Dispersal Maneuvers

09 Apr 2023 2 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in dispersal

Dispersing youngster.

Yesterday at dusk, I saw a dispersing youngster wandering through a neighborhood. He was not fast-to-flee, but rather carefully deliberate and much more aware of his surroundings than he let on. He kept out of the way and to the edges when the couple of people or cars were around, otherwise he used the street. He found a baggie and attempted “milking” it for what it was worth. It looked empty, but it must have retained odors from its previous contents because the coyote was interested in it. As I observed, I became aware of the coyote’s right hind foot: it was compromised, which you could see only from certain angles. Coyote legs in particular are thin and subject to injury — I’ve seen such injuries mainly from being chased by dogs. This guy soon headed to the bushes and I didn’t see him again. That’s about par for me for observing a dispersing coyote: I only ever see them fleetingly. This is because they are not in their own territories, but just passing through what might be another coyote’s claimed territory — in other words, trespassing.

If you look carefully, you can see his injured hind right leg in these photos. This did not appear to impede his movements, so the injury probably happened long ago.

Dispersal here in San Francisco seems to take place mostly during a youngster’s second year of life, although I’ve seen it as early as 9 months of age, and as late as 3 years of age. It takes place at any time of the year: there’s no actual “dispersal season”. The new pupping season has begun, with new pups having just been born — this is one of the times when some yearlings, due to big changes in the family, may decide to, or be prompted to, move on.

Coyote population is like a breathing bellows, expanding during the pupping season, and then shrinking back down after dispersal to the alpha pair, with possibly a couple of yearlings lingering a little longer before moving on. The yearlings who remain at home — and these can be either male or female — it’s not limited to just the females — serve as a great help in raising a new litter and in defending the territory, and they themselves eventually move on.

What are the features of dispersal — how is it achieved? I’ve seen parents drive youngsters out, I’ve also seen youngsters just pick up and leave when they are ready without cause, and I’ve seen siblings driving siblings out. Interestingly, opposing this process, I’ve seen parental feeding keep youngsters around well into their second year.

When a parent instigates the dispersal process, it appears to me to be driven by reproductive jealousy, as well as, sometimes by a crack in the hierarchical order. For this purpose, parents use silent intimidation (such as intense and prolonged intense staring) or physical intimidation (body slams, punches, bites) as well as hierarchy demands. Hierarchy is strong right from when the pups are born, with pups learning to lay low and hit the ground submissively at meetings with the parents. Sometimes I’ve even seen youngsters appear to shrink into themselves to look smaller when greeting parents, possibly in hopes of looking younger and thereby sticking around longer? It is mothers, or alpha females, who mostly intimidate their female youngsters — especially those who show an interest in Dad, and alpha males appear to intimidate and drive out the younger males, particularly if they show an interest in Mom. I saw the process begin with a youngster at 7 months of age in one family.

A form of sibling rivalry seems to include who is able to be next to a parent — it’s almost a kind of jealousy. I wonder if regular proximity might influence a parent’s decision to allow a certain youngster to stay on a little longer. Certainly that individual would have a survival advantage over a sibling who left — that’s one of the survival perks of having a territory to stay on. I just read in Wikipedia about starlings kicking their siblings out of the nest to insure they get all the parental attention and therefore a better chance at survival and reproductive survival — their rivalry goes as far as siblicide. Getting a sibling out of the way, out of the picture, seems involved sometimes with coyotes. Interestingly, Wikipedia even uses human step-siblings as examples of a siblings’ need to displace other siblings for their own advantage: did you know that murders in this group are higher than between other groups? This is how intense these rivalrous sibling feelings can be.

I’ve noticed that youngster males are allowed to remain in a family much longer when a Dad isn’t around — say, he died and another alpha male didn’t take his place — or when dad has become enfeebled by old age and may need the youngster to help defend the turf. I’ve seen such a male then move up into the alpha position — yep — becoming his mother’s mate.

It’s after leaving home that dispersal becomes dangerous for urban coyotes. This is due to cars — cars are their chief killers in cities, due to hostile territory-owning coyotes who drive them away, and due to unfamiliarity with new terrain. They appear to search for new homes mostly at night, when it’s safest for themselves.

BTW, a couple of times, I’ve seen a dispersing, “foreign” injured yearling youngster accepted as a visitor by an alpha female in another territory: it’s really altruistic behavior. I don’t know how common this is. More often, I’ve seen dispersing youngsters being repulsed by territorial owners.

Here are some dispersal directions and final destination I’ve been able to track in San Francisco (center photo — clicking on it will enlarge it for you):

To the left: rivalrous siblings duke it out. Center: some dispersals that occurred within the city (most youngsters move south and out of the city); Right: dispersal is a dangerous time for coyotes — cars are their chief killers.

During dispersal, a brave and strong yearling could end up fighting for a territory within the city where they detect weak or aging alphas — this happened in the Presidio in 2019. Or, a lucky coyote just might find a vacated niche here in the city — this happened at Bernal Hill in 2016. A youngster may wait it out on the periphery of a territory having assessessed one of the alphas to be weak, and then move in when the opening occurs: this happened in the Presidio only a couple of years ago. However, most dispersing youngsters seem to move south and out of the city because all territories within the city are already taken (per Presidio study).

In this video, a mother coyote wallops her yearling daughter to either disperse her or to instill fear in her so she won’t reproduce. Notice Mom is being aided by her son, her daughter’s younger brother, who appears to be simply copy-cating his mother’s mean behavior. In this particular instance, daughter was regularly cozying up to dad. This particular situation ended up with the parents leaving the territory to their daughter because she would not leave.

These next two dispersal maps come from the Presidio (©Presidio). The first map to the left details one coyote’s months of criss-crossings in search of a territory, even out of the city and back, and, the next map (in the center, below) shows her journey’s end in the Presidio: note there is no more wandering, she found her niche and sticks to it and keeps other coyotes out. Of 15 coyotes tagged and collared in the Presidio over a three year span, all apparently were killed by cars except one. In addition, the radio-collars and tags themselves created problems. Here (below right) is a deformed ear due to an infection caused by an ear tag, and her collar was supposed to fall off after one year for humane reasons, however, it malfunctioned and she has been burdened with it for 6 years and will be stuck with it probably now for the rest of her life. I’m not a fan of these gadgets, but the maps are fascinating.

The two maps to the left are from the ecologist at the Presidio©, based on recordings from a tagged and radio-collared coyote. To the right is what these gadgets look like: The ear-tag became infected and caused the ear to permanently flop; and the radio-collar itself was supposed to self-release after a year, for humane purposes, but it malfunctioned, so she’s been stuck with the collar for the past 6 years.

Sparks’ Presidio Family: an Update

15 Jul 2022 3 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in alpha pairs, coyote behavior, dispersal, family structure

Sparks, three-year-old, defending the denning area in the Presidio

For those of you who are interested and have followed his story, Sparks, who had recently been living as a loner in and about the Presidio, has succeeded in integrating himself into the established resident family of coyotes there! He is even behaving like the alpha male, so he may have taken Puff’s, the Presidio’s previous alpha male’s, place. I don’t know this for sure yet, but it’s highly likely, judging by his behavior and that I have not seen Puff. If Puff still is around, then Sparks, a three-year-old male outsider, somehow has become accepted as an integral beta family member. I need to see more interactions to know the exact situation — these coyotes have been particularly elusive. I will edit with an update when I find out.

Here is a brief summary of Sparks’ story, with links if you want to dive deeper:

Sparks was one of a litter of five — one female, four males — born in Glen Canyon in 2019. The siblings were particularly tight, and when Sparks had his first arm injury — this was the right arm and probably just a severe sprain — they helped him to safety when dogs appeared closeby. He had a special affectionate bond with his sister, and the two of them together began their first dispersal foray to Golden Gate Heights Park when they were exactly one year old.

Two months later, his sister returned to Glen Canyon where she remained with her birth family, and Sparks appeared in the Presidio which already had an established alpha pair of coyotes. It was not long before I saw him with another leg injury — an actually broken forearm — the left one this time. He left the Presidio on that broken arm and returned to a backyard in Golden Gate Heights, three miles away, where he remained for three weeks until exactly August 14th — that’s when he was last seen there — nursed by a couple of Good Samaritan neighbors. He was now into his seventh month of dispersal.

Left: Wired, the Presidio alpha female for the last 3 years; Right: Puff, the Presidio’s alpha male beginning three years ago who I’m not seeing lately. His absence would mean Sparks is the alpha male.

