Birds

[Chuckles_82]

Sometimes while your sim is running around collecting small pets, there are birds that your sim cannot catch. It bugged me for the longest time. Looking at the wiki, some of them have levels next to them. Those levels go higher that 5, and the hidden wildlife skill only goes up to 5. It turns out the birds that appear that your sim cannot catch, can be caught by your cat if your cat's hunting skill is high enough!

[Schipperke]

That's interesting, Chuckles.  I never knew there were levels associated with the birds.  Do you know which species are the ones that cannot be caught by Sims?

[Chuckles_82]

It's not specific to species. The levels refer to the hunting, not the wildlife skill. I believe the game spawns them in the same way it spawns dig-spots for dogs. I've been running around making sure I clear all my spawners as quickly as possible to tick off everything on the list to make sure I get all the small animals from my spawners - it would probably be quicker if I just modded my spawners so that they fired more and faster, but doing it the proper way I get a good idea of how long it takes, and if it's necessary to add any more.

[Chuckles_82]

Unfortunately it still doesn't apply to large birds If large birds are spawned on lots, they can't be befriended or caught. The only option is to delete them, I think. I've never seen them disappear on their own.

[redmare]

How do you increase wildlife skill?

[Chuckles_82]

Watching the Raccoon a few times will level it quite quickly.