A young coyote was out, calmly and nonchalantly sitting on a path this morning. The coyote watched a couple of people and their dogs. The dogs just looked at the coyote — their attention was on the coyote, but it wasn’t a riveted attention. They were just watching, seemingly with no need to go after the coyote. Both dogs had had previous encounters with a coyote, and the owners felt their dogs thought the encounters were not fun. We have all noticed in the last two weeks that the dogs in this park have ceased chasing the coyotes to the extent that they used to. These two walked on. Another walker and her dog walked by, as did a man without a dog — everyone comments with amazement on having coyotes in the city, and we exchange information on keeping it a safe situation.
I settled down to take some photos at my allotted 75 feet — I always hope to see some new behavior. I was crouched down when a man walked by on an adjacent path higher up the hill with his three dogs. I don’t know if the dogs saw the coyote or not, but the man did, and he didn’t like it, even though the coyote was over 150 feet away and minding its own business. The man walked on, but at the last moment — unprovoked — tossed a single stone at the coyote. The coyote did not see where the stone had come from, but the coyote was aware that something unexpectedly had hit it. The coyote was startled: it flinched and jumped aside. Then the coyote started looking up and around for where this missile had come from. The coyote made sudden jumps and leaps to the side, as if trying to avoid the same thing from happening again — the first one came out of nowhere, so might the next one do the same? It pursued this activity for about 5 minutes. It then headed into the bushes because more dogs and people were coming down the path. As it headed off, the coyote continued to be jumpy and to look around itself, still trying to figure out if the sky was falling!!
