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This article was published 2/9/2011 (3316 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

While out walking with some friends on a recent warm, breezy evening, we stopped along the path to watch an adult beaver swim to shore.

It nibbled on a plant, before shambling back into the Red River near McBeth Park in Riverbend.

On our return, a red fox scampered through a patch of tall, yellowed grass in a field -- where a small herd of deer can often been seen -- at the end of Scotia Street North.

Meanwhile, a family of racoons, those masked marauders of the night, were prowling about in Kildonan Park near the Witches Hut.

Then, two nights later, while driving north on Main Street past West Kildonan Golf Course, a low slung otter, or maybe it was a mink, ran part way out onto the road as traffic whizzed by, before scurrying back onto the boulevard and under the golf course fence.

Earlier this sweltering summer, my friend, Bill, and I watched two mature Bald Eagles being harassed by haranguing crows, coasting at tree-top level over the river near the East Kildonan side.

"Urban landscapes can support surprisingly diverse habitats that are valuable to wildlife and fish species," offered biologist Cary Hamel, conservation science manager with Nature Conservancy of Canada, Manitoba Region, during an exchange of emails afterwards.

"When city dwellers see urban wildlife it reminds them that nature is relevant, still a part of modern life, and that wild places still exist not too far beyond the edge of the city. Seeing and caring for nature in the city helps reinforce the connection between urban dwellers and the environment."

I encounter many wild species, both fauna and flora, during my explorations in our parks and elsewhere in the city.

Many other people do, too.

As one editor at the Free Press pointed out in an email, he has seen jack rabbits, prairie chickens, crows, seagulls and the occasional deer from his second-storey office window, and while driving to and from work, in the Inkster Industrial Park.

Sometimes, especially if you're in the right place at the right time, you can even encounter scenes that are worthy of a National Geographic wildlife documentary film.

For example, I happened upon a male Cooper's hawk in Kildonan Park on the ground with a red squirrel clutched in its curving talons. I was about 12 metres away. The rodent was still squirming and its tail was twitching a bit.

I remained motionless, quietly drinking in this startling scene.

After about 10 minutes, the hungry hawk flew off with its lifeless prey to a nearby tree limb, paused for a few minutes, and then flew over to another elm tree.

It was perched on a branch about 10 metres above the road.

Tufts of squirrel fur came wafting down as the ravishing raptor (which has been returning to the park with its mate for several years now to nest and raise a brood) wolfed down morsels of meat.

Others have had similar experiences.

"I've seen some pretty interesting scenes that involve red foxes," City of Winnipeg naturalist Rodney Penner mentioned during a recent discussion.

"One morning while driving by a grassy field in the Bishop Grandin area in south Winnipeg, there was a group of Canada geese gathered in a circle with their young in the centre. A fox was bounding around and around them. It looked exactly like something you'd expect to find in the wilderness -- a predator waiting for one of the prey to break and then trying to grab it."

Some critters actually fare better in the city that they would in the wild. Squirrels, for example.

Because squirrels in urban environments don't have to deal with predators -- martens, lynx, foxes, coyotes, raptors -- to the same extent as they do in cities, they don't usually see humans as a threat

"By and large a forested urban habit will probably have more squirrels, reds and greys mainly, than the surrounding agricultural land because large areas of crop land is not good wildlife habitat, especially for squirrels," says biologist Doug Collicutt, founder of the Nature North website.

Both chattering, agile red squirrels and the larger bushy tailed grey squirrels are ubiquitous arboreal rodents throughout the city.

But, two other species of tree squirrels can be found here, the fox squirrel and the northern flying squirrel, both of which come out at night, according to noted wildlife biologist Robert Wrigley.

He adds that Winnipeg is also home to the 13 lined ground squirrel, the Richardson's ground squirrel, and the Franklin's ground squirrel, as well as the woodchuck -- a member of the squirrel family.

"Squirrels can reach numbers just as abundantly in the city as in the wild because of bird feeders and other sources of food, and predator reduction, Wrigley said. "Racoons would be more abundant in urban areas than the wild, except around farms where there is ample food supply."

The eastern cottontail is the most common rabbit species here.

Winnipeg's wealth of wildlife also includes such insects and amphibians as the magnificent migratory monarch butterfly, whose caterpillars feed on milkweed; amphibians, the tiny boreal chorus frogs, which makes a sound like a finger flicking across the tines of a plastic comb; the larger leopard frogs and wood frogs and so much more.

This is a treasure for us all.

Martin Zielig is a Winnipeg

freelance writer.