Being Stared At Causes Coyote To Skedaddle

2014-04-29

Coyotes often flee if they are stared at for too long. It makes them very uncomfortable. In the wild, a stranger staring at you might mean you’re about to be pursued and headed to become chow.

In this case I watched a man become enchanted with a coyote. He stopped and watched the coyote for what a coyote might consider an interminable long time. The coyote, on first being spotted, ran down a hill, but then kept an eye on the stranger from a rock he had found in a field. I could hear the coyote thinking, “Yep, the stranger is much too focused on me and there must be a reason.” Instead of waiting to find out, he skedaddled away with hind paws and tail flying.

Leath Tonino Captures My Joy and Viewpoint In Watching Urban Coyotes, in High Country News

2015-05-25

Click on the photo for a readable version of the article. Also notice that although only one photo displays at any one time at the top of the linked page, you can scroll through all seven of them by pressing the numbers below the photo. Leath Tonino, you’ll all note and agree, is a fantastic writer and has captured the spirit of my adventure perfectly!

I spent the twilight hours in a park with Leath where he interviewed me for this article as we watched a coyote, and I thoroughly enjoyed his company. He sent me another very creative article of his which is about adventure in exploring the urban wild right at your doorstep without driving hundreds of miles. Kudos to Leath! https://www.hcn.org/issues/47.6/raccoonboys-guide-to-urban-wilds

And, the really good photo of me was taken by Terray Sylvester, with whom I spent another thoroughly enjoyable park outing.

Enough Is Enough!

An exasperated coyote determinedly puts an end to the howling of another coyote: “Cool It!” They were responding to a siren. Notice that the victim actually has the last word, though it’s not very loud, before they both settle down to groom themselves!

What Is Natural Coyote Behavior Towards Humans?

2015-05-07Malcolm Margolin’s book, The Ohlone Way, has a brief description of the setting in San Francisco, including the vast number of animals that inhabited the land, before the European settlers moved in, and the behavior of these animals towards humans. I am reprinting this excerpt, with permission, from pages 9 and 11 of his book. It goes a long way to explain the very natural behavior seen in this video between a bobcat and a coyote who are caught in their own very natural interaction with humans standing close by being ignored by the two animals. It is the ignoring of humans which is of prime interest in this posting, though the interaction between the bobcat and coyote is fascinating. I’ve seen the same kind of interaction between a skunk and a coyote:  https://www.facebook.com/jon.snow.56481/videos/vb.25318743/10101407149702764/?type=2&theater.

“The environment of the Bay Area has changed drastically in the last 200 years. Some of the birds and animals are no longer to be found here, and many others have vastly diminished in number. Even those that have survived have (surprisingly enough) altered their habits and characters. The animals of today do not behave the same way they did two centuries ago; for when the Europeans first arrived they found, much to their amazement, that the animals of the Bay Area were relatively unafraid of people.”

“Foxes, which are now very secretive, were virtually underfoot. Mountain lions and bobcats were prominent and visible. Sea otters, which now spend almost their entire lives in the water, were then readily captured on land. The coyote, according to one visitor, was “so daring and dexterous, that it makes no scruple of entering human habitation in the night, and rarely fails to appropriate whatever happens to suit it.”

“Animals seem to have lost their fear and become familiar with man,” noted Captain Beechey. As one read the old journals and diaries, one finds the same observation repeated by one visitor after another. Quail, said Beechey, were “so tame that they would often not start from a stone directed at them.” Rabbits “can sometimes be caught with the hand,” claimed a Spanish ship captain, Geese, according to another visitor, were “so impudent that they can scarcely be frightened away by firing upon them.”

“Suddenly everything changed. Into this land of plenty, this land of “inexpressible fertility” as Captain la Perouse called it, arrived the European and the rifle. For a few years the hunting was easy — so easy (in the words of Frederick Beechey) “as soon to lessen the desire of pursuit.” But the advantages of the gun were short-lived. Within a few generations some birds and animals had been totally exterminated, while others survived by greatly increasing the distance between themselves and people.”

“Today we are the heirs of that distance, and we take it entirely for granted that animals are naturally secretive and afraid of our presence. But for the Indians who lived here before us this was simply not the case. Animals and humans inhabited the very same world, and the distance between them was not very great.

