Coyote Yipps

The coyote pupping season is fast approaching. It’s a good time to find out more about our San Francisco coyotes. I’ll be giving a packed 55 minute talk which includes 175 slides and 8 short video clips! It is, after all, a slide presentation, and I’ll have a lot to say, using the slides to illustrate my points. I’ll be covering 1) their population structure, distribution and life cycle, 2) their family life and interactions, and I’ll wind down with 3) stewardship and guidelines for coexistence. In addition, I’ll cover a little about myself and my methods, and at the end I’ll tack on a little about our coyotes in the Randall Museum neighborhood area.

From the Randall: This is “a presentation to accompany the Pops & Pups exhibition. Join us for a special slide presentation and talk by Janet Kessler, AKA “The Coyote Lady.” Janet has been studying, documenting and educating the public with her first-hand information about San Francisco’s wild coyote population for the past 17 years. Learn where they are, who they are and guidelines for coexistence.”

The Pops & Pups: Perpetual Motion” display will be going up on February 20th in this location.

For more about the Randall Museum here in San Francisco, and their announcement, visit them at randallmuseum.org.

I will be giving a much-shortened 20 minute version of my normally 50 minute talk at the Rotary Club of San Francisco on May 17th at noon. You can attend in person and receive a three course lunch (yes, there’s a fee), or you can sign up virtually. Click the link below for more information.

For more information, click here: https://sfrotary.com/event/rotary-luncheon–citizen-coyotes-of-san-francisco–where-they-are–who-they-are–how-to-get-along/

“If you have been seeing news articles and reading posts in NextDoor, you would think we’re under attack from coyotes in a new and terrifying way. It’s true that coyote sightings are increasing, and members of the El Cerrito Garden Club are talking about this phenomenon of daylight sightings, mangled cat carcasses, and general worry by hikers, parents and dog walkers.

Since we’ve made room for deer, gophers, and other mammals in our neighborhoods, willingly or reluctantly, why are coyotes so feared and hated? And why do they seem to be proliferating all over the East Bay, especially in the hills? All we have to do is notice just how many rats have made their homes around our properties, nesting in vegetation and under houses, and providing a rich diet for predators, including owls and coyotes. If you know that poisoning the rats is dangerous to pets, to owls and others who feed on rats, and you choose not to use the baits, be aware that coyotes are a big part of keeping the balance in our urban/wildlife corridor.

Come and watch Janet Kessler, naturalist and researcher with 14 years of experience with the coyotes in San Francisco, explain their population and behavior, how to accept these amazingly social animals, and how we can keep our pets and children safe while easily coexisting with them.”

This talk is part of the El Cerrito Garden Club’s *speakers series* that will begin after their monthly business meeting. It will include the same information as Janet’s previous talks, so if you’ve missed them all and wanted to hear one, you are welcome to ZOOM into this one. For the link and access code, contact Janet@coyoteyipps.com. After the 50 minute slide presentation, there will be a Q&A period. Here is the recording.

117/12/29

I was invited to talk about coyotes at the Lindsay Wildlife Center in Walnut Creek on Monday. I gave a 94-slide presentation, put together specifically for this audience, based on my first-hand observations and illustrated with my own photos and videos, and then we had comments and questions afterwards.

I spoke about what I do: first-hand researching and photo-documenting urban coyote behavior and family life and their interface with people and pets for the last 11 years in San Francisco and disseminating this to the public, and then I continued with what I have learned first-hand: typical coyote characteristics and their individuality, their family behaviors and communication, their population dynamics and movement into urban areas, coyotes and pets, and finally the social interface of which we humans are a part, along with how best to coexist with them through education and minor habitat adjustments.

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Above are nine of the 94 slides I used as starting points to discuss behaviors and guidelines.

For instance, one of coyotes’ normal behaviors (slide 45) is their routine trekking through the neighborhoods after their evening rendezvous: they travel beyond parks, where they survey, hunt, mark and continue to socialize. Being in neighborhoods is not “wayward” behavior — it is totally normal behavior in dense urban areas and should be expected by everyone living in urban settings, especially by those living close to parks or open spaces. It is a territorial behavior and has little to do with the amount of food and water available to them in the parks: so changing the resources or configuration of these resources within the parks (as was offered as a solution for keeping them out of the neighborhoods by someone) is not going to thwart them from trekking through the neighborhoods. There is more to coyotes than just their stomachs!

Below are a few photos of the event. Thank you Lindsay Wildlife Center volunteers for inviting me: it was an honor to share this information with you!