kill without mercy]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/nyregion/spotted-lanternfly-nyc.html').

By now it is clear that the lanternflies, which can devastate crops like grapes and apples, harm trees and make it unpleasant to sit outside, have embarked on their most robust metropolitan-area invasion since their first appearance here in 2020. And while New Yorkers have taken to bug murder with typical verve, relying on citizens as vigilante exterminators is proving inadequate.

Here is a partial list of the things New Yorkers have seen lanternflies do in the past few days: Crawl skyward past a ninth-floor window on Roosevelt Island. Get squished by day campers in Prospect Park, their carcasses tallied for a competition. Settle on the lapel of a smartly dressed woman in a Midtown cafe. Hang out on a Frosé dispenser in the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. Lie drenched on Rockaway Beach, apparently drowned by waves. And brazenly occupy ledges, screens, trees and terraces across the five boroughs, sometimes evading multiple stomp attempts.

Whistleblowers have posted real-time social-media reports of lanternflies [swarming]('https://twitter.com/Mary_Ruthie_/status/1554940639980265473?s=20&t=HiYnKJS512Xbv3ZRC8D9Ww') the Nomad Tower at 32nd Street and Broadway, [infesting]('https://twitter.com/buo01/status/1555187812382695428?s=20&t=HiYnKJS512Xbv3ZRC8D9Ww') a tree in Woodbridge, N.J., [getting crunched up]('https://twitter.com/gigpalileo/status/1553814641846910976?s=20&t=HiYnKJS512Xbv3ZRC8D9Ww') in the maw of a black-billed cuckoo in Central Park, and [attempting to hitch a ride]('https://twitter.com/juliededit/status/1555996636194668546?s=20&t=HiYnKJS512Xbv3ZRC8D9Ww') at a rest stop in New Jersey. A swarm in downtown Jersey City [made the local news]('https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/live/#x').

Since lanternflies, native to parts of Asia, arrived in the United States in 2011 — in a shipment of stones, scientists believe — infestations have been documented in 12 states, including across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, on Long Island, and in the Hudson Valley and Western New York. Sightings of individual lanternflies, tracked by the New York State [Integrated Pest Management]('https://nysipm.cornell.edu/environment/invasive-species-exotic-pests/spotted-lanternfly/') project, stretch further. The spread brings the bugs within range of upstate orchards and Finger Lakes vineyards — which the adult lanternflies can [damage by feeding]('https://nysipm.cornell.edu/environment/invasive-species-exotic-pests/spotted-lanternfly/spotted-lanternfly-ipm/damage/') on leaves and stems.

All of which raises the question: Is citizen bug-stomping really the way to go?

Marielle Anzelone, an [urban ecologist]('http://www.nycbotanist.com/') in New York, says the question is part of a bigger conundrum about the roles of individuals and governments in tackling sprawling, hard-to-solve environmental problems.

Just as asking individuals to recycle and drive less does not obviate the need for national and global government action to address the climate crisis and protect ecosystems, she said, freelance bug-stompers cannot turn back the lanternfly tide by themselves. In an ideal world, state agencies would do more to fight invasive species.

Still, these agencies tend to lack the personnel and resources, and every little bit of effort helps.

“The sole reliance on individuals is not going to get us there,” Ms. Anzelone said, referring to both lanternflies and the heating planet.

“But maybe individual action is a way of pulling people in,” she added. “It’s not so much about that individual person’s carbon footprint or those three lanternflies they kill in a summer. It’s about educating and engaging and perhaps turning them into the person who calls their council member to ask for more funding for the parks department, or votes for local and national candidates to take real action on climate.”

Lanternflies, Ms. Anzelone said, “invite a lot of participation.” They are easy to identify, they fly clumsily and they show themselves among humans, not just “out in the woods — and there’s something you can do,” she said.

