Howls and Listens

31 Jul 2022 7 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in communication, coyote barking, vocalization

First there were sirens. Coyotes often respond to fire-engine or ambulance sirens. This older alpha male responded with howls as you hear here.

Then he stopped and listened. This is the part that’s most interesting to me: the listening. His family was responding to him. Notice him cocking and turning his head as he listens intently, trying to catch every meaningful sound in the reply howls of various family members — they are in the far distance, but you actually can hear them in the video.

His family consists of his mate and two of his mate’s yearling offspring. He himself joined the family only a year ago, shortly after the then-alpha-male died.

He was listening for WHO in his family was responding and where they were — each coyote has his own distinctive signature howl that includes a certain voice and pattern — I myself can distinguish some of these, and of course he would be able to discern their locations. Also, though, he was picking up on everything else being conveyed in their vocal responses conveyed by duration, tone, urgency or lack thereof, etc: there’s a lot of information there that we humans have not learned to decipher. Most of it, I believe, is emotional states. After discerning what he wanted to know, he then belted out his own long reply.

I have a whole page on vocalizations if you want to delve deeper: Coyote Voicings.

When he began kicking the dirt — a usually angry reaction — I turned around to see what had prompted him to do that. A walker and his dog had stopped close to me to listen, and the coyote appeared to be reacting negatively to that presence. Coyote often react to dogs and even intrusive photographers in this manner.

When the vocalizations stopped, the dog and owner walked on, and the coyote went in the direction of the howls he had solicited.

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. 

Coyote Anger: Cat-like Growls or Screams

16 Dec 2019 13 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in communication, family interactions, mother coyote behavior, mother/pup learning, social interactions, vocalization, yodeling and yipping

When coyotes communicate, there’s little room for misinterpretation. You already saw this in my last posting about “coyote insistence” through body language. If they are insistent towards humans and our dogs, you can be sure they are just as insistent towards each other. This short video clip, above, shows this. It was taken after a family howl session in response to a siren. The howling and yiping in response to the siren were sing-songy and upbeat as you can hear here:

The family howling then segues into the evening rendezvous, where the entire family excitedly meets and greets for the evening trekk and other family activities. But Mom is not so keen on having all that high-energy wiggly and excited youngster activity around her. Her vocalizations at this point, as seen in the above video, are of the “raspy” type I discuss in my posting on Coyote Voicings. These are anger, annoyed, and warning vocalizations directed at family members. She’s telling the rambunctious youngsters that she wants space and calm: “get away from me”. She also displays her frustration by complaining with a wide vocalized gape to Dad who happens to be standing beside her. These are sounds you may not have heard from a coyote: they are very cat-like — the kind of sounds a cat would make before swiping at something with its claws.

Remember that coyotes also “pounce” for prey in a very cat-like manner, they toy with their prey as cats do, they splay their toes as cats do, and they “warn” with that very familiar “Halloween Cat” stance which includes a hairpin arched back and often a gape and hiss. I have been asked if coyotes are cats or dogs: I can see why such a question might be asked. Of course, coyotes are neither: they are simply themselves. However, they can reproduce with dogs and have many dog-like qualities, but they also have several very cat-like behaviors which dogs don’t have.

A Panoply of Howling From St. Augustine Wild Reserve

30 May 2018 2 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in vocalization

Have you ever heard howling from a bunch of different critters all at once? Kathy Lally, who works at the St. Augustine Wild Reserve in Florida, hears this sort of thing often: the animals do this howling routine several times a day, she says.

“Our critters never hear sirens, so that isn’t what sets them off [as it does in urban areas]. Instead, a wolf will start the howling, which I understand is a contact call, and then other wolves will respond until they are all talking to each other. The coyotes then join in with their yipping — it’s a full chorus of howls and yips from them. Sometimes, but not always, the lions and tigers actually participate. It’s all quite amazing!”

“Got this video today but the coyotes didn’t yip, they were barking instead. I was in a coyote cage at the time so the video is of one of our lions across the way. The lions nor the tigers joined in this time. And, interestingly, the one loner coyote at the reserve never participates in this communication, even though coyote mated pairs always do.”

