Information and stories about San Francisco coyotes: behavior & personality, coexistence & outreach, by Janet Kessler: Unveiling first-hand just how savvy, social, sentient and singular coyotes really are!
1) A VIDEO ON COYOTE BEHAVIORS, GUIDELINES & DOGS: a one-stop video, by me, on urban coyote behavior and how to coexist with them, how to handle encounters, and why culling doesn’t solve issues:
*A protocol clarification for when walking a dog (not addressed in the video): Your safest option always is flat-out, absolute AVOIDANCE: Whether you see a coyote in the distance, approaching you, or at close range, leash your dog and walk away from it, thus minimizing any potential dog/coyote confrontation or engagement. If you choose to shoo it away, follow the guidelines in the videos, but know that what’s safest is proactive, preventative unmitigated avoidance: i.e., walk away.
2) MORE LINKS TO COYOTE BEHAVIOR & DOGS:
Press on image above for another crash course on coyotes
For more information on dogs and coyotes, type DOG or DOGS (plural) into the “search” box at the top right of the blog to bring up many dog/coyote related postings with a lot of information to increase understanding of dogs and coyotes. I don’t know why using plural brings up different articles, but it does!
“If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them, and what you do not know you will fear. What one fears one destroys.” Chief Dan George
Charles Wood, a frequent contributor to Coyote Yipps, adds: “I want to try and express Chief Dan George’s words a little differently, though I believe the meaning is the same: ‘If you talk to the animals they will talk to you and you will come to know them. When you come to know them, you will love them, with respect, without fear. What one fears one destroys. What one loves one defends.'”
Within the past couple of weeks, coyote pups were born here in San Francisco. Whatever defensive patterns coyotes had before the pups were born have now been compounded. Especially if you have a dog, you need to know and understand them for what they are. I wrote this three years ago: what I say and how I say it can’t be improved upon, so here it is again for you. Janet
I’ve been invited to participate at the Bernal Earth Day Stroll on Sunday, April 21, to answer questions, hand out flyers, and talk briefly about our coyotes! I’ll be there from 11:00 am to 11:30 am on the steps of the Library — but only for 1/2 hour; not for the entire event which continues until 3:00 pm. My full presentation has not been scheduled yet — but looks like around the last Saturday in August.
Maeve (b~2006): mother and then mate to Silver (b. 2009), mother to Chert, Gumnut and Pinecone (b. 2013),
Silver (b. 2009): brother to Brunno (b. 2009), then mate to Maeve (b. ~2006), father to Chert, Gumnut & Pinecone (b.2015); then mate to Chert: he was Chert’s FIRST mate,
Chert (b. 2013), daughter to Maeve and Silver, then mate to Silver
Gumnut (b. 2013) brother to Chert, son of Maeve and Silver
Sparks (b. 2018) son to Silver and Chert, became alpha in the Presidio, 2nd mate to Wired.
Rookie (b. ?) became Chert’s mate when Silver died in 2021, but their union was shortlived: he was Chert’s SECOND mate.
Scowl (b. 2019), son of Silver and Chert, brother to Sparks, became Chert’s THIRD mate
Tufted (b ?, young at the time) passed through quickly as a suitor.
Archer (b. 2019) passed through for several days. He also has an interesting story because he and his mate uncoupled, and now he has a new mate in his old territory, whereas his previous mate (and mother) shifted her territoryand formed a pair with another son of her.
Rags (b. ?) was a suitor who was integrated into Chert’s family for several weeks before a new suitor and Chert kicked him out.
Tawny (b. ?) is now Chert’s FOURTH mate (not including Rags who spent many weeks with her).
Chert is the female born in 2013 whose thread we’re following in this posting.
Most coyote advocates I’ve spoken with still believe coyotes mate for life. Indeed, this is all I ever saw for many years, and I’m still seeing examples of it. But over time, I’ve come to know more and more mated pairs who have not stuck together.
Monte’s is the first *divorce* I had ever seen, showing me that not all coyotes mate for life, as they are famously misknown for.His photo is small here because he never was part of Chert’s family group.
My first encounter with this was with Monte which you can read about here. Note that he is in a totally different family and territory than Chert and the coyotes I’m addressing here. Since that time, I’ve encountered multiple examples of mate changes, some appearing to have explanations, some I can speculate on possible explanations, and some I don’t know why the change occurred. I’ll eventually write about some more of these, but here I’ll concentrate on Chert’s changing mates. As I describe her changing situations, I’ll interject some interesting tidbits of behavior or information I saw, just because they are interesting, even though they aren’t totally related to mate changes except very peripherally.