City and state agencies have [posted]('https://agriculture.ny.gov/news/new-york-state-announces-confirmed-finding-spotted-lanternfly-staten-island') [instructions]('https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-03449#:~:text=The%20Spotted%20Lanternfly%20(SLF)%20is,threat%20to%20our%20city%27s%20forests.') on [how to identify]('https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/113303.html') the insects (the larvae look like ticks, while adults resemble gray, spotted moths, with red coloring often hidden behind their wings), how to [avoid spreading them]('https://nysipm.cornell.edu/sites/nysipm.cornell.edu/files/shared/documents/SLF-checklist.pdf') (check cars and outdoor equipment before traveling), how to [document]('https://nysipm.cornell.edu/environment/invasive-species-exotic-pests/spotted-lanternfly/') and [report]('https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/a08d60f6522043f5bd04229e00acdd63') them, and how to [buy or build ]('https://www.silive.com/news/2022/03/spotted-lanternfly-set-to-return-to-nyc-this-spring-key-things-to-know-to-control-the-invasive-pest.html')environmentally-safe traps.

Joseph Borelli, a Republican City Council member from Staten Island, recently urged the city’s Parks and Health Departments to take action against the flies. In [a letter]('https://www.silive.com/news/2022/08/with-spotted-lanternflies-reproducing-at-alarming-rate-city-urged-to-help-control-the-pests-on-staten-island.html') first reported by the Staten Island Advance, he called them a “new threat to our ecology” that is “reproducing at an alarming rate” and frightening some residents, though the flies do not harm humans or animals.

But Mr. Borelli did not wait for a city agency to take action. On Saturday, in a park in Staten Island’s Tottenville neighborhood, he sponsored a free trap-building workshop.

Participation, Ms. Anzelone said, may get people thinking and acting on wider threats, like other invasive species edging out bees and the native plants they prefer. There is already a growing movement among gardeners to grow pollinator-friendly species.

Some native-plant advocates [see a silver lining]('https://943thepoint.com/could-the-spotted-lanternfly-help-control-another-invasive-nj-species/') to the ongoing invasion: Lanternflies feed on the tree of heaven, or ailanthus, another invasive, fast-growing Asian species imported in the 1700s to drain swamps and shade streets.

New York has a love-hate relationship with the ailanthus, a symbol of strength in the classic “[A Tree Grows in Brooklyn]('https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/08/22/83935949.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0')” and a stinky, more ambiguous botanical character in a more recent Brooklyn novel, “[The Fortress of Solitude]('https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/books/when-dylan-met-mingus.html')” — and now, for the first time, a species has appeared that could challenge it.

As for freelance killing, Ms. Anzelone voted yesterday with her feet — or foot. She saw a lanternfly on a Brooklyn sidewalk. She photographed it. Then she stepped on it.

“I did my own little part,” she said.

Yes they are here , stomped a good number of em already… ?

Yes they are here , stomped a good number of em already… ?

you brute....................

you brute....................

Yeah I’m telling ya, I was at the WTC and these tourist may have thought I was a mental patient or something stomping on these things from China ?? LoL

Yeah I’m telling ya, I was at the WTC and these tourist may have thought I was a mental patient or something stomping on these things from China ?? LoL

You should have gone full "Manhattan" for them, talking to yourself while stomping on the bugs. I hope you were wearing your steel-top boots, and shorts for the full effect!! Those tourists would then be talking about you for weeks!!

Sex Onda Terace:: part 2…
.

Green Cricket

Katiedid

Thx!

[SIZE=6]Poor Freya, she must have trashed one of the local Nabob's boats. [/SIZE][SIZE=5]They should have let her have someone pay for their Stupid Human Tricks...[/SIZE]

[HEADING=2]Norway puts down walrus that drew Oslo crowds[/HEADING]
[pressherald.com/2022/08/14/norway-puts-down-walrus-that-drew-oslo-crowds/]('https://www.pressherald.com/2022/08/14/norway-puts-down-walrus-that-drew-oslo-crowds/')

Associated Press August 14, 2022
[IMG alt="Norway Walrus Euthanized"]https://multifiles.pressherald.com/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/Norway_Walrus_Euthanized_17077-750x500.jpg[/IMG]
Freya the walrus sits on a boat in Frognerkilen in Oslo, Norway, on July 18. Tor Erik Schrøder/NTB Scanpix via AP

BERLIN — Authorities in Norway have euthanized a walrus that had drawn crowds of spectators in the Oslo fjord after concluding that it posed a risk to humans.

