This coyote became suddenly absorbed by something interesting in the distance. Whatever it was, it did not seem to warrant becoming apprehensive over. It must have been something more amusing than threatening or dangerous, because the coyote then sat back and relaxed for a moment, watching a moment longer before continuing its trek. By the time I stopped filming, whatever it was, was gone. Coyotes tend to be very curious about what is happening in their territories — they like to know what is going on and will often investigate if they can’t figure it out from afar.

The coyote was also licking its chops as I filmed. My original posting mistakenly stated that moments before the coyote had found a mole. It turns out that was a totally different incident. So, then why is the coyote licking its chops? Your guess is as good as mine. However, I have noticed tongue activity as a communication device, for instance, a slight licking of the upper lip is a sign of submission and non-confrontation.  Then again, maybe there were residues from a previous meal still sticking to the coyote’s muzzle!

Thea started feeding a coyote two years ago, when it was a toddler. I told her, pleaded with her, that it was wrong to feed a wild animal and, much to my surprise, she agreed; she promised to stop but then she didn’t. I felt helpless to do anything about it: my neighbor is old and lonely. The coyote was her friend.

I hadn’t seen the coyote for three or four months; I’d missed its absence, for no matter what you say, having a wild animal nearby can send shivers down your spine. It’s thrilling, yet….it’s still wrong. I was sitting down to write, when, out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash, it was the coyote back in Thea’s yard!

Coyote biding his time until I leave

I heard Thea calling to the coyote, “Come, come. Come, come,” in her German accent, as she placed food on the ground. I grabbed my video camera and ran outside. You can see in the video, the coyote looking to the left (Thea), then looking straight ahead (me) and the dilemma he finds himself in. He doesn’t know what to do: here’s a witness to his forsaking his wild coyote ways, and I imagine, he’s a little bit embarrassed. Later, he plops down in the grass in Thea’s lower yard, smelling the flowers (a true Ferdinand, the coyote), passing a peaceable afternoon.

After 45 minutes of taking the breezes and catching bugs, he goes back to dine at Thea’s table.

This posting was reprinted with Charlotte’s permission from her blog, The Rat’s Nest. Please visit her site to see and enjoy more of her fabulous writing!

This resting coyote — hidden from view — perked up when a dog and walker went by. A number of dogs had passed, so I don’t know why this one was of particular interest, but  the coyote felt that an investigation was called for. As I’ve noted before, the interest is often about “what are you doing and where are you going.” The coyote followed, ever so carefully, at a fairly long distance, keeping an eye on the dog and owner who walked in the vicinity of hedges where the coyote had been resting.  At several points, the coyote stopped to wait for the walkers to move way ahead, and then followed at a distance that just allowed it to keep the wakers in sight, yet not be seen. When the coyote stopped and stood still, it was almost undetectable. Then, when the dog and owner finally headed off for good, the coyote just sat down and watched them leave. The activity, from start to finish, lasted thirteen minutes, and the dog and walker never noticed the coyote.

I don’t know how this dog might have reacted had it seen the coyote.  Some dogs can smell coyotes from afar and know they are around, even if the coyote can’t be seen. Some dogs are either oblivious or don’t care, even when a coyote can be seen. And there are some dogs that show real respect for the needs of wildlife, leaving them alone and giving them their space on purpose.  But most dogs have no such comprehension and think coyotes are to be chased.  The chasing sets up a precedent which the coyotes then come to expect. Most often, the coyote will just flee. But it could stand up for itself by messaging its needs to be left alone or to leave its territory. This could entail charge-and-retreat sequences, or sometimes even nipping at a dog’s behind, cattle-dog fashion, to get it to leave. Keeping your dog close to you and leashed can prevent such incidents.

Someone screamed at their dog in the far distance, so I looked up in time to glimpse what I thought were two dogs running up a hill, but it turned out to be a dog chasing a coyote. Even though this was in the far distance, I know this, not only because of the owner screaming at the dog, but also because within a few seconds, the coyote started it’s distressed barking — a common response to being chased by a dog.

I happened to be watching this fella here — a totally different coyote, not involved in the chase — who stopped and sat down to listen. And then he began responding to the other’s yips — each time.  Back and forth.  It lasted over ten minutes. This one didn’t move — he didn’t try to find or join the other. Instead, he stayed where he was, sitting, and calling back. The first coyote eventually stopped its barking. This one continued a few more times, and then got up and  ran in the opposite direction from where the other yipping had come from. There was definite communication between the two coyotes who could not see each other. It seemed to me that the intensities of their calls, the frequency, the length of each howl, their tone — all of these probably have meaning to a coyote. I had lots of fun thinking about this: elephants display a huge range of emotions, whales have languages, crows have vocalizations with meanings, most animals have distress calls. We know that coyotes communicate through body language. Where do coyotes fit in with their vocal communication?

“Viewed at a magnification of over 250 times real life, tiny grains of sand are shown to be delicate, colorful structures as unique as snowflakes. When seen well beyond the limits of human eyesight, the miniature particles are exposed as fragments of crystals, spiral fragments of shells and crumbs of volcanic rock.”

Note that they are as individualistic and as interesting as people or coyotes if you’re willing to look hard enough!!

Please see the full article in the Daily Mail, or Dr. Gary Greenberg’s Microphotography site: sandgrains.com 

(posted with Dr. Gary Greenberg’s permission)

Imagine having something super irritating lodge in your ear and not be able to get it out. I watched this young coyote work on it for 20 minutes. I could feel when the distress got excruciating: the coyote ran towards bushes to dislodge whatever was in there, he ran towards another coyote to ask for help but didn’t get any response, he shook, he scratched, he galloped about, rubbed on bushes, he moped forlornly with his ears down, he tilted is head in all directions. He ultimately resorted to eating grass which coyotes do when they have an upset stomach — of course this didn’t work. I was not able to see that he solved the problem.  I really felt for the little guy.

