Long-tailed Weasel
A fast, flexible hunter able to follow rodents into spaces far smaller than its apparent body length.
Alberta, Canada: places and wildlife
Browse the published Explore collection for Alberta, Canada. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
American Robin
The familiar lawn bird whose upright pauses, orange breast, and liquid dawn song reward a much closer look.
Blue Jay
A crested blue corvid that caches acorns, imitates hawks, and maintains a surprisingly complex neighborhood social life.
Mallard
A widespread dabbling duck whose glossy drake is obvious—and whose variable females reward more careful identification.
Great Blue Heron
A long-legged ambush hunter that can look prehistoric at close range and surprisingly compact when folded in flight.
Red-tailed Hawk
A broad-winged raptor commonly seen on poles, thermals, and highway trees, yet extraordinarily variable in plumage.
Bald Eagle
A fish-eating sea eagle whose recovery turned a once-imperiled national emblem back into a familiar sight over major waters.
Pileated Woodpecker
A huge crested woodpecker whose ringing laugh and rectangular excavations announce mature forest even when the bird stays hidden.
White-tailed Deer
The adaptable deer behind dawn roadside silhouettes, garden browsing, spotted fawns, antler cycles, and flashing white alarm tails.
Coyote
A slender, intelligent canid equally capable of living in prairie, desert, farm country, forest edge, and major cities.
Eastern Gray Squirrel
A familiar tree squirrel whose spatial memory, deceptive digging, and forgotten caches help regenerate hardwood forests.
Virginia Opossum
A nocturnal generalist with a pouch, fifty teeth, a grasping tail, and a famous involuntary shutdown response.
Striped Skunk
A mostly nocturnal digger that advertises powerful chemical defense with bold black-and-white fur and patient warnings.
American Beaver
A broad-tailed rodent that fells trees, stores branches, builds dams, and creates habitat used by entire freshwater communities.
Bobcat
Missouri’s statewide wild cat often appears first as a nearly straight track line through mud, then as long hind legs, cheek ruffs, and a short tail slipping between brush and clearing.
House Mouse
The mouse most closely tied to people is best identified by a nearly bare scaly tail and muted gray-brown body—and best managed by sealing the building, not chasing the animal.
Deer Mouse
Missouri’s open-country Peromyscus is a large-eyed seed cacher whose crisp brown-over-white coat is recognizable, but whose indoor traces demand sanitation rather than close inspection.
Western Meadowlark
Kansas’s flute-voiced grassland emblem is often identified by song before its yellow breast ever comes into view.
American Bison
A living prairie force whose grazing, wallows, and movement reshape the Flint Hills around it.
Barred Tiger Salamander
A boldly marked prairie amphibian that spends most of its life hidden beneath Kansas soil.
Channel Catfish
Kansas’s state fish navigates opaque water with eight barbels and taste receptors across its skin, but the fastest identification begins behind it—with a deeply forked tail.
Swift Fox
A house-cat-sized fox moves through western Kansas shortgrass as a low pale streak, using multiple dens year-round and letting open ground reveal danger before it arrives.
Black-tailed Prairie Dog
A talkative burrowing rodent whose clipped lawns and tunnel systems reorganize an entire patch of prairie.
Ring-necked Pheasant
At a Kansas field edge, the obvious copper male and the nearly erased brown female are two versions of the same introduced bird—both betrayed by an extraordinarily long pointed tail.
American Kestrel
North America’s smallest falcon hunts Kansas roadsides from wires, poles, and wind-held hovering flight.
Burrowing Owl
A small, long-legged owl stands in daylight beside a prairie-dog mound, using another mammal’s excavation as nest, refuge, and lookout.
Northern Flicker
A large spotted woodpecker hunts ants on Kansas lawns and prairie edges, then flashes a white rump and yellow—or sometimes reddish—flight feathers when disturbed.
Red-winged Blackbird
One Cheyenne Bottoms cattail can hold two identification lessons: a glossy male turning hidden red shoulders into a territorial flag, and a heavily streaked female moving low enough to be mistaken for a sparrow.
Killdeer
A shorebird without a shore runs across Kansas gravel, flashes two breast bands, and sometimes performs an apparently broken wing to move danger away from eggs hidden in plain sight.
American Badger
Kansas’s broadest weasel reads the prairie from below, opening prey burrows with long foreclaws and leaving fans of soil that may outlast the animal’s brief nocturnal appearance.
Plains Pocket Gopher
The Plains Pocket Gopher is usually a landscape rather than a sighting: fresh fan-shaped soil, a plugged side entrance, and a loose procession of mounds mapping a sealed tunnel below.
Sandhill Crane
About a million Sandhill Cranes use Nebraska’s central Platte as a spring refueling corridor, commuting between shallow river roosts and working fields in waves of rolling calls.
California Gull
Utah’s state bird is an inland gull whose vast Great Salt Lake gatherings connect nesting islands, farm fields, wetlands, and migration routes.
American White Pelican
One of North America’s largest birds nests on remote Great Salt Lake islands and travels astonishing distances to feed in freshwater wetlands.
Golden Eagle
Utah’s state bird of prey is a powerful open-country eagle most often discovered as a dark, steady shape circling over cliffs and basins.
Two-tailed Swallowtail
Arizona’s enormous yellow state butterfly patrols canyon streams and gardens, flashing black tiger stripes and two tails on each hindwing.
Greater Sage-Grouse
At dawn, males turn a quiet sagebrush flat into a popping, swishing arena—a display sustained by much more habitat than the lek itself reveals.
Mountain Bluebird
Idaho’s state bird flashes an almost unbroken blue across open mountain and sage country, often hovering briefly before dropping onto ground prey.
Western White Pine
Idaho’s state tree once dominated vast northern forests, and its five-needle sprays now tell a story of blister-rust loss, selective breeding, and restoration.
Meltwater Lednian Stonefly
A tiny stonefly living in Glacier’s coldest headwater streams makes melting ice and rising water temperature measurable as habitat, not abstraction.
Western Glacier Stonefly
Known only from the Glacier–Waterton high country, this cold-water specialist survives where ice, snow, springs, and shaded alpine channels hold summer temperatures down.
Bitterroot
Montana’s state flower hides a surprising strategy: succulent leaves gather early moisture, disappear, and leave luminous pink blossoms seemingly resting on bare stony ground.
Common Loon
Minnesota’s state bird is a superb underwater hunter whose haunting calls carry across northern lakes—but whose nest can fail after one careless wake.
Walleye
Minnesota’s state fish is a low-light predator whose famous eyes, seasonal movements, and lake-by-lake management make it more interesting than a dinner plate.
Black-eyed Susan
Rough-haired stems and golden rays around a raised brown center make Maryland’s state flower a familiar open-ground wildflower.
Brook Trout
Follow this jewel-colored char from shaded headwaters to Adirondack ponds, where water quality shapes its future.
Common Snapping Turtle
A rugged freshwater turtle is easiest to notice when it leaves the water to nest, not while it lies hidden below.
Nine-spotted Lady Beetle
New York's state insect once seemed ordinary; finding its precise pattern now demands care and a little luck.