Maeve with her two fatherless sons: she raised them alone in 2009
Chert was one of three pups born to Silver and Maeve in 2013. Maeve, her mother, had lost her original mate to rat poison and had remained without a mate, but with two young sons. As the sons got older, the rivalry between these 2 for their mother’s attention and affection was blatantly obvious, with spats occurring more and more as time passed. In the end, Silver drove his brother, Brunno, out and thereby acquired his mother — Maeve — as his mate.
Silver stands over Brunno as their rivalry escalates
The first (and only) litter they — Maeve and Silver — shared consisted of three pups born in 2013: Chert, Gumnut, and Pinecone. In September, when the pups were a mere 7 months old, Maeve (mom) started attacking the female pup, Chert, and smelling her reproductive area. It was almost as though she was jealous of this pup, the only female she had produced. Her oldest son, turned mate, and father to Chert, would walk by as the mother went after her daughter: he stared and looked perplexed as this happened but he did not interfere.
It’s shortly after these thrashings began that Maeve herself suddenly vanished and I never saw her again. Was she hit by a car or did she leave by choice? If she left by choice, was it because of Chert’s existence? All her other pups to this point had been males. My thought is that they posed no reproductive competition to her, present or future. But Chert was a female. Might Maeve’s intent in thrashing her have been to make Chert disperse early? OR, maybe she was preparing Chert to become “behaviorally sterile” by instilling a kind of fear into her? “Behaviorally sterile” is the condition of younger females in a family, assuring only one litter in the family and on the territory: that of the alpha female parent: territory sizes aren’t meant to support more than this.
Silver with two of his and Maeve’s pups: Gumnut and Chert. Maeve, his mother, was his first mate.
Whatever the reasons, they became moot when Maeve disappeared/vanished when Chert was 7 months old. Silver, her father, carried on now without Maeve, raising 3 and then just 2 of the pups when the 3rd one was driven out at one year of age: that was Pinecone. The two who remained were now Chert and her brother Gumnut. These were best buddies, joyful playmates, and inseparable. I thought their close relationship was going to bridge them into a mated pair, but by 2 years of age, Gumnut had become a reproductive competitor for Silver who had his own eyes set on his daughter as a mate for himself. Gumnut exhibited absolute subservience to Silver in his quest to remain close to Chert, but it was obvious to Silver that he was preferred by Chert, and Silver wasn’t going to have that. Gumnut was driven out by Silver with punches, bites and constant putdowns which increased over time. So here is an example of the female not choosing her mate: her mate imposed himself on her, and probably since he was her father, she felt no options but to abide by his will. Also, by just two years of age, and still very much a playful youngster, she probably had no idea what was going on. Coyotes, like us, have to learn about life, mostly from experience.
Siblings Chert and Gumnut are off to the right interacting and grooming, but only while Silver, their father is looking away!
In the end, finally Gumnut is driven off and Silver claims Chert, his daughter, as his mate as she turned two.
Chert and Silver grew into a very stable relationship that lasted for six years and produced six litter of pups. Their litters ranged in size from one to five. One of their pups from 2019 became the alpha male in the Presidio after the initial alpha male at that location disappeared, I think he was hit by a car. Sparks was not in a position to have *fought* the previous male there — Sparks had a crooked leg — his leg had broken and healed incorrectly: because of this, he doesn’t put himself into compromising situations.
So Silver, from here on, remained “mated for life” for the rest of his life. He very obviously died of old age at 11 years of age: he was gray, arthritic, and slow by that time and then one day he no longer appeared. He had been able to fully raise his last litter with Chert in 2020: he disappeared in January of 2021.
Sparks is Scowl’s brother who now is the alpha male in the Presidio. It’s a small photo because his story isn’t really relevant to this one.
Chert and Silver’s litter before the last one — the litter of five that was born in 2019 — had four males and one female. One of the males was Sparks who, as I’ve said, moved to the Presidio where he became the alpha male and still is. The other significant male of that litter for our story was Scowl. Scowl had remained on the territory as a yearling and helped with Chert’s 2020 litter and also helped defend the territory. In 2021, when his father died, he was only two years old and not really old enough to move into the alpha position there.
That February there was a lot of howling and commotion which revealed a newcomer male suitor had moved into the territory: this was Rookie. This fellow would have smelled the absence of a dominant male’s pheromones/hormones which would have attracted him, in addition to Chert’s own attracting female hormones: it was mating season.
Rookie was Chert’s SECOND mate, right after first mate Silver died of old age.
