Information and stories about San Francisco coyotes: behavior & personality, coexistence & outreach, by Janet Kessler: Unveiling first-hand just how savvy, social, sentient and singular coyotes really are!
I want to make folks aware that injuries and ailments abound in the coyote world. Here are three youngster coyotes, all 8 months old, who have conditions to contend with which will impact them moving forwards.
Probable Glaucoma from an Injury:
I’ve recently posted about Lapis’ condition, above. Her right eye, from the time I first noticed it when she was about two months old, was blue. It remained this way for many months, but about a month ago that eye suddenly looked quite different: I don’t know if this is a developing condition, or if it is the result of trauma, so I contacted an animal veterinarian eye specialist who diagnosed her condition through photos as follows: “From what I can tell from the picture, the right eye likely has glaucoma (increased internal eye pressure. The lens within the eye is probably shifted rearward (posterior lens luxation). The right eye is probably blind, but appears to be comfortable as there is no squinting evident. Could be from a traumatic injury.”
The eye indeed looks glassy and blind, and from her behavior, it doesn’t seem to be painful. Without a second eye, she would have no depth of field, so this definitely will impact her survival skills. However, coyotes are resilient survivalists, and I expect her to live as full a life as any of the other coyotes. At this point in time, she plays with her siblings and hunts, but she is not adventurous when it comes to exploring new places: she prefers the safety of her immediate area. Then again, a sister of hers from last year’s litter behaved in this exact same way without such an affliction, so the eye may be having no effect at all on her life, so far.
Probable Corneal Edema from a Virus:
This youngster visits a backyard about once a day, so a human was able to take these concerning photos. The cloudy eyes are alarming, so we sent these photos to the same eye specialist as before. His response:
“The clouding of the eyes could be due to corneal edema. Since this is a youngster, I would suspect some sort of systemic infection caused inflammation of the cells lining the interior of the cornea (endothelial cells). One possibly is canine adenovirus type 1, which causes a viral hepatitis. This can cause corneal edema due to endothelial cell inflammation. Vision is present, but it is going to be hazy.”
A friend and colleague of mine who knows coyotes well tells me that generalities are always broken by coyotes. I.E., there are exceptions always. My own take is that this fella is compromised which will affect the quality of his life, but then again, he might be the exception. I can’t imagine an easy life with hazy vision. However, he has a safe-haven in someone’s backyard which he can retreat to. He is welcome there whenever he wants. Nonetheless, he’s a male and males have strong drives: he’ll want to find a mate and claim his own territory at some point. But let’s see how his story develops. As long as he returns to his backyard safety zone, we’ll be able to get updates.
Caudectormy from an accident or injury:
And then this shocking injury occurred within the last month: a completely severed tail. We have no idea how this happened, but when it was first observed, the cartilage was exposed and the wound was furious red. However, as we all know, coyotes are resilient, and the little female seems to be recovering and is functional, and hopefully out of pain at this point. If you see her, please leave her alone: her tail cannot be restored, and she already is healing. Remember that what is most important to these coyotes is their families and relationships within those families. Allowing them to remain with their families until they are ready to disperse is crucial for their well being. Unless a wild animal is immobile, or has mange, we leave most alone, allowing nature to follow its course.
Life is not easy for a coyote. Among their strifes with each other, humans, and dogs, there are injuries and ailments, and environmental hazards, a few of which I’ll address here.
Lifespan in captivity for a coyote is about 14 to 16 years — it’s about the equivalent of what it is for a dog of that size. But in the wild-wild, I’ve been told, the average lifespan is only 3-5 years — much of that is caused by human predation. Here in the city I’ve known a number of coyotes who reached the age of 12 and almost 12, but, in fact, few actually reach that milestone.
