Foxes feel at ease on London streets
A fox, as is known from various fairy tales and fables, is a clever and cunning animal. And what does a clever and cunning animal do best? Yes, make life easier for itself. What does an ordinary wild fox need? A cozy and quiet place to raise its offspring. The availability of easily accessible food. And, if possible, the absence of predators.
And, as the BBC writes, British foxes have come up with a brilliant idea. Why run through fields and forests, hoping to catch something edible and not get caught by hunters, when you can simply move to the city, where there is plenty of food and hunters are rare? And so, out of approximately 400,000 British foxes, about half have been living in cities for generations. Most of them are in London. Here, according to experts, there are about 18 foxes per square kilometer, or per 300 people.
Before you start wondering how poor foxes live amidst cars and asphalt, we hasten to remind you that London is a very, very green city. So green that some suggest declaring it a nature reserve. Judge for yourself: about 47% of the city's total area is parks and home gardens. 60% of the city's territory is considered "open space."
London covers an area of more than one and a half thousand square kilometers. More than 13,000 species of animals live here (including Homo sapiens). They have 3,000 parks, 30,000 allotment plots, three million private gardens, and two protected areas. The city has eight million trees – London can be called the world's largest urban park. In other words, an ideal place for animals.
Foxes are quite good neighbors. They do not bother people, only occasionally looking at them with obvious surprise – what are you doing on my territory? They partly eat leftover food thrown in the trash, and also actively hunt mice and rats, for which they deserve a big thank you. The only problem arises around January-February, when they think about reproduction. Mating is accompanied by heart-rending fox cries, from which city dwellers wake up in a cold sweat.
And if you think that London foxes hide somewhere in the suburbs, that is not the case. They can be seen in the very center of the city – one even recently ran into a cafe in the BBC building, in broad daylight, and was very surprised when they started shooing it away.
But London does not live by foxes alone. There are all sorts of creatures here. Sometimes even more than a pair.
For example, London is home to between 10,000 and 50,000 wild ring-necked parakeets from the Himalayas. The exact numbers are unknown to anyone. It is also unknown where they came from. Most likely, these are simply parakeets that flew away from their owners and managed to create their own flocks and master new urban territory.
The first wild parakeets in London were noticed back in the 19th century, but the population increased sharply only from the early 1980s. At first, they were most often found in south London, but later spread throughout the city. Flocks of these bright green parakeets fly from garden to garden, from park to park with incredible noise, eating berries, seeds, and food that people leave in bird feeders along the way. They have already started "venturing" outside the city – recently, a flock of these Indian parakeets descended on a vineyard in Kent, where in one day they managed to eat about a ton of grapes.
A wild fox among people in London no longer surprises anyone
London has never in its history considered that its geographical location should somehow limit its ambitions. Including in matters of wildlife. The British capital clearly does not have enough just Himalayan parakeets and various pigeons. Therefore, in London you can also find quite predatory birds – kestrels, barn owls, falcons (peregrine falcons), and even owls.
For several years now (though not every year), a pair of peregrine falcons has been nesting on the tower of the Tate Modern gallery. Each time, ornithologists set up a telescope in front of the building, and anyone can admire the loving feathered parents feeding their chick with pigeons they have caught.
Russia also had a hand in London's birdlife. In distant 1664, the Russian ambassador gave several pelicans to the local authorities. They settled in St. James's Park, in the very center of the city. In the middle of the park is a small lake, and for several centuries now, London's pelicans, living in the wild, have not strayed far from it. True, one once decided to fly to the London Zoo, where it tried to steal the fish that were being fed to the local penguins and flamingos.
And in Holland Park, peacocks live in the wild. People living near the park are warned that these birds may sometimes decide to explore their surroundings and go to neighboring streets, especially during the mating season.
If you think that birds are relatively brainless descendants of dinosaurs, which are only pleasant to look at and sometimes even eat, that is not the case. Some birds have a cunning mind. For example, to the east of London is the largest city landfill, where garbage (that which is not recycled) from the entire city is taken. Seagulls discovered this landfill, realizing that there was something to be gained here with little effort. A few years ago, scientists decided to find out where exactly these seagulls come to the landfill from. And then it turned out that a certain percentage of them fly from Finland in winter.
How seagulls from Helsinki found out that flying to London for the winter is faster and more convenient than to the Mediterranean Sea remains a mystery. But one thing is clear – seagulls know how to spread rumors, even at the international level.