He reappeared in the Presidio on August 15th, 2020. And then I lost track of him for six months, only to suddenly be surprised by his appearance in North Beach (see above link) a month later in September, when I was updating myself on those resident coyotes. He was now 17 months old and still recovering from the broken left forearm — still limping severely. I’ve always thought that his weakened condition is what helped other coyotes accept him into their fold. For two weeks he stayed with the North Beach family, and I saw a lot of affection and banter between him and Cai2, the (at the time) three-year-old alpha female there, but I never saw him interact with Stumpf, the alpha male. By the way, the Cai2 is the littermate sister of the Presidio’s Puff, born in 2017 in North Beach to the previous North Beach alphas — they are five years old as of this writing.

Sparks’ dispersal in 2020

After this North Beach interlude, Sparks headed back to the Presidio, still with a strong limp, where I have spotted him regularly ever since: this now is his home. At first, I never saw him interact with the resident Presidio family. He seemed to exist around them, and possibly was allowed to stay due to his injured arm — he limped severely for a long time, and even has residues of that limp nowadays — which may have rendered him non-threatening to the resident coyotes. Be that as it may, in January 2021 he was seen being chased out of the Presidio by Puff a number of times — that was the beginning of the breeding season — but Sparks didn’t leave. Wired and Puff, the resident pair, had their second litter that year with Sparks hanging out not far away. That may be when the relationship began changing.

I stopped observing the Presidio coyotes for over a year — there were too many other territories for me to keep up with — but I returned last week, the first week of July, 2022 to update myself on the situation there.

Of highest interest, as stated above, is that Sparks, who is 3.5-years-old now, is acting as though he were the alpha male in the Presidio: defending the den site, babysitting the youngsters of which there are two (apparently there were three but one died, according to the Presidio ecologist), and leading the one family rendezvous that I saw, which included a yearling female and the two pups. Absent from the rendezvous were alpha female/mom Wired, and Puff. There are other yearlings in the Presidio, but they were not involved in this rendezvous. Wired can sometimes be seen sunning herself at the denning site during daylight hours. Is Puff still around? As I said, if he isn’t, Sparks will have taken his place and would be the current alpha male. If he is still around, we’ll know that he was accepted into the family as a beta male to help out by guarding, babysitting, and defending the territory if it ever came to that. But whatever the situation, Sparks is now totally integrated into the situation: this is, somehow, HIS family. Below is a video of the rendezvous of a few days ago:

So the current Presidio family consists of Sparks, Wired, two pups and a yearling daughter. There’s also another male who I call “LowKey” who has come into the denning area, but hangs out more on the periphery: I don’t know his position in the family yet. And there are a number of yearlings who may still be using the Presidio as their base, but don’t hang around the den site.

Two pups born this year (left and middle) and a female yearling (right), all are Wired’s offspring. The yearling would have been fathered by Puff, but what about the two pups?

[press on any of the images to enlarge it and scroll through each row]

Left: Sparks is acting like the alpha male as he guards the area. Center: Wired has been and continues to be mom — she’s on her third litter since moving into the Presidio and becoming the alpha female thre. Right: This fella who I call “LowKey” hangs out on the outskirts of the denning area, he’s at least two years old and is somehow also associated with the denning family. In some ways, he looks like Sparks, and may be genetically related.

© All information and photos in my postings come from my own original and first-hand documentation work which I am happy to share, with permission and with properly displayed credit: ©janetkessler/coyoteyipps.com.

Family Infighting Leads to Dispersal

26 May 2022 3 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, dispersal, family interactions, family relationships

Coyotes are fascinating family-minded social critters whose lives seem to parallel ours in many ways. I write about their family life and interactions and I can see a lot of ourselves in them. They (predominantly) mate for life, both parents (normally) raise the young, and they form intra-family relationships which very much parallel what you’d find in our own families. They each have personalities, individualisms and quirks that other family members learn to deal with . . . or not. There’s play, affection, mutual care, and rivalries. There’s teasing, mischief, one-upmanship, and competitiveness. There are alliances. There’s bullying. They communicate between themselves constantly: most communication is silent through body language and facial expressions. They use vocalizations for emphasis sometimes. Fighting is an amplified negative communication.

There comes a time when the youngsters in a family grow up and leave home. Sometimes, *when* they leave home is based on their own internal time-clocks, and they just pick up and go. At other times they are forced to leave due to growing animosity and conflict with another family member, OR another family member may actually drive them away. Coyotes appear to be programmed to live predominantly in sets of two adults, with pups and yearlings as welcome additions. Beyond this combination makes them edgy and reactive. Their leaving home is called *dispersal* and usually happens sometime between one and two years of age, though I’ve seen it as early as 9 months and as late as 3 years. In our human families, it usually happens after high school, though it could happen earlier or later, depending on the circumstances.

I was able to capture this video, above, of a two-year-old male driving out a one-year-old female from the family and territory. In this case, it was intense, brutal and painful to watch: and it was to-the-point: “LEAVE”, no *ifs* or *buts*.

One thing most people don’t realize is how hard life can be for a coyote. Once they disperse, their survival rates plummet: many are killed by cars here in San Francisco (25 last year), and others are forced to keep moving by other coyotes who own territories. Life is always safer for coyotes with territories, which may be why some youngsters desperately hold on and don’t move on, but in order to be able to stay, they must be *allowed* to stay by the others, and must accept a subservient position and never rock the boat.

BTW, most dispersing coyotes move south and out of the City of San Francisco because the limited territories within the city are already taken. The Presidio ecologists have documented this really nicely. I have found that many of the territories within the city have been owned by the same families over an extended number of years, which creates a lot of stability in the city’s population. When a vacancy does occur within the city, it’s because a territory was either abandoned by an older coyote pair whose reproductive years were over, or because a younger coyote or coyote pair were able to challenge and drive out such oldsters. A visibly weak alpha may also be displaced from his/her territory, as was the limping alpha male in West Portal at the beginning of this breeding season: his disability was obvious, and incoming coyotes took advantage of it to displace him. If anyone sees him, please let me know: I have not seen him at all since Spring began. The Presidio territory was taken over by an energetic younger coyote and the remaining older female alpha was forced to move on.

These hardships are part and parcel of coyote life which can appear idyllic at times, and exceedingly brutal at other times. We humans are their stewards: the best way to steward them is to keep away from them, not feed them, and not interact with them. That’s what they want, and that is what’s not only best for them, but best for us in terms of keeping a peaceful coexistence in place.

The Many Faces of Dispersal

18 Mar 2022 8 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, dispersal, fighting, mother coyote behavior, sibling rivalry, siblings, social animals, social behavior, social interactions, taunting, teasing, youngsters

I hope this posting clarifies rather than confuses or convolutes what goes into dispersal. I think I’ve covered enough examples to enlighted, but not too many so as to confuse! I’ve included plenty of links to YouTube videos and previous postings of mine.

Dispersal is not a simple cut-and-dry process that occurs on a set schedule: it occurs at any time of the year and has a variety of causes pushing and pulling it. I’m sure we all can appreciate that it’s always safer to have a territory and remain on one than not: coyotes are familiar with existing dangers and food sources on their own territories whereas they are not outside of that area. From what I’ve seen, the majority of coyote deaths occur during dispersal, away from their territories, most of those in urban areas by cars, though of course younger and inexperienced coyotes aren’t much safer from cars within their own territories. So that’s an important factor involved in dispersal.

Video of youngsters playing

Another factor is the changing quality of play over time. Initially, coyote littermates learn by playing innocently with each other — it’s great to have a bunch of companions! They learn invaluable and nuanced social skills (how to get along and how not to!), communication skills, hierarchy assessment, etc. They learn their limits, and they learn the limits of their siblings: they learn when they’ve gone too far. Most play is on the level of horsing around, teasing, provoking, and competitive. It includes chase-me, keep-away, wrestling, tug-of-war, pouncing, stealing, grabbing, etc. Very little of it is cooperative, except that they are engaging with each other and learning the rules together and through each other, learning to apologize in order to keep a game going, etc. Even so, I’ve seen plenty of cuddling and grooming, and the growth of very special sibling bonds as seen in the two photos below. Above is a video of siblings playing, showing how rough and tumble it is.

opposite-sex youngster siblings grooming each other affectionately
Youngsters love to play, with increasing challenges as time moves along, until one day it becomes cut-throat rivalry
Sweet Face wasn’t interested in rough play

Roughhousing can escalate: if they want to play with a sibling who doesn’t like the roughness, they learn to tone it down. Those individuals who withdraw from rougher play either can’t keep up, don’t like it, or are innately less socially interactive than their siblings: innate personalities which they are born with are always a part of the equation. They may prefer sitting to the side and watching, or going off on their own. This little girl to the right remained aloof of rough play, but the little girl in the video above resigned herself to being batted around rather than be excluded.