Cars are their biggest killers
Of course cars kill and might be considered their chief “predator” in a city: twenty-four dead coyotes were picked up in 2021 in San Francisco from roadways. There were probably more coyotes hit by cars that were able to scramble under some bushes where they perished but were not counted. And then there were those who survived their car hits. The most notable I knew of happened many years ago: a single mother (her mate had been killed by rat poison) with two very young pups. This coyote managed to drag herself along for months, feeding herself and her youngsters all by herself. After two full months she was again using that leg, gingerly, but she was using it. Over time she did recover: but you can imagine how difficult life was for her during her healing time.
Rat poison has kills
Another coyote killer in the City is rat poison: I’ve picked up several dead coyotes showing no body traumas which could indicate poisoning was involved. Only one was necropsied, but that animal’s body was found to be riddled with four different kinds of rat poison. Rat poison works by causing internal bleeding, so before it kills, it weakens the animal tremendously — and probably hurts unbearably. Some survive milder doses, but their reactions are slowed and subjecting them to further injury. Those with heavy doses die pretty horrible deaths.
Dogs chasing him broke his ankle
Leg injuries are pretty common in coyotes: I regularly see them limping. Although dogs aren’t the cause of all their limping, I have seen plenty of coyotes end up limping after having been chased by a dog. In the uneven terrain, and woodsie areas which they run into in order to escape a dog, the sticks and holes are little booby traps for their fine limbs, and they get injured.
I’ve seen an actual broken ankle — so diagnosed by a wildlife vet from a video I sent her — caused by running from a dog. That ankle eventually, over many months, healed, but it came back to haunt him three years later, when I again saw him limping on the same back leg: he had just lost his mate who had been hit by a car and now he needed to defend his territory and pups from takeover, but he could not do so without his mate. The weakened and then re-injured ankle may have resulted from him trying to defend his turf. He was driven out and I have not seen him for a year.
Dogs chase coyotes constantly in San Francisco
This fella’s left front arm was broken and healed crooked.
I saw a broken forearm (either the radius or the ulna) — I have no idea how it came about. That was an 18 month old during his dispersal time. He returned to one of the territories he had passed through earlier and was lucky enough to hide in the yard of some good Samaritans who nursed him along. Today, at four years of age (he was born in 2019), he maintains his limp — not a huge one, but a limp nonetheless. In spite of his condition, he is the alpha male of his own family — so he’s a real survivor.
Skin lesions from allsorts of pathogens & injuries exist.
I have not seen any cases of mange in the city, but I’ve seen plenty of skin lesions. Below is a case that looked like the result of a mite/flea infestation which then was licked and worked over by the coyote, causing more hair loss than anything else. The wound itself could initially be seen as fiery red, so it must have been painful. I again sent photos of this five-year-old lactating mother here to the vet. The vet replied — this is after the furious red had died down — that the coyote was healing well, that she (the coyote) did a good job of cleaning up the wound, that it could have been a puncture or foxtail wound, and that coyotes seem better at healing on their own than dogs. I don’t usually see skin lesions that are that big — most appear substantially smaller than this one and there are usually many such lesions on an animal.
Bulbous ear growths
Worms
Worms and intestinal parasites obviously exist as shown by my regularly seeing diarrhea and seeing “scooting” behavior, which almost always signifies worms, the same as with dogs.
Coyotes are in fact constantly grooming each other to prevent insect infestations. Here are two youngster siblings removing ticks from each other.
Tag caused an ear infection and deformed ear; radio collar did self-release so she’s stuck with it
Scientists wanting to study these animals — besides harassing and terrifying the animals by capturing them — use gadgets that they staple or buckle onto the animals. I’ve seen tagging that resulted in a permanently flopped-over ear, and radio-collars which were supposed to be automatically self-released but malfunctioned so that after five years, these cumbersome objects are still attached to the animals.
Other human injuries are caused by sporting paintguns which can cause internal injuries and even the loss of an eye. We almost never discover the extent of any injury because we hope for minimal human intervention and, besides, nature is one of the best healers.
An injured eye
A lost eye could have been caused by hunting.
