Coyote Yipps

Great Horned Owl mother

Since this story has repercussions for our coyotes, I’m including it here.

A Great Horned owl pair has raised their owlets every year for the past 13 years in the same crook of a Eucalyptus tree. A couple of years ago I spent every day documenting the growth of that year’s clutch:  Owl Family With Triplets Grows Up.

Sadly, a month ago an owl carcass was found close to the Eucalyptus tree. It would have been a member of the same family we’ve all been observing and that I had documented: owls are territorial — this territory belongs to those owls.

Since we were all so fond of the owls, park goers contributed to have a necropsy performed. There was the possibility that the death could have resulted from old age, or avian flu. We were more concerned that it might have been the result of the large amounts of pesticides/herbicides used to eliminate non-native plants in the park — a park which calls itself a “natural area” but is not so at all. We’ve been trying to stop the use of these toxins for a long time, but without success. We received the results of the necropsy this week: the owl had died of rat poisoning. There may have been other toxins in the bird, but the carcass was only analyzed for rat poisoning.

Ours was Great Horned Owl Patient #1709, accepted at WildCare on November 8, to determine the cause of death. They found that this owl had been exposed to rat poisons — as have 74% of animals admitted to the facility this year. It was found to be well nourished, but it was internally toxic, discolored and hemorrhaged throughout: it had died of “presumptive AR intoxication”,  anticoagulant rodenticide poisoning. So it had eaten poisoned rodents. Great Horned owls consume about five medium sized rodents a day, which amounts to about 10% of their body weight a day. When they are raising their young, they eat substantially more than this.

Rodenticides kill by causing an animal to bleed to death internally. It is a slow and painful death. The animal’s activity is slowed down, and it becomes easy prey for one of our animals higher up the food chain: owls, hawks, raccoons, or coyotes. And so, the poisons get passed along.

Please, let’s protect our remaining owls, and the other wildlife in our parks, including coyotes. Please don’t use rat poisons in your households.

These two members of a coyote family headed into a forested area to avoid encountering a dog.  The forest serves as a protective passageway because it is dense enough for coyotes not to be detected. It looked as though they were out on a morning trek together. I’ve seen them stick together during several hours of trekking. But the trekking plan this time was cut short when they happened upon two juvenile squirrels quarreling in the middle of the path rather than paying attention to their surroundings. One of the coyotes dashed after them and caught one.

The 2nd coyote watched the capture, but stayed behind: trekking activity is shared, but food is not. The coyote with the squirrel eyed the 2nd coyote and squinted — there was a message in that gaze. He scurried off to a hidden location. The 2nd coyote watched him disappear from sight and then turned around, lay down, and waited.

She waited and waited. She put her head down sometimes, she watched some walkers through the dense trees, she sprinted to a close-by tree to avoid detection by a dog and lay down there, and she kept looking towards the spot where the other coyote had disappeared. After a while I left to see if the 1st coyote might still be close by. He was a mere 50 feet away — just far enough away to be out of sight from the 2nd coyote, where he consumed the entire squirrel over a period of about 8 minutes. He then walked away, leaving the area and the other coyote behind.

I returned to watch the 2nd coyote — she was still waiting. She waited another 30 minutes, moving about 75 feet once to a spot where she continued to wait. Finally, she got up and slowly walked to the spot where the first coyote had eaten. She sniffed and stared at the ground there for four minutes. She must have known this was the eating spot — I wondered what kind of scents she was gathering. Finally she walked on, seeming to follow the scent of the first. I lost her in some dense brush.

The initial “togetherness” of the pair was broken when food became involved.  More than likely the second coyote eventually caught up with the first one, but it’s possible that there might have been no further trekking together on this morning.

The American Museum of Natural History in NYC publishes monthly Science Bulletins which include their Bio Diversity News. This is their monthly video program exploring the diversity of life on earth and our human footprint on the biosphere. This month’s story is about a study on behavioral adaptions in coyotes inhabiting urban environments. Coyote Yipps is included — what an honor!  To see more of their videos check out this link: http://www.amnh.org/explore/science-bulletins/(watch)/bio/news/urban-coyotes-mate-for-life.

Here is the video, “Urban Coyotes Mate For Life”.