These photos above are of brother siblings whose playing has turned more serious: more of, “Take that, and I mean it.” One youngster still wanted to get along, but the other wanted brother gone.

Unwelcome teasing, bullying, one-upmanship, all of which are involved in establishing a hierarchy or challenging it, can segue into visceral dislike and antagonism, and ultimately avoidance of a sibling. OR their internal clock begins telling them to exclude others of the same sex, especially the males. For females, growing antagonism appears to be more often on a mother-daughter level as far as I’ve seen. After all, coyotes live pretty much in long-lasting monogamous pairs, so this is ultimately what they are programmed for: reproductive rivals must be excluded. They are *nuclear family* animals as opposed to *pack* animals.

This video above shows sibling rivalry between an older sister and a younger brother: I haven’t seen as much male/female sibling rivalry, but here are two examples. 1) The young male in the video has taken on their mother’s attitude towards his sister. Mother had been regularly attacking the sister in an attempt to get her to disperse. Sister sulked but didn’t leave. The mother’s repeated negative treatment of Sister seems to have given license to this brother to ceaselessly taunt her and egg her on as in this video. Note the purposeful teasing and body slams for no other reason than to annoy her and cause a reaction. And here is more brother/sister “Friction Between Almost Two-Year-Old Siblings”. Sometimes the differences are worked out, keeping the family intact a little longer, but soon there are departures.

In the photos below, you see on the right, bowing submission to the hackles-up guy who could no longer stand his brother’s presence: the kowtowing brother was soon driven out forcefully at 1.5 years of age. He desperately wanted to stay, hanging on as long as he could — he and his mother shared a lot of affectionate interactions and grooming — but the onslaught of his domineering brother become a daily affair. Biting resulting in visible skin wounds and squeals of pain preceded his departure as seen in the photo to the left.

Sibling rivalry to the left has degraded into nips now; the to right, kowtowing to the bully

Most of the time, according to what I’ve seen, parents allow youngsters to work out their own interpersonal differences without interfering. But this has not always been the case as when a parent develops a special attachment to one of the youngsters, in which case the parent may discipline the aggressor or soothe the youngster they want to stick around: the aggressive sibling begins to think twice about bullying if the parent is around.

In one very convoluted and complicated case, Mom, repeatedly groomed her two-year old son, Scowl, obviously inviting him to stay on the territory and be her mate. Her long-term mate (the pair was together 9 years) had died of old age the year before, and a new alpha male intruder had come into the picture and even fathered her last litter. But no one in the family liked him as could be seen by their behavior towards him, and Mom kept paying particular attention to Scowl, to the exclusion of that fellow. Scowl was the apple of her eye, and within the new pups’ 4-month birthday, that outsider male left. Now Scowl, at three years of age, rules the roost with his mom, which is what they all wanted ever since Mom’s previous mate passed away. And they are all now apparently very happy!

Above: the family hovered frequently without the new alpha male, i.e. Dad — Dad was always off alone; Below: Scowl was asked to stay by his mom by constant grooming!

Antagonism and negativity aren’t always the instigators of dispersals. At some point, some yearlings just pick up and go — negativity or not. However, others stay on, even with growing negativity and battling because there’s usually something else attracting them to the area. Such was the case with Gumnut several years ago. His dad kept attacking him, but Gumnut always submitted and slunk away, skirting the dispersal issue. He and his sister were inseparable best buddies. Mom had died, so Dad actually had his eye on his daughter as his future mate, and at two years of age, through domination, he indeed took her over. (Yes, there’s lots of inbreeding in coyote families). Gumnut stayed around until the single pup who was born to Dad and Sis turned 7 months old, braving it through repeated attacks from his father, and then, suddenly one day, at 2 1/2 years of age, after hearing a particularly painful long-lasting squeal from him which I gathered indicated he was bitten, we never saw him again. That he put up with the severe put-downs and blows handed out by his Dad for so long was amazing to me. Gumnut had been undeterred because something more important was drawing him in: his best buddy and sister. I’m sure they would have become a mated pair had Dad not intervened.

Cuddling and affection between a brother and a sister sibling

Mothers may start harsh discipline of daughters early on: I’ve speculated that it’s because of reproductive rivalry. I haven’t seen it often, but I have two video examples of it: 1) Maeve beating up her seven-month old daughter: this dominant and aggressive treatment might also ensure rank is established early on, making dispersal that much easier. Might this daughter have been exhibiting a dominance streak, or even cozying up to her dad?? Again, this is speculation. 2) Here are two brothers vying for sister’s affection: notice the second brother repeatedly inserts himself between his brother and sister. Three is a crowd, so one will eventually leave. Interestingly, in this particular case, the female ditched both related males and paired up with an outsider. 3) And here is another instance of Mom, Maya, attacking her yearling daughter Sissy. On the flip side, I’ve also seen a daughter who stayed and ended up den-sharing with her mother. As I say, there is nothing cut-and-dry about dispersal.

Mom beginning harsh discipline suddenly at 7 months of age — establishing this harsh relationship early on makes dispersal easier. This is the earliest case of this I’ve ever seen of mother/daughter harshness.

Here is more on Beating and rank issues leading to dispersal. And here is a mother roughly disciplining her son as the father watches: rank issues are kept alive right from the start which makes dispersal issues that much easier.

Hawkeye teases and frolics with his dad on this day before his dispersal at 14 months of age. There was no antagonism leading up to the even, except his own towards his sister who avoided him.

Another several examples of dispersal behavior, and behaviors leading up to dispersals can be found in THIS posting. Here, I describe three dispersals from the same family, beginning with a very friendly send-off by a Dad, Ivan, to his son, Hawkeye, who was 14 months old. I got the sad impression that both father and son were very aware of the mites and bugs infesting the son’s coat, meaning his immune system was down. Possibly they both knew son wouldn’t make it even though he would try. Again, this is simply my interpretation. After this sendoff, I never saw Son again. Another son of Ivan’s began distancing himself from the rest of the family by keeping to the fringes of the territory at a great distance from the rest of the family, and then one day he simply left — he was ready to go at 1.5 years of age. The last instance in the above posting is a father’s, Ivan’s, return to check on his daughter, Sissy, on a territory he and his mate had abandoned, possibly due to its being the end of their reproductive years, leaving daughter on that territory. Had they ceded the territory to her? He seems to be checking on her, and even saying goodby. He never came back after this visit. Ivan was the most benevolent of fathers — I never saw him attack or discipline any of his children (though he did so to intruders), rather he always parted on good terms: he was the epitome of a leader, whereas you have seen from some of these videos that that is not always the case.

That’s Sparks to the right, with the sister he originally dispersed with. She returned to her birthplace.

And my final example is of Sparks. He preferred not dealing with a brother who began trying to dominate. He initially left with his sister, the one in the video linked below, but she returned to her birthplace whereas he continued on and found a permanent place to live on the edge of another family’s territory. I have not seen him with another mate, though I’m hoping this situation might come about. His present status, at 3 years of age, is sort of an interloper with a fairly permanent and defined territory (which is a contradiction). Sparks: A Happy Springtime Update. Sparks came from a litter that had formed incredible caring bonds with each other, and here is a video showing his sister’s concern and care for him. In the video, Sparks was the coyote youngster with the injury.

Sparks: A Happy Springtime Update

04 Apr 2021 2 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coexisting with coyotes, coyote behavior, dispersal

Update: My own smile extended from ear to ear this morning as I spotted the coyote I’ve labeled as “Sparks” — all my coyotes have pronounceable labels instead of numbers to make them easier to remember — sauntering along a path with his easy, bouncing little trot, contented and happy as as a lark, with a huge grin on his own face! See photo below. Life is good for him now: more stable and settled, more predictable and secure, than it was 6 months ago and before. He paused, looked at me, sat down to scratch, and then continued comfortably on his way. 

Interestingly, another coyote family lives here in the Presidio, where he seems to have ended up his dispersal journey: they are a mated pair — territorial claimants here for over a year — who share the same pathways with this guy — I haven’t seen a shared territorial arrangement before here in San Francisco. The Presidio is the largest of the territories I’ve documented here in SF: there has been basically just one family in that park, but maybe there’s actually room for two — or at least one family and one additional single guy. I have seen no sign of a mate with Sparks, and as far as I have seen here in SF, males wait until they are 3 or 4 years old before settling down with a mate and starting a family.