Here’s a coyote without an eye. I don’t know what caused this injury. I can just hope it wasn’t caused by a human. This is one of the Golden Gate Park coyote pups born last year who dispersed to Lake Merced before disappearing completely. The coyote was much, much smaller than his siblings, possibly due to his inability to get enough food. Hardship again. And here’s another coyote who only two days earlier was perfectly fine, but now she’s squinting severely with her right eye — again, I hope it wasn’t caused by humans.
These are wounds from a territorial battle. She was driven away from her home, but eventually got it back.
Wounds from territorial battles are not so uncommon. I’ve seen a 4 year old limping home from such a battle. The worst I’ve seen is a five year old father who had part of his lip torn off. And then there was Scout whose flight from her territorial battler I documented extensively on this blog.
Gophers can fight back by biting hard.
But wounds also occur from just simply everyday life. For example, in hunting for gophers, the gopher often, if it can, fights back. This may be one of the reasons a coyote *toys* with its prey: to keep that gopher away from its eyes. I had a friend with a pet python snake who had lost an eye to prey: the owner saw it happen.
Infant mortality is always high in coyotes. Last summer a pup was found dead at the Presidio about ten days after it died — it was too late to perform a necropsy.
And at West Portal last year, one of the four pups was either born with a birth defect or acquired an injury early on to his spine because — he was lame and much smaller than his siblings The vet told me it’s very likely the result of distemper, and the case in the Presidio may be the same: distemper causes neurological compromises that can result in lameness. I saw a cheetah abandon such a pup in the wild — that did not happen here. This fella was not abandoned or ditched. He was allowed to grow up with his siblings who prodded him on. And, miraculously, he improved! He began walking regularly, albeit with a bit of a wobble which over time subsided. At this stage, I don’t know what the effect will be on him as an adult.
You know that there’s an ear problem when they continue to shake their heads. There’s no vet to take care of the infection or remove the foxtail. They learn to cope.
What I have depicted here are the visible injuries and afflictions that I myself could identify. Those diseases that aren’t so readily visible or identifiable, include rabies of which we’ve had no cases in San Francisco, canine distemper — which we can sometimes identify by the injury it causes to an animal, tularemia, canine hepatitis and mange, which is associated with weakened immune systems caused by rat poison.
Scars are their histories — most of the stories we’ll never know, but what we should know is that survival requires some tough beatings. Here are some scars that have stories behind them — and I know only a very few of them. On the left, the scars have healed, but his scars were as disfiguring as these two to the right which were fresh when I took the photos.
So, a coyote’s life is hard and it is short — but it’s harder elsewhere I think, where they are subject to predation mostly by people, whereas wolves used to be their main predator, until we killed them all off. Fortunately, we here in San Francisco have gotten rid of the sinister culture still maintained in many areas: killing them to manage them. One old-timer told me that in the 1950s, San Francisco paid $4.00 bounties for a set of two ears. With all the killing humans have imposed on coyotes — 200K a year — their numbers have not gone down. As a species they are survivors and resilient. As individuals, just like us, they are trying to survive and thrive in a sometimes hostile world. We need to give them a break by simply keeping a distance and walking away from them if you have a dog: that alone will make life more pleasant for them AND for dog owners!
This young female coyote spent considerable time rubbing and scratching her sore eye with her wrist, possibly even with her dew claw. When her wrist was not up in her eye to relieve the itch or pain, or possibly to dislodge the irritant, you could see that the eye was red, swollen, teared-up and recessed a little. I don’t know what was going on, except that it bothered her. I’ve seen quite a number of eye-injuries or irritations in coyotes, so it must be a fairly common malady. They are close to the ground where sticks, brambles, grit and bugs could easily get caught in and become lodged in their eyes. Coyotes are particularly dependent on their binocular vision for hunting, so it was important for her to take care of her afflicted eye.