These are the participants in this recorded howling session:

Adult wolves: Magic, Kashmir, Chaska & Nakai
Year old wolf puppies: Merlin, Spirit, Tonka, Eyota, Raven, Indigo, Nova, Luna, Kachina &Wachiwi
Coyotes: Lakota, Apache, Sundance, Yosemite, Cheyenne & Durango

Here is the same howling a couple of days later, but this time with the camera directed towards the wolves in the rain:

Yodeling and Yipping Are Achieved Through Mouth Movements

27 Oct 2016 Leave a comment

by yipps:janetkessler in coyote behavior, video, vocalization, yodeling and yipping

This video shows one of two coyotes who are yipping back and forth together. You can clearly see how she uses her mouth muscles — pulling them back or pushing them forward — to achieve the yipping or yodeling sounds. Humans do this too, but we have the additional use of our tongues which allows us to produce speech.

Many people mistake these high-pitched coyote yips for pup sounds when they can’t see who is making them, but as you can see here, it is adults who are making the sounds! These two coyotes began this yipping session after ambulance sirens were heard — which is a common response by coyotes.

Vocalization Following A Siren, and Kanyon’s Art

05 Mar 2015 Leave a comment

by yipps:janetkessler in communication, coyote behavior, vocalization

by ©Kanyon Sayers-Roods

by ©Kanyon Sayers-Roods

Here’s a recording of a male coyote vocalizing after hearing a siren. Coyotes often join in with a siren, and then continue their vocalizations long after the siren has stopped. A siren is often the starting point — the inspiration — for a coyote’s howling. As they howl, they’re also calling out to make audio contact with the rest of the family which is close by. The other family members may join in or not, but usually at least one responds. And then the vocalization continues, probably for the sheer joy of vocalizing. In this recording, a female joins the male at the beginning — hers is the high pitched howl in the background, whereas his are the barks in the foreground — but it’s the male who continues through to the end.

With time, one can learn to appreciate the different aspects of coyote howls, no different from appreciating any other foreign language, as I did in a restaurant recently. The Italian language I listened to in the restaurant had unusual and unfamiliar sounds, which also included  lilting tones which we don’t have in English, and was accompanied by strong hand and body movements and strong facial expressions which were all part of the equation. I searched for possible meanings as I listened. Although the words were not intelligible to me I could “read” all sorts of things, such as questions, excitement, enthusiasm, anger, disciplining (of kids) and within the context I knew folks were ordering food. Of course, as a human, I can assume what is being communicated in Italian is not much different from what is communicated in my own languages.

Coyote howling is much more “foreign” to our human ears because we humans are not coyotes and therefore don’t have their “cultural background” to even know what is or needs to be communicated. But at the sound level alone, there are nuances of sounds which can be teased out, and I’m able to do this a little. The sounds include intensity, smooth tones and trills, length of sounds, barks, growls, grunts, whispers, pitch, changes of pitch during a long howl, when these pitch changes occur during the howling session (one coyote I know creates a signature pitch change always right at the end of his howling sessions), and there are distinguishing patterns which include the silences, all of which help me identify the individual who is howling. Context is important, though as a listener, we’re not often able to assess that. And of course, there is a world of meaning which goes beyond simple audio contact with others, roll call, warning, distress, joy, greetings, which I can’t decipher now — yet! But I know that these animals aren’t making these sounds just for no reason at all — they’re communicating.

I wondered if anyone would have the time to listen to my rather long sound bite — we all want things short these days.  But I decided to post it for those who might want to enjoy losing themselves in the call of the wild, as I do.

The drawing is by Kanyon Sayers-Roods, a very talented, committed and community-involved young American Indian from the Costanoan Ohlone and Chumash Native American Indian tribes. It fits with this posting. I think her art is superb, here evoking not only the spirit of the coyote, but the actual howling song as it spins forth. Visit Kanyon’s webpage to learn more about her: at http://about.me/kanyon.coyotewoman.

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