Maybe there’s a truce or pact, or some kind of understanding between these coyotes. OR, might it be that Sparks has been adopted into the breeding pair’s family in a distant sort of way? He had been allowed to remain on another family’s territory for several weeks during an earlier part of his dispersal peregrinations — he was actually welcomed and interacted with warmly by the alpha female, the mother, in that family: I thought of it as an adoption, even though it lasted only several weeks. Possibly he was allowed to stay there, and here at the Presidio, on account of his leg injury, or because he is a youngster, or both!  I myself have not seen him interact with the Presidio family pair, or even seen them together, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. I’ve heard a number of reports of him having been chased (chased out?) angrily by one of the resident alphas, starting in mid-January, but then he always turns up again, so maybe that’s not what was really going on. Or maybe he’s become a very savvy and successful interloper, living on the fringes of the alphas’ territory where they repeatedly try driving him off: Chicago, according to a graduate student I’m working with, is apparently full of this category of coyotes, but not San Francisco . . . . yet. Then again, maybe these two entities simply avoid each other. Until I see them interact, I can only offer speculations about what might be going on. At any rate, the important point is that they’ve been seen in the same areas and on the same paths over the last 6 months. So this is Sparks’ situation now.

I’ll repeat Sparks’ dispersal history here (I’ve posted this before). Being able to keep up with a coyote’s journey after leaving home is very exciting, and that’s what I’ve been able to do in more and more cases. Sparks just turned two: I’ve known him since his birth in 2019. He was one of a litter of five that year: two females and three males. That’s the largest litter his parents had produced — all previous litters, and the one after that one, numbered one to three (and even none during a couple of years). He dispersed from his home a year ago at almost exactly one year of age, having been the second in his litter to do so. A sister left a couple of months before him at 9 months of age and I’ve been able to follow her as well. A brother just recently left at almost two years of age, and two of his siblings — now two years old — still remain at their birthplace and in what remains of their birth family.

When Sparks first dispersed, a year ago, he hippity-hopped to various locations in the city, remaining at each for several weeks before moving on. During the summer he managed to severely break a foreleg — so there were tumultuations during his early roving adventures. As it happens, previous to that, he had severely sprained the other front leg, and recovered over time. With this new break, he hobbled around for months, unable to put much weight, if any at all, on it. The pain must have been horrific because he ended up painfully retracing his steps back to one of the safer areas he had been through earlier on. Here, he remained in someone’s protected backyard where he spent many hours sleeping over a 3 weeks period. It took a long time to heal, but it eventually did with the help of the neighbors who made sure he was not disturbed in any way.

These concerned neighbors indeed sought outside help, but were told they should leave the animal alone. I totally agree with this policy. In my 14 years of observations, I’ve seen a substantial number of debilitating injuries in coyotes: among them, two broken legs and a broken ankle, and I’ve also known these coyotes’ individual intense social situations and how much they stood to lose were they to have been removed for rehabilitation by humans. It’s hard to go back to your previous situation once you’ve been removed and assumed dead. Nature is an excellent healer, and all of these animals healed on their own by leaving them alone.

Sparks’ human “guardian angels” allowed him to heal on his own. He then left his human protectors’ yard when he himself felt ready to go, which surprisingly occurred before he was completely healed. But he must have felt ready because he left. He continued with a limp for a long time after that, but some weight could be put on that leg by then: he was much more actively mobile after 3 weeks. And now he’s make the Presidio his home.

The bottom photo shows how that foreleg, above the wrist, is somewhat thickened: coyotes wear their histories as bumps and scars on their bodies! I should point out that probably no one else would notice this slightly deformed foreleg. Anyway, he obviously feels very at ease and at home where he has now been for over half a year, and it looks like he’ll stay. At two years of age, he’s still, from all appearances, a loner and a bachelor, and a happy one at that! What will come next? . . . to be continued!

As I beamed with joy at seeing this coyote and took a few photos (I’m not in the Presidio very often), a runner stopped to ask me if the coyote was dangerous. “Nah,” I replied.  I reminded her that all she had to do was keep her distance and walk away without running. Also important: never feed or try to interact with them by trying to become their “friend”. These are wild animals and should be respected as such, even though they are citizen coyotes. Definition of citizen: a resident of a city or town; a native, inhabitant, or denizen of any place.

© All information and photos in my postings come from my own original and first-hand documentation work which I am happy to share, with permission and with properly displayed credit: ©janetkessler/coyoteyipps.com.

 

Update on Sparks

03 Jan 2021 6 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, dispersal, territoriality

Sparks is alive and well in the Presidio where he has resided for several months now. I have followed him since his birth in 2019 where I watched him grow up with four siblings, and then through his dispersal journey much of which I’ve written about here on my blog (put “Sparks” into the search box). During his dispersal to date — a dispersal which began in March of 2020 — he stopped for weeks-on-end at various locations where he either remained temporarily with his sister (she returned to her birthplace), or in other locations he remained alone, and he even was accepted temporarily into an established alpha family (alpha mom, alpha dad, two of three remaining pups) where he interacted, played with, hunted with, and cuddled with the family he stayed with. He seems to get along well with new coyotes he meets. He always moved on. I have seen dispersing youngsters repulsed from established territories, so his situation has been very interesting for me.

And now he is at the Presidio where every evening he meets up with a little female coyote: they rendezvous and howl and yip before running off together for the evening’s activities. I have not identified his special friend yet. I’m wondering if this is his final home, or just another stopping place? He has been here for months, and in fact he had come through the area at the end of the summer and then left before returning and remaining. Maybe he left because of a broken arm he acquired at that time: I could not detect a limp when I last saw him.

The established alphas in the Presidio have been there over a year: Wired and Puff. They had three pups this year.  I’ve written about both of these coyotes before. I’m now trying to figure out Sparks’ current relationship with (position in) Wired’s family. Wired and Puff could easily have driven him out, but they didn’t, as hadn’t the previous family Sparks stayed with. Rather, he formed a warm friendship and bond with them. I wonder if he’s been “adopted” into Wired’s family (as he had been temporarily into Cai2’s family), or if he’s forming a family of his own. It seems that it might be beneficial for Wired and Puff to have an amicable neighbor such as Sparks who they get along with and like, rather than a hostile one. So maybe it’s being allowed on purpose. According to the territories I’ve worked out in San Francisco — they average about 1.5 square miles — the Presidio is actually big enough for more than one family.

Sparks’ story continues to unfold. In the middle of January, 2021, he was seen being driven away from the Presidio at dawn by the Presidio’s breeding alpha male — the two fled down Lyon Street which borders the Presidio, one chasing and the other fleeing. I have not seen this fellow since then. I will update as I can. :((

© All information and photos in my postings come from my own original and first-hand documentation work which I am happy to share, with permission and with properly displayed credit: ©janetkessler/coyoteyipps.com.

Some Dispersal Routes and Family Situations Over The Last Two Seasons

04 Oct 2020 6 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, disappearing, dispersal, families

This dispersal diagram on its own, with the several paragraphs that follow it, will give you a nice visual summary of what happens to our coyotes when they leave home. Individual family situations/histories follow [press MORE to read on]: this section is long because I’ve tried to include all their connections. I know each coyote: their personalities, behaviors, family situations and relationships, but it might be tedious reading for anyone who doesn’t. So know that the dispersal diagram section is enough to get the idea across.

A Dispersal Diagram

Have you ever wondered where our coyotes go once they disperse from their birth territories, and what their situations are?

When individual coyotes disperse — leave their birth territories — or for that matter, in one case here, abandon their long-claimed established territories totally — they disappear into the ether almost always never to be seen again by me. Only by chance had I ever seen a few of the dispersed youngsters again, but I didn’t follow through — I’ve always been more concerned with family life, relationships, and individual interactions. However, very recently I’ve been noticing my dispersed youngsters again somewhere else, or on their way somewhere else, and gone from home, so I’ve made a point of following or following-up on a number of these to what appear to be their final (final for now) territory destinations.

Dispersing coyotes are the ones who wander in order to explore their options, find their own territories, and pair-up long-term with mates: their routes are the thin red lines in the diagram. Once they find a territory — be it a vacant or vacated niche, or one they’ve had to fight for — they pretty much tend to stick to that general area: these are the colored circles on the diagram. Most of the dispersals are youngsters, heading out to make it on their own in the world, but I’ve also seen older mated pairs and even an older individual leave a territory to find another. Sometimes a couple of siblings may leave together, but mostly they leave alone, as far as I have seen. Most of the time the breakaway from home is complete and final, but I’ve also seen several individuals repeatedly return home for a period of time before taking a final leave. I’ve seen youngsters leave home slightly before 9 months of age, and as late as 2.5 years of age — they leave of their own accord, when they are ready and without any prodding from parents or siblings, or they are driven out by either parents or siblings. Please remember that what I say here is based entirely on my own first-hand observations: there are going to be situations that I myself have not seen.

