Brown Rat
A Brown Rat problem is a route-finding problem: identify the stocky ground-level rat, map fresh sign to food and entry, clean contamination wet, then close the building before measuring whether control worked.
Québec, Canada: places and wildlife
Browse the published Explore collection for Québec, Canada. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Eastern Bluebird
A sky-blue thrush that hunts from fence posts and readily adopts nest boxes across Missouri’s open countryside.
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.
Mourning Dove
A small-headed dove writes its identity in motion: pointed tail, white tail corners, black wing spots, explosive takeoff, and a high mechanical whistle quite separate from its mournful voice.
Wild Turkey
Missouri’s restored woodland giant scratches for mast by day, flies to a high tree roost at dusk, and turns spring clearings into a careful performance of gobble, strut, fan, and low drumming.
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.
Turkey Vulture
A long-tailed scavenger rides warm air on raised wings, teetering with few flaps while its pale flight feathers flash across the entire trailing edge.
Red-bellied Woodpecker
A zebra-backed woodpecker named for a faint belly wash, not the far more obvious red on its head.
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.
Eastern Cottontail
A compact rabbit that freezes into invisibility, then bounds for dense cover with its cotton-white tail flashing.
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.
Groundhog
Missouri’s largest squirrel lives mostly underground, marking a field edge with fresh soil, feeding paths, a whistle, and brief upright surveys before winter removes it from view.
American Beaver
A broad-tailed rodent that fells trees, stores branches, builds dams, and creates habitat used by entire freshwater communities.
North American Bullfrog
Missouri’s largest frog broadcasts a deep jug-o-rum from permanent water, where one missing pair of back folds separates it from the smaller Green Frog.
North American River Otter
Missouri’s restored river predator travels as a low muscular ripple, leaving paired tracks, fish-scaled latrines, and bank slides that only become convincing when read together.
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.
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.
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.
North Atlantic Right Whale
A broad back, rough head callosities, and V-shaped blow identify one of Earth’s rarest whales when it gathers seasonally off Massachusetts.
Atlantic Cod
A chin barbel, pale lateral line, and three dorsal fins identify the cold-water fish that shaped Massachusetts food, trade, and politics.
Purple Finch
New Hampshire’s state bird is a stout forest finch whose males look washed in raspberry and whose movements follow shifting seed crops.
Atlantic Puffin
Atlantic puffins returned to historic Maine nesting islands through decades of seabird restoration, social attraction, and careful colony protection.
Lake Sturgeon
An armor-plated fish can live for more than a century, migrating from Lake Winnebago into rocky rivers for a brief, spectacular spring spawn.
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.
Golden-winged Warbler
This crisp gray-and-gold migrant thrives not in deep forest or open field, but in the shifting edge between them—a habitat easy to erase by accident.
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.
Rusty Patched Bumble Bee
A once-common Upper Midwest pollinator now survives in scattered strongholds, including the Twin Cities, where an ordinary garden can become consequential habitat.
Baltimore checkerspot
Black wings checked with cream and orange identify a wet-meadow butterfly whose official status contrasts with its rarity in Maryland.
Baltimore oriole
Maryland’s orange-and-black state bird whistles from leafy edges and suspends a woven pouch nest near a branch tip.
Striped bass
Seven or eight continuous dark stripes mark a silvery predator that uses tidal rivers as nurseries and the coast as a highway.
Black-eyed Susan
Rough-haired stems and golden rays around a raised brown center make Maryland’s state flower a familiar open-ground wildflower.
White oak
Maryland’s state tree supports insects and wildlife; rounded leaf lobes and pale bark reward a slower look in mature woodland.
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.
Sugar Maple
Recognize New York's state tree by more than its color: bark, paired buds, and leaf shape tell the whole story.