The 1,320-pound female walrus, known affectionately as Freya, became a popular attraction in Norway in recent weeks, despite warnings from officials that people should refrain from getting close and posing for pictures with the massive marine mammal. Freya liked to clamber on small boats, causing damage to them.

Walruses are protected and as recently as last month officials said they hoped Freya would leave of her own accord and that euthanasia would be a last resort.

Norway’s Directorate of Fisheries said Freya was put down early Sunday “based on an overall assessment of the continued threat to human safety.”

“Through on-site observations the past week, it was made clear that the public has disregarded the current recommendation to keep a clear distance to the walrus,” it said. “Therefore, the Directorate has concluded, the possibility for potential harm to people was high and animal welfare was not being maintained.”

The head of the directorate, Frank Bakke-Jensen, said other options – including moving the animal elsewhere – were considered. But authorities concluded it wasn’t a viable option.

“We have sympathies for the fact that the decision can cause a reaction from the public, but I am firm that this was the right call,” Bakke-Jensen said. “We have great regard for animal welfare, but human life and safety must take precedence.”

Atlantic walruses normally live in the Arctic. It is unusual but not unheard of for them to travel into the North and Baltic seas. Another walrus, nicknamed Wally, was seen last year on beaches and even a lifeboat dock in Wales and elsewhere.

TCM:
.

Coming soon to a backyard near you???

[HEADING=2][SIZE=6]Crying wolf? Disagreement persists over presence of wolves in Northeast[/SIZE][/HEADING]
[pressherald.com/2022/08/26/crying-wolf-disagreement-persists-over-presence-of-wolves-in-northeast/]('https://www.pressherald.com/2022/08/26/crying-wolf-disagreement-persists-over-presence-of-wolves-in-northeast/')

By MICHAEL HILL August 26, 2022

ALBANY, N.Y. — Are wolves hunting and howling in the Northeast woods again, more than a century after they were rooted out of the region?

Advocates who think so say a recent DNA analysis shows a strapping canine shot by a coyote hunter in upstate New York last winter was actually a wolf. They believe there are other wolves in New York and New England, saying they could be crossing the frozen St. Lawrence River while heading south from Canada. And they want the government to protect them.

“There has to be other wolves here,” said John Glowa, president of the Maine Wolf Coalition. “We have no doubt that eastern wolves are coming down and crossing the St. Lawrence. And they’re being killed. And they’re being called coyotes.”

Not everyone is convinced.

The test results are the latest entry in a long-running disagreement in the Northeast about the presence of a charismatic wild animal dogged by a reputation as a big, bad villain in children’s stories and as a livestock poacher to farmers. It’s a surprisingly complicated question, in part because eastern coyotes typically share some genetic material with wolves.

“The question is: What is a wolf? And that is not as simple as it sounds,” said Daniel Rosenblatt, New York Department of Environmental Conservation wildlife biologist.

Critics claim wildlife officials are slow to acknowledge wolves in their midst because they would have to accommodate the presence of a federally protected species.

State wildlife officials say there’s no evidence wild wolves have reestablished themselves in region, though some concede the possibility of scattered lone wolves. They’re not showing up on trail cameras, they say. Maine Wildlife Division Director Nate Webb said if wolves were back in any numbers in his state, they’d be preying on moose.

“I worked on wolves for over a decade and have been to hundreds of wolves kills personally. And it’s pretty, pretty easy to tell when a moose has been killed by wolves,” Webb said. “And that’s just not occurring here in Maine.”

Wolves were effectively shot, trapped and poisoned out of the Northeast by the start of the 20th century, leaving a gap for coyotes to fill. Smaller than wolves with pointier muzzles and ears, eastern coyotes are now common in the region.

But it’s not unusual for people in the Northeast report canines seemingly too big and bulky to be coyotes, which typically weigh around 40 pounds.