I’ve depicted some of these routes and destinations in the diagram above. The colored circles on this map show some of the territories that I’m most familiar with — these are the territories from where or to where these coyotes travelled. The connected circles are fragmented but constitute one territory centered around a park or around one large open green space or an accumulation of smaller green spaces. Park or open-space boundaries hold no meaning for coyotes, so of course the surrounding neighborhoods are a part of these territories. General routes, from their birth territories to their new permanent territorial homes are shown on the map by thin arrow-headed red lines. Naturally, their movements were not smooth lines at all, but rather jagged, erratic, interrupted, and with diversions along the way. In the case of “Wired”, I left off her full-city-length circuits to avoid cluttering. The arrow-head itself is where individual coyotes ended up at their new “forever” homes where they have remained — or in one case remained for a full year and raising a new litter of pups before picking up and moving on again. I haven’t had the time or bandwidth to follow dispersals in the blue circles, but I’ve included some of these in the diagram simply to show there are more dispersals going on than covered in this posting. Two of the coyotes I talk about I had never seen before — they would have come from one of these blue areas or an area not depicted on the map.

Several years ago, before the time-frame of this posting, I saw dispersing youngsters meanly driven away by territorial owners. The flip side of this is that this year, I’ve seen a couple of youngsters warmly welcomed into territories by the resident coyotes. This goes to show that what you might see as a family with pups isn’t always a genetic family!

Then, below, in the second section, I tell a little bit more about the family or territorial situations of the recent dispersals diagrammed above — just bare-bones “to”-and-“from” situational summaries to help round-out their dispersal stories: there are a lot of coyotes and a lot of stories. The diagram covers dispersals over just the last couple of seasons, and one from several years earlier as a precursor to her last year’s story. A number of the individuals I watched grow up from different territories ended pairing up in new territories with others I had watched grow up elsewhere, so in many cases I’ve been familiar all along with both partners of a new pair. In a few instances I know the origins of only one of the new pair. The weft and warp of intertwining individuals has resulted in a tangle in the telling, as you’ll see below!  Any repetitions are to ensure you catch the connections. I’ve grouped these descriptions by family of origin, and maybe this will make it easier. And remember that all of our San Francisco coyotes came from just four original coyote founders.

Several consistencies pop up in my descriptions below. I mention “long-entrenched families on the same territories for many years”. This, along with coyotes’ propensity to mate for life are elements of permanence and stability which can last many years. A stable family can better defend its land than can a loner coyote: having a mate helps. And an intimate knowledge of that land which goes along with ownership better ensures survival because resource locations are known and there are fewer unknown hazards than in the unfamiliar world beyond. Keeping other coyotes out of this territory eliminates the competition for these resources. I also mention “vacated territories” and “forced ousters”, and the “disappearance” of stable oldsters from their lands, which are elements of impermanence and change. Please note that each coyote is an individual: no two stories or situations are the same. So these are some facets involved in coyote dispersal. I’ve sprinked in photos, even though most people can’t tell one coyote from another, but I can, and part of who I’m writing for is myself!  :)) 

The Dispersed and their Family Situations

FAMILY ONE

Sparks, born last year, dispersed at 11 months of age, wandering around for seven months, and even stopping or resting at several locations for 3 weeks to a month along the way (he had a fractured wrist), before settling 5 miles away from his birthplace where he moved in with a 3-year old, Cai2, a mother with 5-month-old pups. Cai’s previous male companion, Stumpf, had disappeared a month earlier and may have been “the sick” coyote that several people had seen but I had not. Into this situation came Sparks who had come from a long-entrenched family that owned the same territory for continuous generations over the last 13 years. He was one of 6 siblings born in 2019, and it was probably sibling rivalry between brothers that drove him out, judging from what I saw. Whether these two coyotes are forming a pair-bond, or Cai2 is simply taking care of a youngster in need, only time will tell. I don’t normally see males pair up at just 18 months of age, which is what Sparks is.

[press the “more” button below to bring up the rest of the posting if you can’t already see it]

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Update: Into Sparks’ Seventh Month of Dispersal

08 Sep 2020 3 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, dispersal, families

I have been able to keep up with the youngster coyote I call “Sparks” who I watched grow up from birth. He began his dispersal at just under one year of age with his sister way back in March to a location two miles away from their birthplace. His first few months away from his birth home seemed to agree with him superbly: it looked like he was having a ball! Freedom from the constraints of parents and siblings obviously felt good. He and his sister rendezvoused every evening after dusk with high-pitched squeals of delight and excitement as they tumbled over each other in anticipation of the evening’s adventures. They were adjusting well to the move. It was unfortunately always too dark to capture images of this.

After a couple of months here, it was time to go, and he moved on to a place that was five miles further away, where life suddenly became harder. He was now alone — sister having returned to their birthplace — and he somehow ended up with a broken leg in this unfamiliar territory. He must have been in severe pain because he returned the five miles to the now familiar place he and his sister had first been, to the quiet of a backyard. There, on an undisturbed and protected hillside, he spent several weeks recovering with the help of humankindness by people who guarded his safety and gently cared for him. I have no doubt that this is what kept him alive.

Three weeks of convalescence in someone’s backyard [above]

He stayed there three weeks until he felt better, but, unfortunately, not until he was healed. He left that place on August 14th, and re-appeared the next day, on August 15th in the Presidio. Then, again, he was off of my radar. Of course, no one else who might have seen him would have known “who” this coyote was. I would have to see him myself or recognize him in someone else’s photos: few if anyone else in the city know who each coyote is, and no one else keeps tabs on individuals.

And then, incredibly, magically, just a couple of days ago, I was documenting another one of my coyote families in the North East of the city, when I glimpsed a coyote that didn’t seem to “belong” there — that I hadn’t seen there before. Suddenly it clicked: this was Sparks! He had moved on yet another five miles!

Of supreme interest to me is that he was accepted and warmly welcomed into this long-claimed territory without incident, and not driven off as an intruder. Why was he not driven away by Mom, especially since she has 5-month-old pups now? I’ve seen many intruders/interlopers repulsed away by the territorial claimants, but that didn’t happen here.

I was ecstatic to see the bantering and show-of-affection between these two as you can see in this series of photos taken the next morning [click on above photos to enlarge and scroll through them]

From my inquiries I learned that it has been only four or five days since he arrived, but I thought I would dive into possible outcomes based on what I have seen elsewhere:

1) Maybe it’s only a very temporary resting spot for him — with a very temporary grant to stay there. Might the alpha mom of the territory have sensed his weak physical condition and foreleg pain, and also his downtrodden mental state, and therefore taken him under her wing? At 17 months of age, he’s still a youngster, though you can see that he’s visibly much larger than the alpha female in the middle photo in the top row above. And she herself, in fact, is only two years older than him at 3.5 years of age. In the photo to the left of that, you can see his left front leg is still bent, and although he can walk on it, he retains the limp he acquired back in July: the limp wavers from barely-noticeable mild to causing intense bobbing up and down as he walks.

2) Another possible scenario is that this isn’t a temporary situation, but that he might have been adopted! I have seen another instance of a female yearling joining another family and, so far, remaining with that family for about 6 months: I think of it as a sort adoption. There were no other females in that family which consisted, before her arrival, of just a father and a son at that point. That “adopted” female is still too young to be a reproducing alpha, though by remaining there without challenge, that’s the position she would grow into. Finding more and more of these not-exactly-nuclear family arrangements have changed my idea of what constitutes a standard coyote family. The variations are beginning to appear to me more and more like our own human family variations!

“Mom’s” young male companion

3) A third possibility is that Sparks could have moved in as the new alpha male, although this seems unlikely because of his young age. But the fact is I have not seen “Mom’s” male companion around lately. In addition, I’ve always wondered if that male companion was actually “Mom’s” mate — he always appeared to be more of a younger brother or even another “adoptee”, though I could be wrong.  Whatever his position/role in the family has been, I have not seen him in the last little while — so the “position” may be open.

As an interesting aside: At the beginning of March which would have been mating season, I found “Mom” with a large gash on her forehead, in the Presidio along with this young male companion of hers. The Presidio is five miles away from her own claimed territory. I wondered what she/they were doing there. The gash was of the type she might have picked up after a territorial battle with another coyote. The Presidio has a very dominant alpha female — the gal I refer to as “Wired” — who has battled other females and driven them away ferociously. Wired’s mate happens to be “Mom’s” brother. Was she seeking out her brother?

