Coyote Yipps

I was on a walk in one of the parks, when two coyotes appeared in my field of vision. They were lying down sphinx-like — this is how I first noticed them where they had not been before. I had heard someone shooing them away, so  they obviously had crossed someone’s path, or they may have appeared with the purpose of checking out an early walker’s dog. The two coyotes were a mother-daughter pair I have been aware of. The younger one got up and walked around, apparently checking out the ground for gopher movements and then headed into some bushes — the dry leaves it was trampling gave away that it was there.

The rustling leaves seemed to concern the mother, who got up quickly and hurried over in that direction, sniffing the ground to know exactly where to go. When she got to where she thought she should be, she stopped. She was totally still, half crouching, and she listened: she was trying to locate the young coyote. The young one soon emerged noisily from the bushes whereupon the two came together touching noses, and then moved off together into the further distance. Because of the movement of the camera, I was not able to tell if the mother had put her chin over the younger one’s nose, but it might have happened — I have seen this several times now: it involves affection, communication and dominance.

As they walked off, both coyotes kept their heads turned towards another brush area adjacent to where they were walking. My thought was that another coyote might be in this brush area — it was not an area from which a dog might emerge, so why else would the coyote’s attention be focused there? The mother stopped and sat down at the edge of this brush area, and then she lay down. The youngster traversed back and forth in this area with a very purposeful gait before trotting to a path and then on the path into the further distance and out of sight. I wondered from the behavior if the youngster had been “instructed” to move on by the mother — it sure seemed like it. The mother coyote remained relaxing by the brush area.

Almost immediately, the relaxing mother became alerted to something it did not like, so it bolted up and began running off. The cause became obvious: two large German Shepherds appeared ahead of the coyote, in the direction where the youngsters had gone — they were right where the coyote needed to cross to get away. The coyote carefully kept hidden behind low lying bushes, maneuvering about so it could tell where the dogs were and if they might be after it. The owner leashed the dogs who had obviously picked up the scent of the coyote, and when there was a clear opening, the coyote hurried off on its escape route. The dog walker kept walking out of sight.

Fifteen minutes later I found this same mother coyote, back where I had just previously seen her, scouting out the area again. She did so for a long ten minutes, then relaxed, intermittently looking over at another distant area I have seen her scrutinize before.

After about an hour, a leashed dog and walker could be seen on the closest path: the coyote was interested, sat up, and then followed them, even though the walker turned to shoo off the coyote several times. This dog walker was amused: “what a stinker” she said about it. The coyote followed them the entire length of a path until the walker forked off away from the area where the younger coyotes had gone — the coyote seemed to be patrolling for security reasons. I left the park at this point.

In summary, during my two hour observations on this day: I had seen a mother’s concern for her youngster. I saw the younger coyote “go home”, and I saw the parent coyote hiding and maneuvering around bushes to avoid dogs. I watched as this coyote surveyed the area and then relaxed, and finally I watched it follow a dog — probably with the intent of making sure the dog left the area.

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The next day, I was on one of the paths in this same park when suddenly a youthful coyote came out of nowhere and passed me, very close! It veered off the trail when it became aware of me. It did not flee, but rather checked out the surrounding area before moving rather purposefully down the trail. I then noticed that a second young coyote was in the distance, off the path and parallel to it. It seems to have been headed in the same direction as that of the first coyote. This second coyote then sat, its eyes focused in distance, in the direction it was headed  – it was definitely concentrating on something specific, and I think that something might have been its mother, because the mother later emerged from that area. Was there communication between the young coyote and its mother?  It would have had to have been a visual communication. Soon the two young coyotes headed in the direction they had been scrutinizing. My observations of these two lasted only a few minutes.

Then, a short time after that, the mother coyote appeared from the area into which the younger ones had disappeared. This mother watched some dog walkers pass by, then she curled up in an area with a view, getting up only for a moment when another dog passed but lying down again. After about an hour, as on the previous day, her eyes became riveted on something in the distance across the way: she sat up and intently watched for just a moment before dashing off in that direction at a run.

In summary, on this day I noticed coyotes purposefully heading in a certain direction, possible communication over a distance, surveying, relaxing, keeping a lookout for something specific in the distance, and dashing off after seeing that something. There was purpose, awareness, interaction among the coyotes; there was assessing situations, dogs and the territory.