Rookie didn’t seem totally welcomed by the remaining family, but I saw Chert lead him away from the commotion, possibly to prevent any fighting. Rookie remained as Chert’s second mate, at least long enough to sire and raise a family of five pups for four months. Not only that, had he sired a litter with Chert’s daughter? She, too, was lactating, but the thought occurred to me that she might have been a wet nurse: we’re waiting for the DNA results to see what the situation was. It was obvious he was the father of Chert’s new litter: most had light or blue eyes, as he did. But even after six months (63 days of gestation and 4 months of raising the pups), it was obvious that he was not an accepted part of the family. Chert actually spent her time grooming Scowl intensely: it looked as though she was inviting/pleading with him to become her mate. Rookie saw and felt this — he had remained an outsider. By July, he had moved on.
By the way, I found Rookie on a different territory, in a different park, in late 2021 where he formed a mated pair with another female and produced a litter of five in 2022. But that union, also, only lasted one season. It made me wonder if some males were just drifters who took advantage of vacant niches for single seasons. All other pairs seem to have stuck together at least for several seasons.
Chert on the left grooms her son Scowl: she’s soliciting him to stay as her mate, and he does.
So, as expected, Scowl, at the age of three, became Chert’s third mate in 2022, moving into the step-dad position and helping to raise Rookie and Chert’s offspring who were born in early 2021. Inbreeding has been extensive in Chert’s family — remember that Scowl was Chert’s son. Dr. Ben Sacks of UC Davis has said that the inbreeding should not be a problem, and as far as I have seen, it has not been. Chert and Scowl together then produced litters in 2022 and in 2023. But of interest, I actually saw Scowl on the next territory over in early 2023 sniffing and mounting a two year old female who had not yet dispersed from that territory. I wondered if the dispersal instinct was stronger in him than the pair-bond. But he returned to father a litter of three in 2023.
Scowl in 2024 headed off to a new territory and a new mate, two-year-old Bonus: I guess it was time to move on, either that, or he was kicked out of his old place. He had been wandering beyond his territory for over a year, so I think it was just time to disperse for him, something he had never done.
Then, in January of 2024, Scowl disappeared from Chert’s territory. My eyes popped out of my head when I saw him on yet another territory, with his nose sniffing another two-year-old female. I spotted them repeatedly at this location. I had to ask myself, why did he move away? Whose decision was this? Had he decided to leave of his own volition or had he been forced out by Chert? One of Rookie’s youngsters who had been raised by Scowl, this is a fellow named Sweet Face, had remained on the territory for three years, which is the one of the two male coyotes who remained at their birthplaces the longest. But he, too, left at this time. Scowl had been showing intense antagonism towards him in a progressively aggressive manner as time passed. Had Chert not liked this behavior? It’s a question that occurred to me, but I can’t answer it.
What I do know is that yet again, there was no viable alpha male on the territory beginning in 2024. Suddenly in February of that year, I started seeing suitors. In fact, FOUR of them came by that winter. It’s my assumption that Chert’s female reproductive odors were calling, as was the absence of alpha male marking odors on the territory.
Two additional suitors who came by in early 2024: Tufted and Archer — neither stayed long. One of them stared at the sleeping resident family for over 1/2 hour one day. The family was unaware of this, but the minute they saw (they did not smell him) him, they chased him away, and he ran off, lickety-split.
A fellow I called Tufted came by but was soon gone. Next came Archer. Archer’s is another interesting story. He was the alpha male of his territory along with his mate Amber. He actually was Amber’s son and her second mate. Why had he moved away from that situation? Again, I’m thinking that the urge to disperse might be stronger than the pair-bond. It’s Archer who remained as the alpha male on that territory but with a new female who I haven’t identified yet; whereas his mate and mother, Amber, moved to the edge of that territory with another son of hers, one born a year after Archer, where they are raising a family. So you see, to say that coyotes *mate for life* is not accurate in the coyote world.
Rags hung out with Chert for close to a month and it appeared he would be her new mate, but when Tawny arrived, he was driven out by both Chert and Tawny.
Rags is the third suitor to come by Chert’s territory. He, in fact, stayed for a number of weeks and was accepted by Chert and her remaining offspring. He and Chert groomed each other, she allowed him to sniff by lifting her tail, she claimed him by resting her chin on his back; they would nap and sun themselves together for hours. But suddenly he was driven out: I was there to see this. New suitor Tawny had arrived, was accepted, and displaced Rags, and helped drive him out. I wondered if Tawny had been a previous relation of Chert’s? Possibly a long gone son? Coyotes change over time, and if I stop seeing one, I lose track of who it is.
