What bugs/diseases/critters have ya'll seen that weren't around 30-40 years ago?

[WVH1977]

For us in Virginia, it has been coyotes and black bear. Bear used to just be in the mountains and swamps of eastern VA but now they are in every county. We have one around my house currently where there were none years ago.

A lot of folks blame the Government for introducing/re-introducing coyotes to VA (Hear all kind of theries on this). I can hear them at night running down rabbits. All I know is they were not around back in the day.

 

[BnRidge]

We used to have pheasants, but most were stocked by a few nearby neighbors who would introduce them. Grains like wheat oats and grasses were also raised for feed. In the 80s that all changed. The neighbors no longer stock, grains are now corn and beans, fencerows have been removed, pastures and marsh land are now trees and brush. And there is less interest in hunting, and then the stocking that goes along with it. So we have very few to no pheasants here now. There is a local crowd of coyote hunters that would roam the roads with trucks and dogs with radio collars. I used to hear the coyote pups howling way off in distance, then when I was off a few miles away on another country road I would hear the same only in a different direction. I could triangulate their location on a map, always the same, along a 2000acre marsh, on a hillside. Haven't heard them in years either. They are around, I see their tracks often, I just rarely hear them like I used to. Fox populations come and go. They are around here again in higher numbers, along with rabbits everywhere. There's probably a correlation to all of that, who knows.

 

[ponytug]

We used to have pheasants, but most were stocked by a few nearby neighbors who would introduce them. Grains like wheat oats and grasses were also raised for feed. In the 80s that all changed. The neighbors no longer stock, grains are now corn and beans, fencerows have been removed, pastures and marsh land are now trees and brush. And there is less interest in hunting, and then the stocking that goes along with it. So we have very few to no pheasants here now. There is a local crowd of coyote hunters that would roam the roads with trucks and dogs with radio collars. I used to hear the coyote pups howling way off in distance, then when I was off a few miles away on another country road I would hear the same only in a different direction. I could triangulate their location on a map, always the same, along a 2000acre marsh, on a hillside. Haven't heard them in years either. They are around, I see their tracks often, I just rarely hear them like I used to. Fox populations come and go. They are around here again in higher numbers, along with rabbits everywhere. There's probably a correlation to all of that, who knows.

Birdful has a nice article on the many reasons for the decline; What happened to the ring-necked pheasant? - Birdful TL;DR, changes in farming practices and habitat declines.

Ring neck pheasant is native to Asia, and was introduced to the US in 1881 to an island in Washington state. From the founding population of fifty, they formed a breeding population for stocking around the country.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Jstpssng]

A lot of folks blame the Government for introducing/re-introducing coyotes to VA (Hear all kind of theries on this

I hear that up here, also. From colonial times to the middle of the last century there was an ongoing attempt to irradicate predators. It was very effective; we haven't had wolves or mountain lions in a century. Yet nature abhors a vacuum, and the coyotes have filled the niche left behind by the above.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Sorry I haven't read the whole thread, but I have witnessed some changes here in central Oklahoma. When I was growing up, there were some deer, but very few. We lived in the country, but I only saw one deer in the wild. The meat hunters during the depression had wiped them out in some areas; including turkeys and beavers. We had coyotes, and a few bob cats, but no mountain lions.

They prey animals have increased tremendously, including deer. Saw my first turkey in this state maybe 40 years ago; a couple years ago I counted 64 in my front yard. Mountain lions are being spotted here abouts, and I believe I saw one on the edge of our creek last year. We are now seeing the occasional eagle and beaver.

Don't know much about vegetation, but I remember my Dad saying that during the dust bowl, after a big blow, they often saw weird, foreign plants sprout up in the fields.

 

[orezok]

Ten or 15 years ago we were returning from a camping trip on CA 95 which parallels the Colorado river. For a stretch of 10 or 15 miles there were millions of caterpillars crossing the road. Close to 1 in every square foot of road.

It was squish, squish squish!

The front of the trailer was completely covered with a green mess. Never seen that since.

 

[orezok]

About 5 years ago we were sitting in the living at room at night watching TV when I see about a dozen vehicles with red lights coming down the dirt road in front of our house about a mile north. They were traveling very slow and spotlighting both side of the roads.

My first thought was that it was law enforcement looking for a criminal!

We kept watching and one vehicle stopped in front of our drive. I grab my binoculars and look and determined that it was an animal control vehicle.

The next day in the paper it turned out to be a bear that had wandered down from the mountains that are 25 miles west of us. Several days earlier it had been spotted in another area 20 miles east of us.

Now I’m not sure why a bear would come down into the desert, but he must have decided “desert - no good” Head back to the mountain!

They did capture it about a mile from our house.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Just saw my first Joro Spider at the property the other day, another invasive species. I first heard of these on a hunting forum a couple of years ago. Some guys in NE Georgia started reporting them, my property is in NW Georgia. The one I saw was HUGE maybe 3" around legs and all had a huge web across my road. Luckily I was driving the tractor with the grapple. Their webs are supposed to be super strong, not your typical spider web.
The itsy-bitsy Joro Spider that’s taking the world by storm

 

[Jstpssng]

I came across something which my "Seek" app repeatedly told me was a shrub called "Possumhaw". The odd thing is that I'm about 500 miles north of it's normal range and nobody walked in to where I was to plant it. So when I got home I looked it up the old fashioned way...using a Google search.
I determined that it was a native plant of the same genus but different species.

 

[ponytug]

Cool! "Trust but verify"...

We have a couple of plants near here that are in the "was last seen in 1870..." bin. The scientists and us are the only ones who know.

In my experience generally accepted maps can be way off, for both flora and fauna. Over the years, I've found species that were way outside of their normal ranges, when taken to experts. I think my record is over two thousand miles for a spider that can barely crawl, and that one ended up in a scientific collection.

All the best,

Peter