Coyote Yipps

Hi Janet,

I hope you are well, it has been a long time since we corresponded! I wanted to give you an update on the coyote den i found two years ago in my back yard. First, we took your advice and built a catio for our cats. They still get to go outside occasionally, but now it’s less of a desperation on their part, and they accept my suggestion when i point them to the catio when they are not allowed to go outside. This gives us more choices to keep them indoors when needed.

Such an occasion to keep them indoors has come up: the coyote family appears to be back, and renovating their old den! I got one of those fancy wildlife cams, and have attached a few videos taken last night. Mama spent quite a bit of time enlarging the hole to the point where she could go inside. She had been working on it over the past few weeks, digging a little bit here and there. I had thought she would be giving birth to her pups in here again, but she appears to have already given birth to the pups in these videos, because she looks really skinny and appears to have lactating teats. What do you think?

My hypothesis is that she might be looking for an alternate den to relocate her pups to eventually. We’ll see… Dad is also pretty busy helping her and making sure everything is safe. There appears to be a third coyote, i assume some part of the family, who has a hurt front leg, but accompanies the hole-digging activities nonetheless. As you can see from the time stamps, the digging took all night, and mom looks so proud and pleased with her den at 4am! They did the digging in 3 distinct spurts – some at 11:30, then they left and came back an hour later (maybe left to feed the pups?), then came back again in the late 3am hour to finish the job.

I hope you enjoy these videos.

Cheers!
Susan

Six short night-camera video clips: Looks like a lactating mom – Mom digging – Graceful entry – Success!! – Mom & Dad check on the hole – Coyote with a missing paw