Tawny is Chert’s FOURTH mate. The family also includes offspring from Chert’s previous litters: Rot and Bibs born two years earlier, and Tug born last year.
So that’s where this situation stands right now. Chert is on her FOURTH mate and had a little fling with Rags right before this.
Coyotes “test” in order to assess and learn about the world around them. “Testing” needs to be differentiated from “messaging”. The messaging behavior, as I’ve often said, is a clear warning, usually to dogs, to keep away or go away. It involves scary posturing, including an arched back, gaping with lips pulled back and teeth bared, tail tucked under: the message is “leave!” If you encounter this behavior, the best thing to do is walk away and keep walking away. That’s what the coyote wants, so you might as well do it.
On the other hand, curious coyotes may *test* or *assess* how a dog will react to them which is not a demand to immediately move away — though this is what you should do practically to discourage the behavior. A coyote may test or assess a dog by approaching with a little bouncy gait or play-bows and try to interact, touch, or nip the dog’s tail. Some people have mistaken this for an invitation to play, whereas other dog owners have been terrified of any coyote approaching their dog. Although it does not look unfriendly, it needs to be discouraged. This is testing behavior and not play: a dog should be pulled away from this situation and walked away from the coyote. And here is the video, taken long ago in the San Francisco fog, which shows this coyote behavior towards, in this case, a disinterested dog who doesn’t react at all to the coyote. Few dogs will behave like this dog. Most dogs will lunge at and bark at the coyote.
A variation of this testing behavior might involve a bit of a dare or provocation — messaging displays are not involved. Your reaction should be the same: leash your dog and move away from the coyote showing him you aren’t interested in interacting. I’ll describe this here:
Coyotes watch in order to get to know the world. As they do so, they assess and judge situations and individuals of interest to them, in this case dogs. Watching informs them about what every animal is capable of and how their own safety might be affected by these capabilities. After watching for some time — maybe even weeks on a regular basis — a coyote might summon up enough courage to “test” or even “provoke” a reaction in a dog: it’s a variation on the testing behavior I outlined above.
Coyote sees a dog playing as he treks bycoyote lies down and watchesafter awhile, coyote moves closernow watches from closera nervous stretch — ho hum — as he moves in a little closerHe sits within the dog’s view and watches
One of the coyotes I watch has, for the last little while, stopped and fascinatingly watched a particular dog and his owner playing fetch on a large grassy field in a park. Over time, the coyote has come to know this dog’s capabilities and has now *graduated* to a mode where he either wants to *test* the situation or even *provoke* the dog into reacting to him. It’s not aggressive but it stirs things up a bit because it is an encounter that causes a response or retort. What is the coyote doing? First, he wants the dog to know he’s around and that this is his — the coyote’s — home. After all, the dog appears daily for less than an hour, whereas the coyote lives there.
It’s important to remember that only one coyote nuclear family occupies any one territory and all other coyotes are kept out. I’m sure this coyote exclusivity affects their feelings towards dogs. The coyote does this by entering into the dog’s field of vision and looking on or pretending to sniff something in the area, coming closer if the dog doesn’t react. To some, this may look like *play* and in fact it does border on play in that it’s fairly benign. The coyote will engage this way only only for a moment — just long enough to prove to himself that he’s the smarter and quicker and the more clever of the two. In other instances, I’ve seen the coyote swipe the dog’s ball and run off with it.
Walking within clear vision of the dogDog sees then chases coyotedog chasing coyotecoyote remaining within dogs viewcoyote waits to see what dog will docoyote knows dog is restrained and prances by in front of him
So the coyote heads towards the dog slowly. He pretends to do other things, including sniffing the ground. When the dog becomes aware of the coyote, the dog gives chase. The coyote runs off, just fast enough to keep out of reach of the dog, letting that dog get close enough so that he feels he might catch the coyote, even circling back so that the dog will continue. This, of course, only goes on for a minute before everyone yells at the dog owner to please leash his dog, which he does. That ends the interaction, and maybe in a week or so, it will happen again.
Below are photos of a coyote ducking and then crouching low in the ground to keep from being seen by a dog — this is their normal reaction to active dogs. Testing is reserved for dogs that they think pose no threat to them.
crouching for protectiongetting ready to flee as a dog approaches
I myself, and several other people I’ve spoken to, have encountered a similar type of behavior towards human. In my case, it occurred because the coyote noticed I was focused on him: he wanted to asses what my intentions were: https://coyoteyipps.com/2023/11/03/testing-feints-and-zoomies/
It was dark, so I couldn’t see anything, but I heard the vocalization loud and clear: a coyote was calling out to someone and there was no response, a snippet of which I’ve embedded here. I know the voice, and when I got home, by lightening the video, I was able to confirm visually that this was Mom.