We all tend to forget that wildlife has its share of ailments and injuries, not dissimilar to our own, and that even if these don’t incapacitate an animal, they make it that much more difficult to perform their daily living routines, and can serve to shorten their lives.
By the time I saw her on the next day she was no longer tending the eye — the affliction had passed.
Foxtails tend to go one way: IN. The pointed quills make it very difficult for them to be pulled OUT.
I’ve had quite a time removing these from the soft lining in my boots. They become embedded and without a lot of effort, won’t come out. And they hurt!
Dogs frequently get them embedded in their noses or in the webbing of their toes, and it is only by going to a veterinarian that they can be removed. In fact, I know of a vet that wore a beautiful gold foxtail pendant around her neck. She said it was given to her because these beautiful little foxtails are what she made her living off of: extracting them from pets!
coyotes hunt and rest in foxtails
Our wild critters don’t have the benefit of a veterinarian who could help them, but I’m sure our coyotes are as affected as often as the rest of us. I’ve seen them attempt to pull things from their paws — probably foxtails, and I got a photo the other day (darn, can’t find it — I’ll add it when I find it) of a foxtail stuck to a coyote’s nose, which is what made me think of creating this posting.
She kept scratching and scratching. She’d get up to move on, and then immediately again be on her haunches, scratching.
She kept it up for over 20 minutes, with that leg boing, boinging up and down for that length of time. The scratching has been particularly intense over the last few days. I’m hoping that it’s just a bug that she hasn’t been able to get, or maybe it’s just that there are a lot of them: ticks or fleas.
I don’t know if she’s trying to ease an itch or an irritation. Her coat is extremely thick, which impedes the claws from reaching whatever it is that is bothering her. Shedding has begun and will continue through June, so maybe the scratching is helping to remove some of the loose fur.
My one worry with constant scratching of this sort is the possibility of mange — a killer. Mange results from a mite that buries itself into the skin, causing severe discomfort which the coyote attempts to relieve through such intense scratching that the fur is slowly removed, leaving the skin exposed with lesions. This is a prime killer of coyotes. Apparently all canines, including domestic dogs, carry the mites which are transferred from mother to pups via cuddling during the first few days of life. Most canines live in harmony with their mites — but things could get out of balance when the immune system is compromised or if there are other underlying health issues.
There are no bare patches of skin, so, I’m hoping it’s just fleas or ticks. I’m monitoring this one.
She’s been limping for several days now. It was barely perceptible at first, and I questioned myself as to if it really was a limp. But now it has gotten worse — a definite limp.
I’ve not yet trained myself to recognize, by the stride, if the injury is in a paw, wrist, knee, hip or shoulder — veterinarians apparently can do this. But even I can tell that it’s the back left leg because she holds it up regularly, not wanting to put her weight on it, and her gait is not smooth.
It doesn’t seem to hamper her ability to move. I still see her climbing steep inclines and rocks — but it might be hampering her speed. And the injury might be the reason she keeps much further away from people and dogs, all the time lately.
I wonder how much it hurts. I know it hurts because she’s holding it up. Pain serves a purpose — it tells her “don’t use this appendage”.
Is this a new injury, or is it an old injury coming back to haunt its victim? Four years ago, this same coyote sustained a severe injury on her hind back left leg after being hit by a car, the same leg she is now holding up. That leg retains large black scars from that incident. Is this that injury acting up, or is it a new injury? No way to know. I’ll keep tabs on it.
Anyway, life is short in the wild. Every injury or disease takes its toll. A coyote can live 14 years in captivity — but what a horrible worthless life that would be. In the wild, the average life expectancy of a coyote is about five years. Do we even know how long coyotes live in the urban wild? Many urban coyotes are killed by cars. In some areas of the country, coyotes are trapped and killed in urban/suburban areas. Most coyotes everywhere endure all sorts of diseases and injuries. Whenever there is an injury, I think about it specifically and globally.