We humans have our own worries, so we forget that even wild creatures, too, have many seemingly mundane things to cope with. I’ve seen thorns in foot pads, eye infections, ears infestated with mites, limping, skin ailments, wounds, etc. These things occur regularly in our wildlife. This series of photos, over a long twenty minute period, show how distressing it can be for animals to deal with these seemingly petty annoyances.

Trees, forests, and dense thickets of underbrush — thickets which are impenetrable to dogs and humans — serve as wildlife habitat: they offer physical protection and food to wild animals. Almost all trees in San Francisco are non-native — there were only four native species of trees in the area when the Europeans arrived. Non-native berries such as Himalayan blackberry, cotoneaster, pyracantha, holly and others serve as food sources for birds and furry creatures. These are being ripped out in our parks for the shortsighted intention of  ”restoring” the San Francisco area to what it might have been like in 1776 — mostly sand-dune grasses and understory species with little if any habitat value.

But the environment has totally changed since that time. The biggest change which altered the landscape forever has been the growth of a dense human population. This impacted the environment tremendously.  But when humans came, they also planted trees and shrubbery to help them deal with the harsh environment — mostly to hold in the loose sands which blew around everywhere, and as wind barriers. The plantings did more than this, they added greenery and beauty to the area. And they created a wildlife habitat which is now home to almost all of our wildlife. Because of these and other changes, even the original soil structure along with the microorganisms that were part of the sand dune ecosystem have been altered forever.

The new plantings grew and evolved. Ours, now, is a totally balanced ecosystem that has evolved over the last 250 years, and it is a healthy ecosystem. An indicator of the health of an ecosystem is it’s top predator. There are coyotes in San Francisco — our ecosystem is very healthy.  Now, along with our dense human population, we have paved roads, lots of automobiles, plenty of pollution  – we need our trees to combat the environmental effects of our dense population and the way we live.  San Francisco has the second smallest tree canopy of any dense urban center in the United States. Our urban forests are essential in terms of carbon sequestration and water sequestration — they help the environment and combat the effects of global warming. Every single tree counts. Yet more of our healthy, hard working naturalized trees are being ripped out and replaced with grasses and shrubs that are not sustainable in the present environment, all in the name of a clearly misguided environmentalism and false science.

Sustainability is something we all aspire to. However, in the time since the Native Plant program began in San Francisco, we have discovered that, in fact, native plants are not very self-sustainable. These native plants require a vast number of volunteer work hours to maintain them. In addition, our Recreation and Park Department is, literally, splashing poisonous pesticides on our parks’ non-native species regularly in order to accomplish their nativist goals. We have tried fighting this policy, but the use of poisons in the Park Department’s so-called “natural areas program”/NAP has actually increased 265% in one year alone, from 2009 to 2010. They are using these pesticides in parks where children play, where there is wildlife, where we walk our pets, and where there is a creek — the manufacturer of these chemicals warn strongly against this. The “natural areas program” is clearly not “natural” at all.

Critics of NAP question not only the program’s expenditures in budget-tight times but also the native plant advocates’ rhetoric, ”  ’Restoration ecology’ is a euphemism for a kind of gardening informed by an almost cultish veneration of the ‘native’ and abhorrence of the naturalized, which is commonly characterized as ‘invasive,’ ” Arthur Shapiro, a distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis, wrote city planning officials last October. (Sacramento Bee, 1/16/12). People are finally waking up to what is occuring in their parks — and they are desperately alarmed.

Images are worth a thousand words:

Sirens set this coyote off, with long drawn-out howls and barking, and pauses in-between.  I’ve only included part of the recording here. During one of the last pauses you will hear, unusually, a dog’s response, which surprises the coyote who stops to carefully listen. “What the. . . . . who does he think he is?”  Anyway, the interruption seems to tick off the coyote who throws herself into the next howl with a spirited leap, howls some more, and then hurries off to a place where she might get a view of her competitor. I don’t think she saw anyone. The coyote continued to howl, but the dog did not, and the siren had long since ceased, so things quieted down fairly quickly.

Here is a little drama during mating season. The neat thing is that I sense a lot of respect and understanding between these coyotes — a respect and understanding that comes from affection, and also from a rigidly established hierarchy. In the photos, you see the male approach the female who has been observing the world go by in a very relaxed manner. Affection is often displayed between these two — kisses and nuzzling, often with the use of a paw, as here. Here, the affection begins no differently than usual: he puts his paw on her face and caresses her, nuzzling her affectionately.

Then he shifts around and tries mounting. He gives it a try, but after a short time she breaks away from his hold, barring her teeth: the answer is “no.”  She is not receptive to his advances at the moment. To emphasize her “no”, she then lifts herself and puts both her paws on his back and keeps them there in a display of dominance. When she walks away, thinking his advances are over, he runs after her — his intentions must have been obvious to her, because she now wraps her jaws around his, and he allows this. Her statement is stronger this time, and he accepts her command. There is clear communication between them. They continue hunting for a long time. Several times he became interested in her odor, and sniffed her intently, but he never tried mounting again during this observation.

I have read that mating in coyotes actually makes them very vulnerable to dangers. The reason is that there is a “tie” which occurs which prevents them from separating for an extended period. If a predator or danger of any sort were to arise, they wouldn’t be able to do much about it. Please see the following post with a video I found on youtube which shows this.

Coyotes literally become “tied” together during mating. As you can see from this video which I found on youtube, it puts them in a very vulnerable position and could be dangerous for them if there were larger predators around.