Two weeks ago, Mom and her family left her usual hangout area in this section of her territory where I was now hearing her calling. Last year she also had moved in order to have her pups in a safer area. Note that this is still within her 2.5 square mile territory, it’s just a different hub of that territory. The wooded area she left here has been continuously cleared by the San Francisco Park Department irregardless of the habitat needs of our wildlife, in particular coyotes. What appears to matter to them is *what they think should live here*: i.e., native plants. The problem being that this area was all sand dunes long ago, and the few native plants that grew here were small desert type plants that provide no real habitat protection, especially from the many off-leash dogs who like chasing and antagonizing the coyotes. Dogs are an invasive, non-native species for which the coyotes need thicker cover for protection than what native species can offer. The sheer number of dogs in the city is overwhelming. The coyotes used to use the thick, entangled undergrowth to hide in. I went over to the area being cleared: it’s mostly hidden from human view by the few trees they’ve left up as a sort of curtain. All that’s left is dead wood: so this is probably the reason for moving. Note that “mating for life” I’m finding to be less and less true these days. This alpha female is on her fourth mate.
Mom
So Mom moved her family, along with her new mate and two yearlings. One *pup* — not quite a year old yet — can still occasionally be seen here alone: I don’t know if he chose to remain behind or if he was *assigned* to remain here: both ideas have occurred to me as possibilities, but there’s no way for me to know this. This youngster is a relatively large male, and I can imagine that Mom’s new mate might not want him around: I say this because of the bite marks I’ve seen on his snout the last few times I’ve seen him. Coyotes discipline, convey dislike, AND show dominance by grabbing another’s snout, sometimes quite hard.
Eleven month old youngster left to *tend* the old hub of the territoryThe two yearlings who pretty much still stick with Mom
Mom herself went through a family makeover earlier this year. First of all, her mate from over the past several years left her. Well . . . did he leave her or was he driven out? Again, I don’t know the answer, but either way, I found him happily paired up with another female on her territory about a mile away: it was such a surprise because coyotes have famous reputations for mating for life. It might be interesting for all to know that, as far as I have seen, it’s the females who choose (or inherit) their territories, and who also choose their specific den sites. Did he leave of his own volition, or was he driven out by her? I think the former, but I can’t prove it.
Mom’s new mateMom’s old mate who I saw cozying up to a new female elsewhere
Then, last night, Mom was back here, definitely calling someone from her family. The calling went on for ten straight minutes: I’ve cut out a short section of it for you to hear. Who was she calling to? It could have been the large male pup who has been hanging out here alone, only he was not around last night. But, might she have been calling her old mate? Maybe his departure had not been a fait accompli? Maybe she was hoping he hadn’t left? Then again, maybe she was looking for her new mate who might have wandered off? I haven’t seen any of them since they left except 11-month old son. And then a few days ago I heard this definite calling out with no response on March 14th.
If you live in San Francisco and missed this film the first time around, it will be showing again on March 26th, at the Bernal Branch Library in San Francisco, along with a Q&A afterwards with me and the filmmaker, Nick Stone-Schearer. You’ll need to reserve a space for yourself at Eventbrite. This is sponsored by the Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema. Below is the same introduction they have on their site: https://bhoutdoorcine.org/f2f-3-26-24/
In the early 1900s, California paid a $5 bounty for dead coyotes as well as other predators. This practice and rapidly growing urban areas led to coyotes disappearing across the state. Over the next century, public sentiment towards wildlife slowly shifted. By the early 2000s, coyotes began appearing in the state including returning to San Francisco’s green spaces like Golden Gate Park, Bernal Hill and other parks and forests.
DON’T FEED THE COYOTES observes several years in the life of a three year-old coyote as she vies with a territorial challenger in the quest to form a family. Studied by two naturalists with different approaches and perspectives, we follow the coyotes as they journey in the city’s parks including Bernal Hill.
Join Nick Stone Schearer, director, and Janet Kessler, featured naturalist for a post-screening Q&A
Filmmaker, Nick Stone Schearer, began his filmmaking career in 2010 documenting the impacts of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he spent several years working and learning in New York before moving to the Bay Area in 2015, where he has focused on stories about the natural systems around us and the spectrum of relationships we have with them. Nick continues to collaborate with other filmmakers, organizations, and brands including Bloomberg, Netflix and the Biden/Harris campaign. He is currently working on a project about California newts.