In London, between two and three thousand badgers live and thrive. True, it is rare to see them – they are shy animals, preferring a nocturnal lifestyle, when they quietly emerge from their burrows in gardens and parks and begin hunting for worms, insects, and other such creatures. In some primary schools, children are taught about the badgers living nearby, as they have one small problem – it is not possible to dig a burrow for themselves and their offspring everywhere. Accordingly, schoolchildren are taught how to make a special box, how to leave only a small entrance in it, how to camouflage it with leaves and branches – so that if a badger appears in the garden, it has somewhere to live.
In other schools, children are taught how to create a shelter for hedgehogs, of which there are also plenty in London. Badgers and hedgehogs are not friends with London foxes, but since badgers are larger and stronger, and hedgehogs are simply prickly, foxes avoid them. It is said that badgers love peanuts, so if you suspect there is a badger burrow somewhere nearby, leave some peanuts there and see who eats them.
London, as is well known, stands on the River Thames. Until relatively recently, the eastern part of the city and further into the Thames estuary were full of docks and wharves, as London was a center of world trade. And who arrives at the port on ships, besides sailors, cargo, and legitimate passengers? Yes, stowaways.
In the mid-19th century, such stowaways landed on the southern bank of the Thames from some ship. And not just any stowaways – Mediterranean scorpions of the species Euscorpius flavicaudis. These are quite small (3-4 centimeters in length) scorpions, black in color, with yellow legs and a yellow venomous tail. Their venom is supposedly harmless to humans. They eat insects, which they hunt at night. During the day, they sleep in cracks between the bricks of some wall, and there is no shortage of brick walls and houses in east London. And how many scorpions roam freely on the streets of London? Up to 13,000, say experts. True, the largest colony has settled in a brick wall just outside the city, in the town of Sheerness at the mouth of the Thames.
Sometimes the population of London scorpions is supplemented by their relatives of other species. My neighbor found a large and very aggressive scorpion in her bathroom after buying a bunch of bananas at the supermarket a few hours earlier. But this does not happen too often.
The Thames, as is known, flows into the North Sea, which is a stone's throw from the city, and with the tides, all sorts of marine life constantly swim into the river. For example, seals. Since there is little industry left around the river, and in general, little is now discharged into the river, the water in it, though murky, is relatively clean. As a result, fish have returned. And what does a self-respecting seal need? Yes, fish.
A couple of years ago, a "census" of seals in the Thames was conducted, and on that particular day, more than 150 were counted. Some experts believe that up to 700 seals live (or visit) along the Thames. And who else?
In the same Thames live seahorses. Yes, exactly. Seahorses do not like to travel far, so scientists think that a permanent population of them has been discovered in the Thames. Until now, seahorses were only found in the Thames a couple of times a year, but in 2017, several dozen were found, from Greenwich in the east of the city to the very center. Scientists at the Zoological Society of London now believe they live here permanently.
Well, besides that, deer also live and thrive in London. The largest population of deer living in London can be found in Richmond Park. But they also inhabit other places, as they are gradually moving into the city from neighboring counties. They are regularly spotted in areas such as Barnet, Bromley, Croydon, Havering, Hillingdon, and Waltham Forest, for example.
In the late 1980s, the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" were all over TV screens. Naturally, children began to beg their parents to buy them the same turtles, but real ones. Thousands of parents gave in to the persuasion. But some time later, they found out that, firstly, these turtles grow to a relatively decent size – the size of a large plate – and secondly, they live for about 40 years or even more. The result was not long in coming. Tearing their hair out, parents secretly released the turtles into rivers, canals, and ponds. The turtles liked it there and stayed permanently.
On the banks of the Regent's Canal in the northern part of London, Aesculapian snakes, native to the Mediterranean, have settled. They appeared there relatively recently, and no one knows exactly how they got there. There are suspicions that someone deliberately released them there. But they have adapted and seem to be already reproducing.
The snakes can reach two meters. How many live along the canal, no one knows. It is believed to be about 30, maybe more. But there is no need to worry. Firstly, they are afraid of people and do not bother them or their cats and dogs. They hide from people, and experts say that even if you pass within a meter of them, you are unlikely to notice them. Moreover, their favorite food is rats, so these snakes have proven to be useful neighbors.
And, of course, everywhere, in every park and beyond, squirrels, ducks, geese, coots, swans, Egyptian geese, and other such creatures thrive in huge numbers. Sometimes minks enter the city, and even wallabies (an animal related to the kangaroo, which has been living in packs in counties neighboring London for about a century). The list of wildlife in the British capital is growing.