Information and stories about San Francisco coyotes: behavior & personality, coexistence & outreach, by Janet Kessler: Unveiling first-hand just how savvy, social, sentient and singular coyotes really are!
Collage showing coyotes feeling at home in San Francisco. Cities have become natural habitats for them, along with mountains, beaches, deserts, ranches, farms, riparian corridors.
Many people assume “coyotes in their natural environment” means anywhere far from humans. But when not persecuted, coyotes have long lived near people — and benefited from it. As anthropologist Malcolm Margolin notes in The Ohlone Way, Indigenous peoples coexisted with coyotes well before Westerners arrived in America.
Coyotes are extraordinary opportunists. They’ve adapted to nearly every habitat and climate — from scorching deserts to frozen tundra, from ranches and farms to beaches, mountains, riparian corridors and cities. All of these are natural habitats for them.
Their troubles began with Western expansion and the cattle industry, when humans started slaughtering both wolves and coyotes. Wolves were wiped out, and coyotes expanded their range — but were branded as vermin and hunted relentlessly. Even today, they’re often shot on sight or killed in contests. Ironically, hunters blame coyotes for deer loss, though humans take far more deer, including the healthiest bucks, while coyotes mostly target the weak or sick (among others, see Coyote America by Dan Flores).
As ecological awareness and humane thinking have grown, people began questioning this persecution. In cities — where guns are now banned — coyotes have found relative safety. Food prey is abundant in the form of rodents of all types, particularly gophers, birds, opossums, skunks, raccoons, vegetation of all types, bugs and lizards, and about half their diet here in San Francisco comes from human refuse (see Tali Caspi). For coyotes, as for us, city life is about convenience.
Some argue coyotes don’t belong in cities, citing car strikes, mange, or dog conflicts. Yet outside cities, life can be harsher, with predators like mountain lions and humans adding to the risks. There’s no law — or scientific reason — saying coyotes don’t belong here: that’s simply wishful thinking on their part. In truth, they’ve always belonged wherever they can survive.
A mated pair cuddle, horse around, and tease each other
[Note: This is a highly shortened version of the more detailed posting with photos that can be found here: WHO are they?https://coyoteyipps.com/who-are-they/]
In a nutshell, WHO are the coyotes? Well, it’s a little like asking, WHO are we as people: there is tremendous variety manifested in our/their individuality, situations, histories, and locations, because we’re each nurtured slightly differently by the culture, environment, happenings, opportunities and individuals immediately around us. But within that variety, there also are unifying generalities.
Coyotes are highly social, highly communicative and highly interactive animals that live in nuclear family units headed by the alpha-parent pair, several yearlings born the previous year, and new pups born this year. They live on their exclusive, claimed territories that are about 2 to 2.5 square miles in size, and they keep other coyotes out: this results in a natural population control. We have 20 such territories covering all of SF. Size of territories are smaller in cities because of the abundance of food: 50% of their diet comes from human refuse (Tali Caspi), and in fact this might be why they’ve moved into urban areas.
Family life is very similar to human family life which should make it easy to relate to them: parents have the ultimate say. They interact and communicate constantly, either visually, through odor, or through vocalizations. They hunt, play, cuddle, explore (often in pairs) have disputes, have besties and sibling rivalry. There is usually a *rendezvous* of all family members at dusk which begins their more active part of their day. Nonetheless, they are diurnal and can be active at any time. The yearlings usually disperse some during their second year of life.
Coyotes’ main source of nutrition comes from rodents, especially gophers. Their diet is supplemented opportunistically with what is available around them and what they as individuals have become good at catching: such as skunks, raccoons, cats, ducks, ravens, opossums, snakes. Seasonally they fill up on all types of vegetation, including blackberries, kumquats, apples, pears, persimmon. They have all sorts of hunting techniques, including coming out in the rain when gophers are more likely to be driven higher in their underground tunnels, and waiting for squirrels to enter trash bins and bring out refuse left by humans, which the coyotes then grab!
Their visibility has increased in recent years due to a number of factors, including the growth of social media postings and the COVID shutdown which sent more people to the parks or kept them at home where they were more likely to see coyotes (than in downtown office buildings). In addition, coyotes over time have indeed become more habituated to human presence. Constant benign human presence has made them more comfortable being seen and in closer proximity to humans. In addition, coyote parents who have become blazé about the presence of humans pass this on to their youngsters: you can actually see when this happens. A youngsters sees a human and immediately looks to Mom to see what her reaction is for guidance. She doesn’t react, so the pup relaxes.
The primary issue with coyotes is dogs. Dogs and coyotes do not like each other: this is a given. Coyotes keep non-family coyotes away, and by the same token they try keeping dogs away, especially during pupping season — so they’ll message dogs with scary postures or charging at them, and might even nip to get the message across. It’s easy to abide by their needs: stay vigilant when you walk your dog and always walk away from them. For more on dogs see: https://www.instagram.com/p/DLqI5dKhlKh/. And if you are worried about “danger” from a coyote, please remember that dogs are much more likely to bite you or maul your dog than is a coyote: per year we have 17 coyote bites and scratches to humans for all of North America, whereas dog bites send 1000 people a day to emergency rooms.
About My Site and Me: This website reflects my 18+ years of intense, careful, and dedicated field-work — empirical observations — all photo-documented without interfering or changing coyotes’ behaviors. Be welcome here, enjoy, and learn!
Coyotes reappeared in San Francisco in 2002 after many years of absence, and people are still in the dark about them. This site is to help bring light to their behavior and offer simple guidelines for easy coexistence.
My information comes from my own first-hand observations of our very own coyotes here in San Francisco. They have not been studied or observed so thoroughly by anyone else. Mine is not generic information, nor second-hand.
Note that none of the coyotes I document and photograph is “anonymous” to me: I know (or knew) each one of them, and can tell you about their personalities, histories, and their family situations. There have been over 100 of them, distributed among over twenty families, all in San Francisco. Images and true stories have the power to raise awareness and change perspective.