Janet Kessler, known throughout San Francisco as “the Coyote Lady,” is a self-taught naturalist who is into her 16th year of daily field-research: documenting urban coyote behavior and family life — including their behavior with people and pets. Through her blog, coyoteyipps.com. Janet shares her observations, photos and guidelines for easy coexistence. Janet has a degree in Cultural Anthropology and a Masters in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin. She was born in South America and spent her childhood there. She has worked at Vorpal Gallery, at U.S.News & World Report, and at several law offices.
This bird camera caught the sounds of coyotes, but only showed the eagles. Amy at the Raptor Resource Center asked if I would write something about coyote vocalizations for their blog and possibly general coyote behavior at this time of the year, and this is what I wrote: Press on the embedded title to read the article. This is an “in a nutshell” short summary piece! Thank you, Amy, for the invitation to write this!!
As winter ends and Spring is upon us, change is the theme of the season. Some areas already have spring blossoms. Some areas are locked in snow. We continue on.
Profound changes in local coyote admittedly bothered me some..but I’ve accepted the changes and will keep adapting just like coyote. They have adapted for millennia beyond sucessful.
The changes are both small and huge. Im sure I don’t even get a fraction of it usually.
My dogs and I patrol, inspect and check on vast properties and areas. We note anything worth noting. We scout, track, study and immerse ourselves in the land. This is the 1st late winter that local coyote…have been relatively silent. Not mute. But definitely low key and subdued.
The reason is…wolves. Wolves have very slowly…in trickles..resettled our region. Historically…my pack and I encountered coyote weekly especially in our pre dawn patrols. We developed strategies to counter coyote and give them options and room as we passed. The past 10 years the pack has grown very skillful in minimizing coyote encounters. It was par course to hear coyote concerts, insults and messages.
This has mostly…stopped. On ranch after ranch, range after range…we see changed coyote. They ARE NOT wiped out. But definelty reduced. Our area had a free flow of very vocal packs..sometimes numbering 4-7.
We are now experiencing duos or 3 maybe. And they are quick to call and disappear. They are here…and leave scats still proclaiming territory. But they aren’t advertising visually. If they see or sense canines…they literally disappear in silence. It’s profound for us who always heard some tips or calls or canoe defiance…and recognition.
Most people don’t realize the sheer influence and power of wolves. They are doing what coyote do…surviving. They are actually much shyer, and quieter, then coyote. Less daring. But….when it comes to canine hierarchy..wolves are top dogs in woods. A lone nomadic wolf trots thru and is gone. A territorial pack of wolves methodically, regularly, patrols vast vast areas. They need to eat. And they will run off…or dispatch, any strange wolf, coyote or dog they find in territory. We have 2 regional packs minimally..vying for vast areas. They travel further and faster then any coyote…rountinely.
The result is..after a few years..wolf wary coyote behaviors we’ve never known.
If we want wilderness and wildlife..this is the other side. Animals will establish themselves. They will survive. And some species are more direct about it.
The coyote aren’t wiped out..but no doubt…many have not survived once wolves claim the foothills to cascade circuits. It is nature.
I admit my own struggle with it. Areas the pack and I used to hear coyote neighbors…silent. Also..its humbling. My pack and local coyote established a specific..somewhat sloppy truce. A lot of growls and messages…and distance.
Wolves are inherently shy of humans. I’m not going to hear them yip to my pack. But..my pack also can’t counter wolves as they did coyote.
The Wolves are here and no canines can contest that.
The coyote get quieter and more low key. My dogs stick close to me and we go fwd. We are adapting to wolves. Acknowledging wolves. And amazed to live with Wolves. Real…horizon roaming wolves.
Lapis has been limping. It’s not a hard limp, but a definite limp. It must hurt her because she stops her walking and lies down apparently to relieve the pain.
Brother then comes by and can sense why she’s lying exactly this way. He comes by, keenly focusing on her eyes — eye-to-eye communication, caringly reading every nuance of her reaction to himself as he gets closer. He’s looking to see if she might not want him to come closer. I know she trusts him because he has earned that trust.