This is actually the second instance of where I’ve seen a female head off from her own territory to a foreign territory during the receptive phase of her reproductive cycle, and it made me wonder if it was related to reproductive reasons. My DNA study will not be able to reveal this because DNA taken from scat can only follow the maternal line. So the questions remains: who sired her pups this year? And, will Sparks remain there?

So, it’s into any of these situations that Sparks now finds himself. Time will help us decide which is the real one.

FOR UPDATE, see: https://coyoteyipps.com/2021/01/03/update-on-sparks/. Sparks moved to and has been living at the Presidio for several months now.

© All information and photos in my postings come from my own original and first-hand documentation work which I am happy to share, with permission and with properly displayed credit: ©janetkessler/coyoteyipps.com.

Dispersal: One Youngster’s Trajectory Over The Last Five Months

16 Aug 2020 Leave a comment

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, dispersal, dispersion in pocess

All photos in this posting were taken after his dispersal from home.

We’re on another leg of the dispersal of a coyote I call Sparks. He and a sister, at just about one year of age, stepped away from home [see map below (1)] and out into the wider world where they came to rest and stay about two miles from their birthplace (2).They remained here close to two months — long enough to make me think that this might become their new home, but they did not remain there at this point in time. Maybe they weren’t ready to claim the area as theirs? Maybe they wanted to explore greener pastures, possibly less fragmented pieces of property? Anyway, Sparks’ dispersing “walkabout” — which I think is an apt term — was not over yet, apparently.

By the second week in July Sparks was spotted way up in the Presidio — a full six miles away from his birthplace, whereas the sister returned to their birthplace where I continue to see her romp with her other brothers who vie and compete for her attention. But Sparks had been dominated by these brothers — there may even have been a battle between them — and there was no going back for him.

So Sparks continued to roam in that area for the better part of a week, and by the third week of July found himself in the north-western corner of the city (4), where he was seen limping severely again on that left front leg. It was either a new injury, or the original injury was acting up. The original injury had occurred way back in mid-February and was severe enough — very likely a break, and very likely caused by chasing dogs — for him to retain a severe limp and keep off the leg entirely for over a month. I don’t think he ever fully recovered from that injury even though he regained use of the leg.

By July 31st and through August 5th — possibly because the new leg injury had deteriorated so badly from continued use — he returned to that two-mile distant spot (5). This was a space he was familiar with and where he felt safe, including from other coyotes. Here he was observed numerous times with what now had become an identifying characteristic: the severe limp. A worried neighbor spotted him on the hill in back of his house curled up in a ball. The last sighting was of him running, three-legged, licketsplit through the main park of the area on August 5th. UPDATE as of August 15th: Sparks left his neighbor’s yard at the beginning of the heatwave, after almost 3 weeks in a neighbor’s backyard. The neighbors have been worried about what became of him: well, he is now again roaming around in the Presidio! His leg has not healed.

Dispersals, as we’ve seen before — and again, these insights are from my own first-hand observations over the past 13+ years, but also include several photos sent to me — have coyotes exploring through distant corners of our city and some even exiting the city to the south. On the other hand, coyotes who are entrenched territorial claimants seldom have a need to travel such distances, so they don’t: although they still trek away from their homes, it’s not usually the vast distances as the dispersing/exploring youngsters. The territorial owners seem to stay nearer to their homes where it is safe and they know the terrain.

When do coyotes disperse and what causes them to do so? They leave home, as far as I have seen, anywhere from about 9 months of age and up to 2.5 years of age. They do so either on their own initiative and timeline, when they themselves get the urge and without any prodding or provocation from other family members, or they may leave because of growing rivalry and repeated battles aimed to drive them away.

This dispersal period might be navigated with ease and little danger — it could be a piece of cake — or the opposite, with extreme difficulty and constant danger. Territorial claimants might fight them off viciously, or might welcomingly invite them to stay a while — the latter is something I’ve seen only with young dispersing females. Many of the dispersing youngsters have miraculously found vacant locations right here within the city limits itself — spaces either vacated by other coyotes, be it because they moved or died, or some of the maturer dispersers might have fought the resident coyotes — the ones who may have become weak due to old age or even sickness — and won. One of the biggest dangers for dispersing youngsters in urban areas is traffic: they regularly get killed by cars. The city counts about ten such deaths a year officially, but you can be sure there are more that were not reported.  Those youngsters who can’t find vacant spaces within the city have been found to move south and out of the city according to the ecologist at the Presidio. Dispersal is a treacherous time for coyotes and contributes to their notoriously low survival rate: it is claimed that only 30% of coyote litters survive to adulthood, which is their one year old mark.

I don’t know where Sparks will move next. I don’t know if the injury will hinder his ability to survive. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come across him again. If I do, I’ll post about it.

By the way, it’s not necessary to know the dispersal trajectory of every single coyote to understand the process. A few examples give the idea, and I have provided a number in this blog, with maps. The coyotes I’ve been able to follow I do so visually and by examining photos: I recognize them each by their unique faces, so that radio-collaring and tagging are absolutely unnecessary: these heavy and bulky contraptions are intrusive, hampering and even harmful, and not needed to find out what indeed is needed to coexist with them.

Photos taken by other folks during this part of his dispersal “walkabout” [click on any of the photos to scroll through them]

© All information and photos in my postings come from my own original and first-hand documentation work which I am happy to share, with permission and with properly displayed credit: ©janetkessler/coyoteyipps.com.

Two Youngsters Take A Tentative Step Towards Dispersal

02 Aug 2020 Leave a comment

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, dispersal, sibling rivalry, siblings

[Note: This posting has been revised! After revisiting my photos, I realized I had mistaken a coyote’s identity. This is so easy to do among siblings who very often look very much alike, and whose facial bone structures continue to grow and therefore alter their appearance, even if ever so slightly, even after a year of age. The change is that Sparks did NOT return home with his sister, which is what I had written, but continued his dispersing “walkabout” to the north of the city. I have edited this post to reflect this].

These two siblings — a brother and a sister — left home together in March when they were just about a year old. I assumed they were leaving for good — dispersing. A couple of months into their absence, I was thrilled to recognize the male when he showed up in another park about two miles away: I’m always exhilarated when I find dispersing youngsters who I’ve watched grow up because most, of course, I never see again after they leave. This male comes from an exceptionally large litter, most of whom I was seeing very irregularly and sporadically recently, so now I had to figure out which sibling was accompanying him, or was it someone he had met and hooked up with from a different family?

That second one remained too distant and seldom appeared in daylight; it was always at the darker end of twilight when I saw them, and this one always seemed to be moving away from me, so it took me a while longer to figure out which individual it was: I have to see their faces to know who each one is. To help me (though it didn’t help) I put out a trap camera on a narrow path close to one of the entrances to the park where I had seen them, not really expecting anything to show up on it.

Apparently I placed the camera well, because I caught these few seconds which, although they didn’t help me identify the second coyote, they did tell me how much fun these guys were having in their newfound freedom! In the video below you’ll see the two youngster coyotes who had been running along a narrow, sandy path. They’ve just jumped over a bush where the camera is hidden, and this is where the short video starts.. They stop to communicate their joy through eye contacting, touching and joyful jumping before continuing on. It’s only a few seconds long, but long enough to tell this part of their story.

People noticed them and told me about them: not only were they spotted in the fragmented parks of the area and on the streets in-between, but they were also seen in several backyards, where they were seen successfully hunting, once even with prey — a white cat — in their mouths.  They seem to have learned to navigate this new area well. Finally I was able to see her — the second coyote’s –face: these photos below have been substantially lightened to make the individuals visible —  they were essentially taken in the dark. Even so, the coyotes are very identifiable.

Male sibling adventurer
Male to the right, female to the left
Finally a face-on shot of the female

Far and away from home (above)

I pondered if these two would move on or become entrenched in this newfound location. The area has served as a sort of temporary “stopping off place” for several coyotes I’ve kept track of as they traversed the city, so would it be the same for these, or would it become a more permanent home — even though highly fragmented — since available territories within the city have been dwindling. I checked up on them only a few times as I continued to hear reports of them, and then, one day, suddenly, they no longer were being spotted. Where had they gone?

WELL, as of mid-July, the female, at 16-months of age, was back at her birthplace, after four months of absence! I guess she wasn’t quite ready to disperse lock-stock-and-barrel yet, even though she seemed to have a lot of fun and excitement during her AWOL adventure. And certainly the two of them escaped family tensions during that time “abroad” due to coming-of-age relationships which were beginning to show strain among the brothers.