In New York’s Adirondack Mountains, wolf advocate Joseph Butera said his friends and neighbors have seen animals bigger than German shepherds, and he constantly sees large canine tracks in the woods.
“And once in a blue moon, you’ll hear a howl that you know is not a coyote,” said Butera, president of the Northeast Ecological Recovery Society.

Wolf sightings can be dismissed as people wrongly identifying coyotes, domestic animals or wolf-dog hybrids.

But a 2011 academic study using carbon isotopes to distinguish wild from captive wolves suggested that at least three wild wolves were living in Vermont and New York in the previous decade.

Glowa, citing DNA analyses and other evidence, said at least a half dozen wolves were killed in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine from 1993 to 2007. He believes these cases likely represent a fraction of the wolves in the Northeast.

Advocates note that wolves can travel hundreds of miles, and that wolf populations have already rebounded around the Great Lakes and farther west.

Some canine researchers say it’s not clear if there are sustained populations in the Northeast, but it appears likely wolves are wandering into the region.

“In all honesty, I don’t know how there can’t be, just based on the biology that canines disperse incredible distances. By pure fact alone, why would there not be? Unless they’re always hunted,” said Bridgett vonHoldt, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Princeton University.

In the case of the recent New York animal, Glowa said he was tipped off about pictures posted online by a hunter with his kill this winter west of Albany, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of the Canadian border. The hunter agreed to provide a tissue sample of the 85-pound (39-kilogram) animal to advocates. A lab analysis showed predominantly wolf ancestry, with a very small amount of coyote genetic material.

However, New York environmental officials say a separate DNA analysis they commissioned determined the animal was most closely identified as an eastern coyote. The conclusion was based in part on maternal DNA markers, though the analysis found ample evidence of wolf genetic material.

VonHoldt, leader of the North American Canine Ancestry Project, said both tests relied on a limited amount of genetic data. In her opinion, it was not possible to conclude the animal was a coyote or a wolf without more data.

The Princeton lab is performing additional tests on samples from the animal.

The issue any genetic analyst must face is the blurry line between wolves and eastern coyotes. Researchers believe coyotes heading east over the Great Lakes bred with wolves. The result is that eastern coyotes are a bit brawnier than those out west. Some people even use the term “coywolves.”

“Where do you draw the line between the two?” asked New Hampshire Fish and Game Department wildlife biologist Patrick Tate. “How much wolf DNA can you need before it’s a wild wolf? How much coyote DNA do you need before it’s a coyote?”

Rosenblatt said New York not only is retesting this animal, but also is trying to collect more genetic data on coyotes so they have a better sense of makeup of the canines at large in the woods.

“We know this question is not going to go away,” he said.

smart bastard,,,,,, ill fix him i will grease the whole pole :p ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,[COLOR=rgb(26, 188, 156)] ><)))):>

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smart bastard,,,,,, ill fix him i will grease the whole pole :p ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,[COLOR=rgb(26, 188, 156)] ><)))):>

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Sheesh Joe, don't you realize there's no such thing as a "Squirrel Proof" bird feeder set up??

A friend who moved up here from Key West proudly proclaimed that she just bought a "documented, squirrel proof bird feeder" to which I immediately fell down on the ground in a fit of convulsive laughter. She seemed miffed that I would even suggest that this wasn't true. "Call me tomorrow and give me a progress report, IF it takes that long for those bushy tailed rats to figure out how to crack the safe." Two hours later I got the call, "Yup, the little rats have already figured it out!!"

smart bastard,,,,,, ill fix him i will grease the whole pole :p ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,[COLOR=rgb(26, 188, 156)] ><)))):>

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build one of these - if you can't stop them - you can at least have fun with them
[MEDIA=youtube]QWOIokz4pjc[/MEDIA]

shouldn’t make fun of squirrels ? participants on these survival shows would tap out early without them… ??

smart bastard,,,,,, ill fix him i will grease the whole pole :p ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,[COLOR=rgb(26, 188, 156)] ><)))):>

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He will out smart you all day long lol