He is always attuned and responsive to her, whether when she’s ready for a chase or just wants to sit. He knows she has a painful leg. Fascinatingly, and I’ve seen this before a number of times, he SNIFFS her foreleg, not just to find out more about it, but also to let her know that he knows about it and that he is concerned. She trustingly watches his very careful and deliberate approach. I myself don’t know if pheromone markers of any type are produced by such an injury, or if simply the heat from the injury is what he detects, but he is able to detect what he needs to. I’ve seen this same type of awareness and detection several times: 1) In this photo, a female found out more about her mate’s injury by smelling it, and then prodded him to move out of the area where dogs might continue to chase him (see photo below from SPCAHSU Peninsula talk]; and here a sibling sniffed to find out about her brother’s injury and then tried channeling his movement to safer places: Cat prodding Sparks.
When Brother appears, he doesn’t poke or push, he simply sniffs and then slowly lowers himself to the ground next to her to lie by her side, as though he wanted to be a comforting presence. I was enthralled watching this: mostly the subtle eye to eye contact, keen mutual awareness, and caring responsiveness.
These two are highly intune, almost telepathically communicative with each other. Mostly, they are understanding and empathetic and warm towards each other in a way I think most of us humans are not aware of, or even, often, capable among ourselves unless it’s a very intimate relationship. When he looks at her, you can FEEL this understanding of her.
When he plays with her, he only plays as roughly as she plays. If you have a dog, you’ll know what I mean: my dog would play tug of war with me, but always only as roughly as I would. If I pulled gently, she would only use that same force to play with me.If I tugged much more roughly, she exerted that same force, in other words, playing at MY level of capability. I’ve seen this brother coyote play with his much larger and more developed brother, and that is a totally different, rough and tumble, competitive and even forceful interaction. In fact, this caring brother in the end always submits to that roughhouse brother in order to stop the rough play.
As Mom stares at daughter’s strange eye, daughter warns her to leave it alone.
Recall that Lapis — the 10-month-old female who I’ve written about — has an eye condition which is either congenital, or possibly an early injury. According to the vet, her eye isn’t hurting her or she would be squinting it. But we don’t know if she can actually see out of it, though she appears to because she doesn’t turn her head to favor her *good* eye. We also don’t know if the eye itself, or the socket around it might be more sensitive than normal to the touch in any way.
Mom stares into her daughter’s compromised eye trying to figure out why it’s odd.
These photos above show her mother’s keen awareness of that eye. In other words, to us the eye stands out visually, and it does the same for her mother. This “staring into her eye” lasted many moments, probably trying to figure out what might be wrong, or figuring out if there is a way she might fix it. So for example, if there was a foreign object in that eye, Mom might be able to physically pull it out, but, of course, this is not the case here.
a foreign object & goop in the eye
And here, to the right, is a photo of such an object lodged in another youngster’s eye: mostly goop around something the size of short fur. This is not Lapis’ situation. This is a coyote youngster from an entirely different family, just to show that grit and objects sometimes end up in eyes..
With Mom’s intense gaze, along with her body movements indicating she was about to approach that eye, Lapis pulls back her lip and bares her teeth with a snarl: a clear message that this kind of intrusion, even from her mother, would not be welcomed: “Please DON’T!” At the same time, Lapis emits a few high-pitched squeals of pain at her mother: “Please STOP!” emphasizing that anything the mother might try is going to hurt her.
Brother comes to sister’s rescue: sensitively and intelligently!
After Lapis emitted those short squeals of pain, BFF brother comes over to his sister’s defense. He seems to know she doesn’t want to be poked at, even by a well-meaning mother. In this family, he has spent the most time with his sister: he and his sister play constantly and I’ve watch them achieve a very nuanced and keen awareness and understanding of, and communication with, each other, and I’m sure it’s even deeper than anything I can see. So he is more intimately aware, even than his own mother, of what his sister’s feelings and needs are: I would say that he has a handle on her very essence.
Of course he has to be very diplomatic and careful how he “tells” mom to back off: this is hard, because naturally Mom is top dog here and everyone falls in line under her. Since she is the dominant one and he has to submit to her, he messages Mom gently to move away by offering himself to be groomed instead. What a brilliant move!
Above: brother inserts himself in front of Mom to be groomed, and she obliges.
Well, that solved the problem! Sister moves off, and brother becomes the object of Mom’s attention! (2-8)
The coyote pupping season is fast approaching. It’s a good time to find out more about our San Francisco coyotes. I’ll be giving a packed 55 minute talk which includes 175 slides and 8 short video clips! It is, after all, a slide presentation, and I’ll have a lot to say, using the slides to illustrate my points. I’ll be covering 1) their population structure, distribution and life cycle, 2) their family life and interactions, and I’ll wind down with 3) stewardship and guidelines for coexistence. In addition, I’ll cover a little about myself and my methods, and at the end I’ll tack on a little about our coyotes in the Randall Museum neighborhood area.