Rivalry between siblings escalates over time, especially between brothers, and that seems to be kicking in and growing between these two stay-at-home brothers.One is more dominant and he’s displaying a lot of bullying these days. “Underling” brother kowtows towards him, and it’s precisely this kind of behavior that may have driven out Sparks, the dispersed brother this posting is about.

Back to family politics: the two remaining brothers vie for the affection of their sister

© All information and photos in my postings come from my own original and first-hand documentation work which I am happy to share, with permission and with properly displayed credit: ©janetkessler/coyoteyipps.com.

PostSript: The information in this article was gained by simple recognition of individual coyotes and from a vast knowledge about them gained through first-hand direct observation — without the use of radio-collars or identifying tags which are intrusive and harmful. My direct observations engender a much deeper and more expansive knowledge and understanding of coyotes than can be provided by simply mechanically tracking their movements.  “Look, Ma, no hands”. Try it! My “hard” facts include both photos and DNA from scat.

Another Youngster I Knew Before Dispersal Seems to have a New Territory!

17 Jun 2020 Leave a comment

by yipps:janetkessler in dispersal, genealogies, pedigrees, Presidio

“Blondie” in early 2020, almost 3 years old, after dispersal.

After watching individual coyotes grow up and leave home, I resign myself to thinking that I will never see them again. So you can imagine my thrill in recognizing them in a new location. It’s like coming across a long-lost family member of my own!  Here you have such an individual — one of a growing handful of coyotes that I’ve re-discovered on territories within the city after they’ve grown up and dispersed. Many of our dispersing youngsters appear to move south and out of the city, and a substantial number are killed by cars. Those I find are survivors who did not disperse far.  [Here is a posting about some of the others].

This male is from a family of four siblings to survive into adulthood, ALL of whom I’ve been able to locate in their new territories. I use no collars or tags, just simple recognition. These are animals I had gotten to know well as youngsters through watching and documenting their family interactions as they grew up, including that of their parents and siblings, and recording their immediate family relationships.

The significance of this — its impact — is that I’ve been able to trace the major movements of a number of coyotes within the city, and I’ve been able to construct a limited genealogy of their relationships. Dr. Ben Sacks has extracted DNA from my scat samples and determined that all of our present coyote population here in San Francisco came from just four original founding coyotes: that means they are all related in some way and those connections which I’m unable to put together from visual recognition, his lab will be able to relate through DNA.

The fellow in this posting I named/labeled “Blondie” due to his appearance as compared to his siblings when he was a youngster. Here is his photo as a yearling youngster in 2018 before he dispersed:

Blondie, almost a year old

These photos are all somewhat blurry because they were all taken under almost no light, right at the break of dawn.

I’ve also followed the mate he hooked up with in late 2019, a female born in the Presidio in 2018. She dispersed permanently from that territory in 2020 when a new coyote alpha pair took over that property. When I first re-discovered Blondie and his new mate, they were regular trekkers to Lafayette Park and Alamo Square, but they abandoned that route early this year and moved on, looking for greener pastures. They’ve ended up at Lands End, close to her birth territory, but across town from his. Since they’ve been here a while and they’ve had a family, it is their claimed territory where they will remain. This is the same female with the infected ear which I wrote about in March earlier this year. The ear remains permanently damaged because the infection was not taken care of, but, hey, she still seems to be going strong!

“At home” in their claimed territory

©  All information and photos in my postings come from my own original and first-hand documentation work which I am happy to share with permission and with properly displayed credit.

Setting Up House in the Presidio

28 May 2020 2 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in dispersal

Puff at his birthplace at one year of age, months before dispersal

Here in San Francisco, I’ve been able to follow about a handful of youngsters after watching them grow up in their separate families, after dispersal, after finding mates and territories of their own and then raise their own litters. This is an update and a slight expansion upon what I previously wrote about the fella I call “Puff”.

When coyotes first disperse, I lose track of them — many I don’t ever see again — so you can imagine my thrill whenever I find any of them again as full grown alphas and territorial claimants in their own right.

Puff is one of those: At three years of age, he has become the new alpha male in the Presidio — across town from his birthplace — after dispersing at over a year-and-a-half of age. I don’t normally state locations, but the coyotes there have already been heavily advertised in the Presidio, which is vast in size, so I don’t feel I am compromising their situation. And it is there that Puff has now become a dad, with all the attendant responsibilities of that role, including intense patrolling, keeping outsider coyotes out, guarding against dog intrusions, and bringing in food for the youngsters! In coyote families, dads help raise the young on a par with moms. So Puff has come of age in a new territory!

About the label, “Puff”. All the coyotes I watch I label according to a characteristic which helps me identify them. I rarely share these, but here are a few more as examples: Chert is the color of the chert rock, Silver has a silver patch on his back, Squirrel sat below a tree filled with squirrels. Scout was an explorer. Puff was a puffball. When a new mate joins a coyote I’ve been watching, I pair up the name appropriately: Bonnie’s new mate became Clyde. Scout’s new mate became Scooter.

It’s my first-hand documentation work that led me to the connection between the new Presidio alpha male and the youngster I watched grow up: no one else in San Francisco is or has been doing this kind of family-life documentation work. My DNA study will confirm my observations with harder facts for the hard-core “scientists” out there.

July 12, 2017

As a youngster, Puff was a playful teaser — the prime mover and leader of his large litter of which there were four surviving siblings (several died before the end of their first year — killed by human negligent acts, including a car).  Play fighting was how they passed the time: this activity, as might be expected, segued into true fighting as the males matured, and at 1.5 years of age, Puff and a brother teamed up to aggressively drive out a third brother — I was there to witness and photo-document the event.

However, I did not witness the actual trigger that drove Puff himself to disperse, if indeed there was one. I’ve watched coyotes disperse anywhere from 9 months to 2.5 years of age, where some were forced to leave by other family members (brothers, fathers, mothers) and some moved away without incident on their own timeline. Amazingly, I’ve been able to follow three of the four all four [updated] survivors in Puff’s litter to and at their new locations where they all are now parenting litters of their own which were born in April. I stay well away from den areas because this is what the coyotes would want, so I have not yet actually seen any pups this year, but I see all the moms who are obviously lactating.

Puff’s new mate is a coyote I call “Wired” (so named because of the radio-collar). The two of them took over the Presidio territory by force from the previous long-time territorial coyote residents there (as per a surveillance camera video capture at the Presidio).

Pre-Presidio, Wired had quite a story of her own: I was able to keep track of her as she roamed, looking for a place of her own. She even viciously pursued another coyote throughout the city after taking over and claiming that coyote’s territory: it turned out that this would be only a “temporary” takeover. Coyotes are well known for being opportunists, and she found something better! She ended up with Puff in the Presidio.

Puff’s birth territory has been abandoned by his parents and inherited by a sister who now is the pupping alpha female of that area. His Mom is still around but keeps a low profile. I’ve seen his Dad around, but not as the alpha male he had been. Oldsters get pushed out by younger reproducing pairs either from within or without of the family. And I’ve actually seen an older territorial pair leave a territory voluntarily, thereby ceding it to a daughter! THAT pair was seen several months later about a mile away, looking decrepit, worn-out and old. I have not seen them again and guess that their lives ended. Might they have known this was coming?

Immediately below is a recent photo of Puff and one of his new mate, “Wired”, and below these, several of the many photos I took of Puff and his siblings months before their dispersals.

Puff on the left as a full-grown, three-year old alpha male, and Wired on the right is his mate. 

©  All information and photos in my postings come from my own original and first-hand documentation work which I am happy to share with permission and with properly displayed credit.

It’s A Small World After All

15 Mar 2020 2 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in Coyote DNA in San Francisco, coyote physical appearance, dispersal, DNA, identifying individual coyotes, radio collars, territoriality, trekking

A couple of days ago I visited the Presidio of San Francisco. I haven’t been going there regularly because the ecologist there is already monitoring those coyotes, but I went this time to check on the coyote I’ve labeled “Wired” — she had been radio-collared over a year ago. I heard she had moved in there and kicked out the previous family. This coyote indeed is a “toughy”. She is of special interest to me:  I had watched her wreak havoc on another coyote (who I’ve been documenting since her birth in 2015) and then pursue that coyote throughout the city for 6 months.

Second pair of coyotes in the Park

Initially I did not find the coyote I was looking for. Instead I found another pair of coyotes who looked surprisingly familiar. I’m trying to “place” their relationship among the coyotes I know. I generally can do so by watching visually for nuclear family similarities which I then hope to confirm with DNA analysis results.

