I saw lots of coyote affection and protective behavior this morning. I was waiting for the rain clouds to blow by so that I could get a shot of the crescent moon. I like moons. I was sticking the camera back in its bag when I noticed a young coyote only about 30 feet in front of me. It had to have just arrived and sat down. It was too dark for photos except that of the moon. The coyote allowed me to look at it for about a minute before it headed off walking, and then disappeared.
A few minutes later, I heard a walker whistling loudly. He and his dog were coming up a distant trail. The coyote apparently had heard or seen this walker, because I saw it suddenly run away from the walker. It sat down to watch. Neither the walker nor the dog saw the coyote.
At about this time the mother coyote appeared on the scene, right in back of the young one, and sat down. The young coyote was ecstatic to see her: there was jumping up, muzzle contact, licking of the face of the young one by the mother, licking of the mother’s back by the young one, body contact. This affection frenzy lasted about three minutes. My camera settings were out of sync — so the photos are totally blurry, but I posted a couple anyway: they convey what they need to.
Then both coyotes sat, one in front of the other, watching the area where the whistler had stopped to talk to someone. This man soon walked on. Things appeared calm, so the young coyote got up and walked around for about 6 minutes.
This is when the first set of dogs appeared. These were two unleashed dogs which rushed right after the coyotes. The young coyote disappeared into the brush area, but the older, protective mother, after initially fleeing, came back, as is her normal behavior. She assumed her defensive stance: hackles up, pawing the ground, snarly face. One dog returned to its owner. The mother coyote made short charge-and-retreat motions towards the dog that remained to try to get it to leave. The owner of this dog called, hyper-hysterically, and ineffectively, for her dog to return. Eventually, the dog slowly made its way to its owner, whereupon the owner leashed it and departed.
Even before this first incident was over, three more unleashed dogs appeared, all belonging to one owner. They also ran after the coyote — the owner had absolutely no verbal control of her dogs. She seemed resigned to them going after the coyote, even as she ineffectively called them. I tried to let the owner know that this was a mother coyote who was going to defend her pup. The coyote was leading the dogs away from where her pup was in the brush. The owner of the three dogs decided to leave them — they were nowhere in sight. She went back down the hill. Then the mother coyote started barking, which is how I found where she was. The three abandoned dogs were near by, out of breath, and looking for their owner but couldn’t find her. The largest of the three dogs decided to go after the coyote again, causing the coyote to dash off to a hill further off where it continued its barking. The dogs, I assume, were eventually reunited with their owner, because the coyote was no longer being pursued by them.
This entire episode, or I should say two consecutive episodes of two and then three dogs going after the coyote, took about 18 minutes. On the hill the coyote barked distressingly for another 3 minutes before calming down. With the dogs gone, she moved higher up the hill where she relaxed for about 45 minutes, keeping an eye on the spot where her pup had hidden.
