🏡 Backyard and town animals

You do not have to travel to see wild animals. Bees, butterflies, birds, squirrels and toads live in gardens, parks and even cities. The best way to meet them is to sit still and watch, and never to pick them up.

The biggest and the smallest here: the white-tailed deer and the seven-spotted ladybug

🧒 our measuring child, 4 ft1.2 m🦌 White-tailed deer, 33 in84 cm at the shoulder🐞 Seven-spotted ladybug, 0.4 in1 cm long🔍 Pip the pangolin zoomed in 50 times on the seven-spotted ladybug

⚖️ Compare them

18 animals here

Record holders here

Fastest: the peregrine falcon, 200 mph322 km/h1
Heaviest: the white-tailed deer, 90 to 300 lb41 to 136 kg2
Lives longest: the peregrine falcon, 20 years20 years3

Backyard and town animals for kids, A to Z

🐦 American robin: It tilts its head on lawns to spot worms, and lays blue eggs.
🐸 American toad: It sheds its skin, then eats it, and does not give you warts.
🪲 Common eastern firefly: A beetle that flashes its own light to talk to other fireflies.
🐍 Common garter snake: A striped backyard snake that gives birth to live babies.
🦋 Common green darner: A green dragonfly that, like birds, may fly far south for winter.
🐺 Coyote: A clever wild dog whose yips and howls fill the night.
🐿️ Eastern gray squirrel: Squirrels help plant trees by forgetting where they buried nuts.
🦉 Great horned owl: Its "horns" are just feathers, and it can turn its head far around.
🐝 Honey bee: A busy bee that makes honey and helps flowers make seeds.
🦇 Little brown bat: A bat is the only mammal that really flies, and it eats mosquitoes.
🦆 Mallard: The duck in most ponds, and the ancestor of many farm ducks.
🦋 Monarch butterfly: An orange butterfly that flies all the way to Mexico for winter.
🦅 Peregrine falcon: The fastest animal in the world when it dives from the sky.
🦝 Raccoon: A raccoon feels its food with sensitive hands, often dunking it in water.
🦊 Red fox: A red fox can hear a mouse squeaking under deep snow.
🐦 Ruby-throated hummingbird: A tiny bird whose wings beat so fast they hum.
🐞 Seven-spotted ladybug: A tiny red beetle that helps gardeners by eating plant-munching aphids.
🦌 White-tailed deer: A white-tailed deer flashes its white tail to warn other deer.

National Park Service, Denali and Yukon-Charley Rivers, checked 30 October 2026.
National Park Service, Jewel Cave, checked 30 October 2026.
USDA Forest Service, Fire Effects Information System, checked 30 October 2026.