She Who Laughs Last, Laughs The Loudest

30 Sep 2018 Leave a comment

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior

Here’s a fun photo-essay involving two coyotes and their ownership of a mouse.

SHE caught a mouse and began to play with it. HE, of course, noticed and approached.

Aware that HIS eyes were on HER mouse, she distanced herself fast.

Then she teased him and taunted him, provokingly, and continued to play with her mouse by tossing it and catching it, and dropping it sometimes: “ha ha, this is MINE and you can’t have it!!”  But he watched her carefully, and . . .

the minute that little mouse was tossed a little too far, HE grabbed it and ran with it. She watched him tear off with it. Now it was HIS.

He distanced himself far enough not to be reached, and then played with what was now HIS prize. He kept looking over at her thinking she might try to grab it back. But she was sly and pretended not to care –she pretended to be otherwise occupied.

Then, when she felt HE believed that it didn’t matter to HER, and when he was occupied with “his” mouse and no longer watching her, she snuck over and,

now it was payback time: when that little mouse was tossed too far, SHE grabbed it and took off.

This time there was no more tossing the mouse around. Why take the chance of its being grabbed again? She chewed it up and down the hatch it went. After all, it had been HER mouse before HE stole it from her! And then she grabbed HIS snout in hers to show who was boss: she who laughs last . . .

Teasing each other is something coyotes do a lot of. It’s a form of interaction, and most of it is done in good-will.

Beautiful Solo Howling to Sirens by an Older Male

25 Sep 2018 1 Comment

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, yodeling and yipping


He has a fairly large family, but they didn’t join-in this time.

Coyotes Are Appreciated

20 Sep 2018 6 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in Uncategorized

Might this be a yoga pose?

Hi, Janet.  Today I saw my first coyote in daylight !!!  It was in Pacifica.

At first I thought it was a dog.  Or a wolf.  I even looked at your website’s pictures just to make sure it really was a coyote.  

You note on your website that, “Everyone I know is as thrilled as I am to have them here, even if they’ve never seen one!” And I know that’s true of me!  I want them to keep sharing the habitat we still have.  I am a defender of the coyotes.  Seeing the coyote today was an enormous thrill for me.

I also took pictures of a huge flock of quail in Pacifica today and recently I photographed my 37th California butterfly and that was in Pacifica too.  It was a Satyr Anglewing.

I really enjoy your coyote pictures.

Best wishes,

Jim Musselman

Another yoga position — and he held it for a long time!

 

Lugubrious Howl After Picking Up An Unwelcome Scent

15 Sep 2018 4 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, coyote howling, following, interloper, parenting, territoriality

 

Kicking dirt after his howl (with a youngster beside him)

This lugubrious howl capped extensive and intense sniffing by the resident alpha male of his territorial area. He had been picking-up the scent and following it fervently for several days, and I wondered what was going on. Right before the howl, his nose again was to the ground as he zig-zagged intently over the area. Immediately following the howl, he “kicked” the ground: he was clearly angry, but whomever he was angry at was not present.

Nose to the ground, following the scent

The intense sniffing occurred regularly for several days.

My initial thought was that a wayward dog might be causing alarm, but seldom have I seen dogs here. HOWEVER, the day after the recording, I spotted an intruder female yearling sniffing through the area evasively. She was a coyote I knew. Recognizable facial features apart, she was encumbered with a hefty radio-collar. These are used only in only one park in San Francisco — most of our city coyotes are free of them. So I’ll take this opportunity to say a little about her.

She had been “babysitter” for her own younger siblings born this year in her park several miles away. Pups in the city are more than five-months old now and require less looking-after, so relieved of this responsibility, she is freer to explore away from her home. Might she be making tentative steps at dispersal and looking for an unfilled niche within the city? She’s a year-and-a-half old and ready to move out on her own. Her brother, apparently, dispersed out of the city, dozens of miles south. On the contrary, this gal has been making forays within the city since March, but she always returns home (per Jonathan Young).

The yearling interloper

Might the howl have been either a warning to the intruder, or at least a vocalization of discontentment — the same as when coyotes howl after having been chased by a dog? Most intruders are chased off by resident coyotes — this is what I normally see — but if it happened here, I was not there to see it.

Papa’s five-month old pups.

Whatever was going on seems to have been resolved for the time being. I say this because the very next day this papa left the area for the day, leaving three youngsters and mom there alone. He would not have done so had there been danger lurking nearby. Leaving them for day-long intervals has been a routine behavior of his over the last couple of months, so things seemed back to normal and calm again. The youngsters seemed to know how to take care of themselves by doing what youngsters do best: playing chase and wrestling with each other, and keeping (fairly) hidden.

