A live cow
Outside of a zoo, maybe American Avocet or Painted Bunting
Well that need the disclaimers of “outside a zoo” and “of which i was aware of”, but probably Hummingbird hawk-moth, it might not be very rare, but i was like “wtf a hummingbird in Poland?” and i managed to get close enough to see it’s in fact a moth.
Probably a Takahē in New Zealand but in captivity.
In the wild I’ve seen kiwi, kea, Kākā. I took a trip to mana island in the late 90’s, the kiwi were just wandering around during the day…
I’ve never seen the takahē.
I too saw a kea in the wild near the Milford Sound! Sadly I didn’t see any of the others in the wild. The takahē was also in Zealandia.
I saw takahē in captivity too, in Zealandia. You can sort of see why they almost went extinct - their big defence move is to sit reeeeally still. Big silly chooks.
Yeah I saw the takahē in Zealandia and one other zoo. Would have been cool to see in the wild if possible in the preservation areas the have.
I’m happy just to know they’re there, living their lives.
About a year ago my wife and I did a zoo date and when we got out of the car there was this bird walking around the parking lot. Not sure what kind of bird, flew off after like a minute but I thought it looked really cool.
I was quite lucky to see an i’iwi when I went to Kaua’i Hawai’i. Unfortunately only a couple hundred left because of avian malaria.
Wolverine.
I saw a lynx cat in th3 backyard of a place I was staying at in Washington it was very cool.
Panay monitor lizard.
My buddy was trapping monitor lizards for us to eat and we caught one of those. He recognized it and told me that they were endangered.
We did NOT eat it. It went back into the forest, unharmed.
Polar Bear on the Hudson Bay coast in northern Ontario.
I’m Indigenous and I’ve gone hunting and trapping with my relatives a few times in my life. On one of those trips we happened on a polar bear on the mud flats of the bay during the late autumn. We drove by in our freighter canoe (a very large oversized canoe with a 60 HP outboard motor) and the bear swam near us and then walked by a few hundred feet away. It wasn’t afraid but we were. We watched for a while and then fired rifle shot into the mud next to it to scare it away. From the moment it started to run to the point it disappeared as a speck on the horizon was about a minute or two. I went up later to look at the prints and the clay mud looked like a tractor had driven over it. I couldn’t believe how fast it could move on the mud. I quickly sank in my boots and could barely walk around.
One paw print was about the size of my head. I never left camp without someone nearby or a rifle in my hands.
I guess nobody can tell how big they are from photos. There’s never someone standing next to them for comparison.
Seriously! They’re the biggest land carnivores bar none. If you’re 5’ - 5’6" a bigger polar bear will be able to look you levelly in the eye while on all fours* and on its hind legs, it’ll be more than half your height again.
*survivability of said staring contest is low
I’m told that the time it takes a polar bear to discover, stalk, hunt, kill and partially devour you is on the order of 10 minutes.
Most people do not survive a polar bear passing them in the bush.
Your dad
In the wild: Florida scrub jay. key deer. carracarra. Indigo racer. I don’t know how to determine what is rarest. There are a lot I have seen.
There was a stray firefly at my house one night. Like, singular. We’re not even near their habitat, so I don’t know what’s up with that.
A panda at Singapore zoo.
Either a black stork, a least weasel (actually pretty common, but difficult auf to see around here), Cerambyx cerdo (probably not as rare as most regulating bodies think), a Eurasian eagle owl (rare around Germany) or felis silvestris