From the Randall: This is “a presentation to accompany the Pops & Pups exhibition. Join us for a special slide presentation and talk by Janet Kessler, AKA “The Coyote Lady.” Janet has been studying, documenting and educating the public with her first-hand information about San Francisco’s wild coyote population for the past 17 years. Learn where they are, who they are and guidelines for coexistence.”
The Pops & Pups: Perpetual Motion” display will be going up on February 20th in this location.
For more about the Randall Museum here in San Francisco, and their announcement, visit them at randallmuseum.org.
Some of you received a calendar I put together of coyote family life at the end of last year. This exhibit is extracted from that calendar so that more people would have an opportunity to peek into the family life of coyotes.
As many of you know, fathers are important in coyote families: in fact, both parents raise the young, which is unusual in the mammal world. This exhibit mostly displays the helter skelter fun and games between fathers and pups. This behavior is not something seen by most people, the reason being, not only that coyotes are highly secretive, especially with their pups, but most of their activity occurs at night when we aren’t around to see it and when it’s too dark to see it.
The point I want to make is that coyotes are hugely wrapped up in their own family lives. Any of our or our dogs’ interactions with them are peripheral to their family life and are only likely to occur if we impinge on their families and themselves in some way, including through territorial intrusions. The only way to avoid coyote/dog interactions in the city is to stay away from them and walk away the minute you see them. Please note that the display opens around the 20th of February, and I’ll give a general talk on February 24th at noon in the Randall Museum theater. See: https://randallmuseum.org/
This series of photos shows Mom on the right letting Dad on the left know what she feels about what he’s doing. One of their youngsters is there, in the middle, looking on, and obviously anxious about how their “conversation” is going. Coyotes communicate constantly through eye-to-eye contact, facial expressions and body language. They are always aware of each other’s moods and intentions, and most of their communication is silent like this, though sometimes these might include quieter grunts and growls.
Top row: Dad had been lazily relaxing in the aftermath of a rain, when Mom approaches from the right. He’s taking it in stride, with his ears pulled back and focused eye-contact which shows he’s really listening. Notice how intently pup, in the middle, listens to it all and is upset about it’s intensity as shown by the anxiety in his face. He shows his nervousness by licking his lips.
Middle row left, pup is kept quiet and out of the conversation — or maybe even calmed down — by Mom who grabs his snout: this is usually a disciplinary move and reasserts her status and will over his. At this point, pup steps back but continues to be totally focused and absorbed in his parent’s “conversation”.
Bottom row: On the left is when they become aware of me: “Oh, hi over there!” But they’ve come to know me as a benign fixture in the distance, so their conversation resumes. It appears that Mom wanted Dad to get moving because she beckons him to follow and leads him away. Dad complies, and pup trotted along in back of them.
Another conversation that might interest you is this one: Coyote Conversation: An Example. These communications are very directed in their messages: they have a specific intent and planned outcome by the coyote delivering the message, and the message is understood absolutely by the recipient.
Besides eye-to-eye contact and all sorts of body language including physical arm pokes, coyotes also use smells to communicate: this is a whole different channel of communication that we “mere” humans do not have access to except in academic studies. In fact, in our terms, coyotes almost “see” with their noses. They produce and detect pheromones which convey all sorts of specific information, including territorial boundaries through urine scent marking, the presence of outsider coyotes including their meekness or boldness, reproductive status and gender, they can identify specific coyotes who have passed by even days beforehand, and they can smell injuries in each other. And, of course, much more.
In this photo here, it’s interesting to see how a parental communication to one youngster so thoroughly affects an onlooker pup. They, of course, can identify with the situation they are watching.
About My Site and Me: This website reflects my 17 years of intense, careful, and dedicated field-work — empirical observations — all photo-documented without interfering or changing coyotes’ behaviors. Be welcome here, enjoy, and learn!
Coyotes reappeared in San Francisco in 2002 after many years of absence, and people are still in the dark about them. This site is to help bring light to their behavior and offer simple guidelines for easy coexistence.
My information comes from my own first-hand observations of our very own coyotes here in San Francisco. They have not been studied or observed so thoroughly by anyone else. Mine is not generic information, nor second-hand.
Note that none of the coyotes I document and photograph is “anonymous” to me: I know (or knew) each one of them, and can tell you about their personalities, histories, and their family situations. There have been over 100 of them, distributed among over twenty families, all in San Francisco. Images and true stories have the power to raise awareness and change perspective.
Press on image above for another crash course on coyotes
Coyote Yipps 
