This five minute video is of a family interacting vocally in the late afternoon. It’s actually two interactions within about an hour of each other, starting at about 6:30 p.m., with napping in-between.The wind noise during the first minute and a half is really off-putting and painful to listen to. You can turn the volume down during this section or jump ahead. I wish I knew how to take out the wind — I’m sure there’s a way.
The video starts out with Mom calling out to her family — no sirens were involved. At :40 seconds into the video [the numbers below refer to the progression of the video], the rest of the family responds, and Mom then intensifies her own calls as she replies to them — you can see and hear this uptic in sound. At 1:15, satisfied with their responses, she heads off to another location nearby but does not join them. Some people have speculated that this type howling is a “roll-call”, but it isn’t, since repeatedly I have seen some family members absolutely ignore the sounds and continue with what they were doing.
By 1:23 the rest of the family is sleeping on a hillside without Mom. If you didn’t know they were there, you would not have seen them — they pretty much blended into the hillside and looked like part of the landscape. Dad looks up briefly at 1:53. Of course, I didn’t stick around to video them sleeping (!) but the minute I heard them again, I returned.
By 2:05 the family is howling again, this time in response to sirens. If you listen carefully you can hear that each coyote sounds different, and you can hear Mom’s deeper voice in the background. Howling is often set off by sirens, but just as often it’s initiated without them. Possibly they are simply confirming their family unity and their family separateness from any neighboring coyote families. If sirens occur late in the afternoon, as in this case, the coyotes may use it as their signal to meet up at the rendezvous — a nightly event — which begins their activity together through the evening. Coyotes sleep mostly during the daylight hours in urban settings as an adaptation to avoid people, even though they are not at all nocturnal. They are as diurnal as we are.
By about 4:07 the howling has stopped. They interact minimally, and then they head off to meet Mom for their rendezvous.
At 4:36 you may have to turn the volume up to hear their squeaky voices during their meeting: this part is hidden from view because they are deep in the bushes.
Within a few minutes of hearing these high-pitched voices from the bushes — it was dusk by this time and difficult to see them — I saw three of them headed out together with purpose and direction to their steps — they were on their way to patrol and hunt and mark their territory in order to keep non-family coyotes out. One of the youngsters, the female, seems never to come with them during these treks. I’ve seen this stay-home behavior in a number of younger females. I don’t know if they remain home due to not feeling secure away from home, or if there is some other reason.