Calling Forth the Troops at Dusk

19 Oct 2021 5 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, howling, yodeling and yipping

Mom slept out in the field all alone — this is something she does frequently as evening sets in. After a while she propped herself up and began grooming herself. After that I could tell she was waiting. She kept looking over the hill to where she knew the rest of the family was and she kept staring in that direction for some time. She seemed to be expecting someone or something.

Sleeping – grooming – yawning

After a while, she must have become impatient. She got up and stretched in all direction and then began howling, seemingly calling forth the troops — her family. There had been no sirens to set her off. She yipped and barked, but there was no response except for an irritating dog who barked the whole time — three minutes worth — which rendered the recording practically unusable: I salvaged what I could in the recording below.

Stretching in all directions

She began to vocalize – calling her family together. But they didn’t respond.

After another short while, she must have given up, because she trotted off into the direction she had been looking. I had heard my howl and thought I wouldn’t be seeing any more coyotes as it became dark outside, so I began heading out of the park. Just then, howling began — the responses. They came from three directions with one youngster visible as a silhouette against the sky. The family consists of the two alphas and three pups born this year who are now six months old. The silhouette belongs to one of these pups. Here is the video and recording I captured.

Responding

25 Feb 2021 4 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in communication, coyote behavior, families, howling, hunting, social behavior, vocalization

Most coyote activity usually begins after dark, but sometimes some family members are ready to begin their evening activities well before then. Yesterday, by late afternoon I found this young, almost-two-year-old female lying down in a field in the shadow of some bushes. She was very well concealed, but visible if you actually knew what you were looking for. She kept her eye on the passers-by in the distance, keeping her focus mostly on unleashed active dogs running energetically all over the place, but none came in her direction. Soon, grooming herself became her focus of activity –the bugs were bugging her!

She began getting up to better reach some of the irritating rascals on her body, then she lay back down. After several of these getting-up and then lying-down again cycles, she sat up, stretched, and slowly began to wander off.

She probably had been waiting there for the rest of her family. It’s a place they have met up frequently before heading out together in the evening, but today she was probably tired of waiting and decided to jump-start her activities. Even coyotes can get bored!

leaping after a sound she heard, but coming up empty handed

She walked calmly along, following the line of the bushes, and stopped sporadically at whatever movements caught her eye. A couple of times she bounced fast and high over tall grasses, a little like a jackrabbit, towards something that caught her interest, but the prospective meal never panned out. So she continued on.

She stops to listen

Everything seemed quiet when she suddenly stopped, turned around, and looked into the distance. She listened intently, and then she began calling out. In between her calling out, during the silences, far, far into the distance, I could barely hear two other coyotes calling out (you will also hear a couple of domestic dogs barking). Our young female was responding. This video covers her responding. Her sporadic vocalizations went on for a couple of minutes (this video is the entirety of it) even after the others had ceased their end of the communication. When she was through, she trotted off in their direction. They would meet and greet, as I’ve seen them so often do, and then head out together on their evening trekking expedition, sticking together for a while as a family, splitting apart at time, and then coming together throughout the evening and until dawn.

Each coyote’s voice and pattern of sounds is identifiable and distinguishable by the other coyotes — not dissimilar to the way you recognize voices over the telephone. I myself am able to identify some of the coyotes by their vocalizations. 

Coyotes September 8, 2020, by Lisa Febre

17 Oct 2020 5 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, howling

Hi Janet!

[This] is the video from our backyard security camera in September.

We sleep with our window open in our bedroom mostly to be able to hear the coyotes during the night. As an insomniac, I admit that I love hearing them. They walk up & down our street (and in fact, some have actually walked along the cinder block wall between our house and next to our bedroom window) all night long, so we often hear very close howls. This video, when I was listening to them “live” at the time, I would say that the “gang” was right in our front — maybe not in our yard, but definitely on our street.

The thing that caught my attention with these vocalizations was the almost human-like yell that seemed to be coordinated — hearing them live, that was the only group I was hearing, but when I went back to listen to the camera recording, that’s when I heard the 2nd, and possibly 3rd, group. It’s hard for me to tell if there are 3 groups (the yellers, the yippers and the howlers at varying distances).
Anyway! I thought this was an exceptional capture for our camera — we have many like this, but never this clear or close. 

We live about 3/4 mile from the Santa Susana Historic Pass State Park in Chatsworth, CA (far Northwest of Los Angeles county), so it’s obvious they live up there in the hills and come down at night. 

And as always, so happy to have ‘found’ your blog and you as well! Hope you are staying healthy & safe, and of course sane. Always read each entry even if I don’t comment. I love it!
Thanks again!

Lisa

Sirens Lead to Howls and Yips in a United Front

15 Oct 2019 3 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, coyote pairing up, howling, territoriality, video


Come to think of it, I don’t hear loner coyotes howl very often, even on their own claimed territories. Is this because they don’t want to “proclaim” to the world their ownership of a territory they might not be able to defend alone? And neither do I hear coyotes howling for any reason when they are passing through territories other than their own.

The female in this video, when she was a loner on her claimed territory, never used to respond to sirens during daylight hours (though she did so sporadically at night), though she would howl in distress after being chased by dogs or in response to seeing one particular dog whom she did not like.

However, in this video, with a new male companion, she obviously felt secure about belting out her response to the sirens for the whole world to hear, and seemed to be super-happy about it! Coyote families respond to sirens all the time, possibly to express their family unity and their territorial separateness from their neighboring coyotes.

That male companion situation, however, was short lived: it lasted only four months. The male/female relationship was disrupted by another female before the bond was solidified (yes, this happens even to coyotes) and the male companion moved on, so the female now again is a loner who again does not respond to sirens as she did when she had her male companion. She does, however, continue to bark in distress when chased by dogs, or when her one dog nemesis appears on the scene.

This video shows clearly how lips are used for modulations by coyotes.

Although I mounted this video on Youtube eight months ago, it’s only now that I’m getting around to posting it on my blog, after it has garnered almost 1M views.

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