Is There a Yellow-rumped Warbler In the House?

Seattlest has been thinking a lot about the metropolitan flora and fauna in Seattle recently, which was potentially touched off when we came across The Street-Smart Naturalist: Field Notes from Seattle over at Amazon. Hopefully, it arrives today and we can dive right into how, "living in a major city doesn't have to separate us from the natural world."

With that in mind found a WWF website today courtesy of Worldchanging.com. The WildFinder will take one of two inputs from you, an animal species or a geographic location, and tell you either where they live or which species live in a specific location. The site lists 284 species in "Seattle, WA", from the Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) to the White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys). It also provides the threat status of individual species, so, for example, you could also learn that while the Spotted Frog (Rana pretiosa) can be found here, it is unfortunately listed as "vulnerable."

James Cascio breaks it down globally at Worldchanging:

Knowing where different animals live is an important part of understanding the threats they face from climate change and other human causes. Wildlife is often the silent victim of human conflicts, for example, either caught in the crossfire or hunted down by hungry soldiers or starving refugees. This, in turn, can have important implications: simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) is older than the human form (HIV), and was possibly initially caught by a human through the consumption of chimpanzee "bushmeat."