If the sniffing and howling were indeed because of the intruder, I wonder how serious of an infraction the intrusion was? My only clues that there was a problem were the alpha male’s repeated intense sniffing and his mournful howl, and then the intruder’s appearance. She has not re-appeared and neither has the intense sniffing behavior. Whatever was going on, no longer is.

A Boyfriend for A Loner!

10 Sep 2018 4 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, coyote pairing up Tags: ,

My friend Ilana contacted me after she saw two coyotes where there had only been one ever before. Our loner coyote, a female, has lived reclusively — reclusively when it comes to other coyotes but not people or cars — in one of our parks for two and a half years. Suddenly and for the first time, she was seen walking in the company of another coyote! This is very exciting! I hurried over to the park to take a look, even though it was late at night.

She’s on the right smiling at her new beau!

Because it was nighttime, I saw some wildlife which I don’t normally see during daylight hours: for instance, a barn owl, beautifully white in the light of a streetlamp, fluttering kitelike above its prey, and two raccoons stealthily weaving their way around parked cars and over a cyclone fence on their way somewhere.

Within minutes, I spotted the loner coyote and then the newcomer. They stuck pretty much together. An acquaintance happened along and held my flashlight so that I was able to take a record shot in the dead of darkness. I didn’t know if the coyote’s would be a one-night visit, or something more permanent.

The next morning I returned and saw them again, well after dawn. First, I saw the loner by herself. She sniffed something enticingly-smelly in the middle of an intersection, so she wallowed and rubbed herself on it: perfume for the occasion??  Fortunately, it was Saturday, so traffic was light. She then disappeared into some bushes and soon re-appeared, this time with the newcomer right behind her. It appears that he’s planning on staying a while. My friend Gary’s running club appeared at that moment and I was able to share the event, and the excitement thereof, with them.

When the loner emerged with her new friend, she exuded happiness. It was apparent that, to her, the newcomer was more than welcome here. She was totally solicitous towards him. They went trotting off: I’m sure she was showing him around. Her attention and gaze were regularly in his direction. Repeatedly she extended her snout in his direction in a show of happy acceptance, and they both smiled most of the time. Only once, that I saw — and I was continually watching — did he push back, which surprised her no end, as revealed in her facial expression in this photo I captured (below). Might she have been a bit overbearing in her welcoming behavior? She backed off a little and everything became balanced again.

The resident loner (on the right in all these photos) kept looking at the newcomer as if to say, “Isn’t this fun?”, and reaching with her snout in his direction.

Only once was she told to “cool it”!

The coyotes spent the bulk of their time together hunting, playing chase with each other, and trekking the length of the park. The most amazing part of it was to see how happy they were, especially the loner: she was smiling ear to ear almost every time I saw her; she kept looking at him to make sure he, too, was having a good time, and she became playful frequently to show how much she liked having him there. Walkers in the park were enchanted: TWO now!

Chasing, play, and just being together.

The newcomer is skilled at hunting, especially leaping for prey

Twice she was chased by dogs — this is par for a morning — while he sat in the background and watched. He did not go to her aid, which many coyotes wilI do. In both cases, the exhausted dogs gave up: no dog can maneuver the hills as lithely as a coyote who doesn’t have bulk or pounds weighing her down.

What is on everyone’s mind, I know because everyone is asking me, is pups. Whoa! Coyote females come into heat just once a year in January or February. Our loner is old enough to have pups now at 3 1/2 years of age. Males, interestingly, produce sperm, also, only at this one time of year through a process called spermatogenesis which lasts two months. Males tend to wait to reproduce until they are about 4 years old is what I have seen. We have no idea how old this male is, except that he is at least 1 1/2 years old — he is obviously not young enough to have been born this year.  If he is as old as our female or older, we could have pups next April. If he is younger, it won’t be for a while.

My hope is that paying attention to him might help curtail some of the attention the loner has been paying to human activity, dogs, and cars. Wouldn’t that be nice?!

Please, everyone, keep your dogs away from them: the minute you see a coyote, shorten your leash and walk away. You could pick up a small dog as you walk away. For an introduction to coexistence, watch: Coyotes As Neighbors: What To Know and Do. For How To Handle Coyote Encounters: A Primer, press for the flyer by that name. To learn a little about coyote family life, read this short article which appeared in WildCare Magazine: Inside A Coyote Family

A Newly Discarded Bike Tire Inspires A Coyote’s Inner Child

04 Sep 2018 2 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, investigating, novelty, playing

Here are fifteen slides of fun: investigating and testing yet another discovered novelty! Note the tentative approach with touching, poking, and at first, grabbing the tire only minimally by a torn tire tread, all the while with hackles up and ready to bolt if the need should arise.

This is serious business — getting to tame and know her environment — in this case a bike tire!!  :)) The best way to see these slides is to click on the first one and then scroll through them.