Countywide : Re-Emerging Wildlife Provides a Spectacle

Sitting in her car near an Irvine neighborhood, Cheryl Heffley saw something unusual.

A couple of black-shouldered kites were circling overhead, looking for prey. Suddenly the birds swooped down into a field, each re-emerging with a vole--a small rodent resembling a mole--in its mouth. Then, resting on a high-tension wire, the birds spent the next several minutes calmly eating their squirming morsels.

“It’s not something you usually see,” said Heffley, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game who specializes in Orange County wildlife.

Except maybe about this time of spring. That’s when the voles come out from their underground resting places to forage in the sun, becoming potential prey to birds. And all over Orange County, other wild animals and their new young begin emerging from the winter months to make their yearly appearances and start their life cycles anew.

In addition to the birds, there also are coyotes, foxes, raccoons, possums, rabbits, squirrels, rats, mice, bobcats, skunks and deer.

“This is always the best time to watch wildlife,” Heffley said. “You have the newborns, the young animals venturing out for the first time.”

Sometimes they venture into residents’ yards, causing problems.

This time of year, the number of calls to the county about wild animals in residential areas increases threefold--to about 200 a day, said Dr. Richard Evans, chief of veterinary services for the Orange County Health Care Agency which, among its other duties, oversees animal control.

Most of the calls are about birds, he said, and the rest have to do with possums, raccoons, skunks and coyotes, in that order.

“People see a possum taking a stroll with its babies on its back and they call us,” Evans said. “There are significantly more calls at this time of year because there are more animals out there.”

While the wild animals generally pose no health risk to humans, he said, there are occasional instances of skunks carrying rabies and coyotes eating small dogs and cats.

Evans said his department responds to reports of bites or attacks on domestic animals by quarantining or destroying the wildlife involved.

In addition, he said, the department will respond to a report of an injured animal by picking up the animal, attempting to rehabilitate it and eventually returning it to the wild.

Residents who spot a wild animal on their property are advised to leave it alone.

“Don’t touch, handle, feed or play with it,” he said. “Just watch it, enjoy it and marvel that you have a wild animal in your back yard.”