I have been collecting DNA extracted from scat samples since 2008, to (among other things) help confirm my observations about relationships and movements throughout the city. The DNA analysis (Ben Sacks, Monica Serrano, et. al., UC Davis, 2020) has already shown that our present SF coyote population of 60 to 100 coyotes all came from just FOUR founding coyotes originating in Mendocino County: It appears that our SF coyote population is indeed inbred as I’ve noted and has not been augmented from the South.

Wired ran by — she’s radio-collared

When he looked at me I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was this Puff?

A couple of days later I returned to the Presidio and this time was rewarded with the appearance of Wired and her new mate! Wired hurried by with the male following close behind — she is obviously the leader of the pair. And then her mate turned around and looked at me. When you come across an old friend you haven’t seen in ages, in an odd place, your response might be, “Wow, it really is a small world!” This has happened to me with coyotes, and it just happened again! I could hardly believe my eyes! This appears to be the coyote I had labeled “Puff”. The label is based on his appearance and is used to differentiate him from his siblings when I write about them.

He was born in the spring of 2017 in a park that is not far off [I don’t state exact locations on this blog]. I’m including several photos of him (above) taken before he dispersed from his birthplace, along with photos of his mother and father on their territory there. I have DNA from these coyotes — I collect it right after it is expelled in most instances, so I know which coyote belongs to which sample. These will be used to confirm my visual/photographed observations. Puff has proved himself to be as much of a toughy as is Wired, having joined a brother to forcefully and viciously drive out a third brother from their birthplace in August of 2018, something I was able to observe. That’s how dispersal works.

It’s great to see Puff now paired up with a like-minded female (two toughies) and they appear to be the reigning alphas of their territory. It’s exciting to see these coyotes’ lives develop beyond their dispersal, something I’ve been able to do with only a handful of them so far. I don’t yet know what their relationship is with the other resident pair. They use some of the same territorial pathways, which I’m sure has significance for determining what the relationship is.

These two pairs may in fact be closely related. I say this, because otherwise, I believe, Wired and Puff would have driven out that second pair, but they have not. The previous Presidio pair along with their offspring were driven out. My continuing DNA study will confirm what their relationship is if I don’t figure it out beforehand.

So far, none of the coyotes I’ve been able to follow after their dispersal from their birthplaces has produced any offspring. Maybe Wired and Puff will produce the first 3rd generation that I’ll be able to keep tabs on! And there’s the possibility for a next generation in one other dispersed female I keep tabs on. We’ll just have to wait and see. Although I’ve watched yet another family through four generation (parents of parents of parents), there, the breeding pairs, one after the other, have remained stable and on their original territory the entire time — in fact for 13 years so far.

More recent movements within the city:

Among the four youngsters I’ve watched grow-up and then been pleasantly-surprised to see in other parks, are two that I’ve already written about, though I may not have used these labels: Scout and Hunter.

In addition to these dispersals, I’ve also seen family members travel large distances within the city to “pay a visit” or “check on” their dispersed youngsters (Maeve, Yote). I’ll soon be writing about a Dad who was just kicked out of his most recent territory and returned to where his youngsters were living. This male and his mate had dispersed from that territory (where the two youngsters remained), rather than the offspring (who did not leave/disperse) — it’s an interesting twist in things. Some family connections seem to be maintained over a great many years and over long distances.

By the way, Wired was in Puff’s birth-territory for awhile when he was still there. I don’t know if she is related to him, but there has been a long-standing association. I’ve also seen two other Presidio coyotes at Puff’s birth-territory. I wonder what the special tie is between these two family groups.

Endnotes: It’s very satisfying to have one’s visual observations confirmed by hard data (DNA). “Science” tends to accept only hard data, not visual data, though I have my photographs which indeed show connections. Incidentally, I do not use gadgets such as radio-collars or tags, which I think are harmful. I recognize coyote facially and can follow them that way, using sequences of photos to study any details. Except in a few instances, the coyotes I document are all labeled based on their appearance so I can readily know who they are.

©  All information and photos in my postings come from my own original and first-hand documentation work which I am happy to share with permission and with properly displayed credit.

Happiness is Having Someone to Watch Out For

14 Feb 2020 8 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, dispersal

Basking in the sun

This coyote seems to be extra happy these days as seen here on a very sunny morning! First she lay down and basked quietly in the sun for a while, and then as seen in the photos below, she ever so joyfully twisted and turned, contorted and wiggled, and rolled and slithered all over the place, giving herself a wonderful all-over body scratch and massage. She exuded joy. Maybe she was thinking about the new development in her life, which she would reveal to us a couple of days later!

Two days later I saw and heard a new behavior for her. She had been hunting but suddenly stopped short and began howling in front of a man who abruptly appeared, as if he were the cause somehow. She had never howled at a human before. I wondered what kind of dog the man had, but as he walked on, I could see that he had none. She had only ever howled at sirens and dogs who have chased her; and when she had a companion long ago, she would howl to communicate, but she didn’t have a companion now. . . (or did she?)

(note that the high pitched vocalization is the coyote; the barks are a neighbor’s dog)

After a moment of howling which you can hear in the recording above, she trotted briskly and purposefully up the road and away. I could see that the man had nothing to do with her howling. Within five minutes she had returned over the crest of the hill, and there by her side was . . . . a companion coyote! It became obvious now that her howl had been a response to this other coyote whose vocalization we had not heard.

She appeared to be as smitten with him as she had been with a previous young fellow visitor (a 1½ year old) who had spent four months with her. This new fellow, again, is a younger guy, maybe even younger than the last fellow. Has she become a “yearling caregiver” for dispersing coyote youngsters? I had actually witnessed that previous youngster being forcefully kicked out of his home by his siblings in a fight — that’s how I knew he was dispersing — and then shortly thereafter appear in this loner’s territory, where he was wholeheartedly welcomed. Has this new fellow been welcomed as a kid or as a mate? Only time will tell. Whatever the case, the loner seems super-happy to have him there! A companion to care for!

I should mention that I have seen another male youngster in a similar situation with an older female — he eventually became the reigning male mate. We’ll have to see what happens here. Anyway: Happy Valentine’s Day!

“Him” in the upper left corner, and then the two of them, with her being as solicitous and affectionate towards him as possible.

 

Moving Around

31 Jan 2019 Leave a comment

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, dispersal, life cycle, roving, territoriality

Maybe you’ve been noticing coyotes where you haven’t seen them before? Or maybe you haven’t been seeing them where sometimes you did? These are the same coyotes. There aren’t suddenly more of them right now, even though it might APPEAR so when they appear in never-before-seen areas. Those I observe have recently been spending less time where they were, and more time roving. They aren’t just wandering aimlessly about: they have purpose to their gait, and intent to their direction. Here is a gallery of travels as I’ve recorded some of them. In this casual gallery, I’ve included photos of a red dawn, a red dusk, and a rainbow which I captured during my recent outings. [The rainbow photo has been enhanced with the “saturation” button — a rainbow is never as brilliant as this, but the dawn and dusk photos have not — the sky really looked like this!]

What are the coyotes actually doing? Those who have left home are searching for new areas for themselves at the same time that they are being driven away by established resident coyotes with territories: they are having a hard time. The resident coyotes, on the other hand, are getting things in order for the next big event of the year: pupping season is just down the road. They are surveying every nook and cranny of their vast homesteads for safety from other coyotes and from dogs and people, they are checking out the food supply, and they are scouting-out the safest den sites in out-of-the-way places where they can hide their precious new arrivals for many months. Pups are one of their best-kept secrets. I make it a point to stay far away from any area where I know there might be a den — this is what coyotes want or they wouldn’t take pains to hide their youngsters so well.

So lately I have been seeing them fleetingly and on the move in a variety of novel places. Folks have recently reported that they’ve spotted coyotes in their yards or even on their porches, or down the street where they hadn’t seen them before.

If you see coyotes where you haven’t before, know that this is normal behavior. Coyotes are regularly in the surrounding neighborhoods of our various city parks, and sometimes, as now, there appears to be somewhat of a spate of such activity. They are not coming after you. It’s not an invasion. They are simply minding their own agendas which have nothing to do with us. Please make sure to continue keeping your distance from them, and always walk away from them, especially if you are walking your dog [see “How to Handle A Coyote Encounter: A Primer” for more on this]. It’s best not to let pets wander freely or unsupervised, and if you don’t want coyotes repeatedly visiting your yard, please remove all food sources!

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