“The Ohlones depended upon animals for food and skins. As hunters they had an intense interest in animals and an intimate knowledge of their behavior. A large part of man’s life was spent learning the ways of animals.

“But their intimate knowledge of animals did not lead to conquest, nor did their familiarity breed contempt. The Ohlones lived in a world where people were few and animals were many, where the bow and arrow were the height of technology, where a deer who was not approached in the proper manner could easily escape and a bear might conceivably  attack — indeed, they lived in a world where the animal kingdom had not yet fallen under the domination of the human race and where (how difficult it is for us to fully grasp the implications of this!) people did not yet see themselves as the undisputed lords of all creation. The Ohlones, like hunting people everywhere, worshipped animal spirits as gods, imitated animal motions in their dances, sought animal powers in their dreams, and even saw themselves belonging to clans with animals as their ancestors. The powerful, graceful animal life of the Bay Area not only filled their world, but filled their minds as well.” 2015-05-09Note that if the humans in the video had approached the coyote, the coyote would have moved away immediately, and yelling or throwing a small pebble towards the coyote would have caused it to move away even quicker.

Elephant Helicopter Tails, by Charles Wood

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Janet and I have written about coyote family daily meet ups, rendezvous, and in a past post I included a short video of one: https://coyoteyipps.com/2011/07/24/rendezvous-by-charles-wood-2/ . The coyotes act like they haven’t seen each other in days when it has only been a few hours. It’s so joyful!

The other evening I was listening to Krista Tippett interview Katy Payne, an acoustic biologist and founder of The Elephant Listening Project. Here’s a link to that interview:http://www.onbeing.org/program/whale-songs-and-elephant-loves/24 from Krista’s On Being web site.  About 22 minutes into the interview Katy describes elephants family rendezvous greeting sessions that  are very similar to those of coyotes, including the tail twirling. As with coyotes, elephants show the same joyfulness after having been apart for a mere few hours. Incredible!

2015-05-14

Click image to read Rendezvous posting and see Rendezvous video by Charles Wood

Feisty & Berserk Reaction to Dad and his Putdowns

Usually one doesn’t mess with Dad. When Dad comes at you with his tail out, hackles up and belligerent, you go belly up fast and stay there until he releases you. It’s a many-times-a-day occurrence for this young male coyote. The behavior serves to reconfirm the strict hierarchy of dominance and submission between a father and a son coyote. Peace is maintained in the family with this order of things: there’s never any question about who is the boss.

On this day, Son has a feisty and berserk reaction to Dad’s dominating put downs. This reaction occurred after the third such put down within only a few minutes — “enough is enough, man”. First while on his back, Son snaps (teasingly), full of fun and good-naturedly at Dad. He sticks his paws in Dad’s face and then, full of himself, and “possessed by the devil”, runs off, not knowing exactly where to go or what to do, but running and jumping in circles and in fits and starts, and occasionally looking at Dad. Dad sat & watched until it was over, and then went over and put him down one more time!


 Putdown #1 and #2


Son Reacts Playfully


Son Goes Into Full Berserk Mode


Dad’s Reaction and Final Putdown In This Series

My dog would do this — go berserk — after a bath, or, in her eyes, after restraining her in the tub against her will. After the bath, she’d run around the house wildly, jumping on the furniture and wiping herself on whatever was available, as though she were trying to “wipe off” or undo the bath.It was as though she had been bitten and was running from something. She would stop every few seconds to look at us with a grin on her face, rump up, forelegs extended out in front, and ears back. Maybe she was thinking: “Okay, you made me submit, but I’ll show you that I don’t like it and that I have a free spirit.”

Coyotes Remove Ticks From Each Other

I’ve been told that grooming is hierarchical in coyote families. Not so! Here you have two buddies of equal stature taking turns in grooming and taking off ticks from each other. I’ve seen mothers groom their yearling pups, I’ve seen mothers groom their mates, I’ve seen males groom their youngsters and their mates, and I’ve seen youngsters groom each others and their parents. So it’s not about hierarchy. It’s about caring for one another, removing unhealthy ticks and about companionship.

I had been watching these two coyotes groom for several minutes before I decided to videotape them. You can see from the length of the video  — over five minutes long — that this isn’t a perfunctory groom. These guys are really taking care of each other. Ticks are bad this year.