This video is a long one, four and a half minutes. One coyote is removing ticks from the other, and the other is enjoying the exquisite attention and massage, closing its eyes to relish this personal grooming session. The behavior not only serves the purpose of removing unhealthy ticks, it serves to strengthen the social bond between these two. The affection between these two is tremendous.
Ticks seem to be out now. My last posting showed a coyote grooming another — it looked as though ticks were being removed. Here is a coyote photo I’ve blown up — the ticks are very visible on the ears. Since we don’t have deer in the city of San Francisco, there is little risk of Lyme Disease. The ticks eventually fall off of coyotes with healthy immune systems. However, I have seen an unhealthy deer which the ticks clung to — it’s entire neck was literally covered with this blood-sucking insect.
When I saw this coyote, my first impression was that its paw might be hurt: the paw was being held up in a limp fashion. But the coyote then struggled to reach something under her arm in the armpit — that is a hard place to reach. It didn’t take long for the problem to be fixed. The coyote then got up and continued her wanderings. I did not see her return her attention to the armpit. It was probably just a burr or a bug.
I was able to get these shots between wafts of fog that kept blowing in and leaving. What is going on here is that one coyote is bothered by something on her tail area. Whatever it was, she wanted it off — possibly it was causing discomfort — maybe it was a burr or something like that which was pinching or had become embedded in her skin.
What is of interest is that this coyote was able to communicate her need to the other, and the other tried his best to help. However, the problem was not solved by his attempts to help, as can be seen by the coyote with the problem trying again to remove the source of discomfort on her own in slide #9. It appears that she was unable to do this.
Slide #10 shows that she then continued soliciting his help: walking or rolling in front of him and thrusting that sore spot in front of him. Maybe he knew his help would be futile, or maybe he got tired of helping, or maybe the message was not so clear this time, but his interest shifted to leading them both into the woods and out of my view. I’m hoping that maybe he helped her some more once they were under cover.
Tuesday I found a spot in the nature preserve that seemed good. I had a long view of a straight paved utility road and hoped to catch crossing it a very young coyote. I got tired of waiting and walked slowly down the road. A tree squirrel alerted a bit too far from me. I stopped to listen for why. Behind a tall wall of drying wild mustard I heard a quiet rustling coming knee high ever so slightly towards me through the brush. I backed off immediately and retreated fifty feet. Then a coyote pushed onto the road where I had been standing. It was Dad.
August (a)
He stared, shook himself for his face being slightly wet and then trotted away from me on the road. He cut into the brush on the side opposite from which he had come. I continued leaving, knowing that Dad would re-emerge and that if I wasn’t quick enough, he would do so ahead of me. We know each other’s tricks. Tantalizingly, along the road on the side from which Dad had first appeared, more rustles came from the brush, although I couldn’t take time to investigate. Dad appeared behind me as I arrived at the exit.
August (b)
Last April Dad looked fit. Tuesday, allowing for this season’s sparser coat and for his head being a little wet, he nevertheless looked gaunt and his face looked whitened, like that of an old coyote. I love that coyote and I couldn’t believe the change in him, felt wounded. It is he, my having checked his markings down to his busted lower left canine tooth. His eyes are the same, and before I checked that tooth I thought that if it isn’t Dad, then surely it’s his daddy. Dad’s hips poke out, he seems to squint with his right eye, there is a dark patch on his left face and there are new dark eraser sized markings on his forehead and on the sides of his face. He is looking like a beat up old coyote. Yet even so, he’s still got game and I’m hoping he still has his health.
Posting written by Charles Wood. Visit Charles Wood’s website for these and more coyote photos: Charles Wood. His work is copyrighted and may only be used with his explicit permission.
In Los Angeles county this week I saw Mom a few times and also a couple of the yearlings. Thursday Mom came under the bridge headed south into her field, having come from the nature preserve. She paused when she heard my camera’s shutter. It took her about a minute to go hide and watch. The nape of her neck: looks like mange, something I haven’t seen on her before.
Tonight, Saturday, she was headed in the opposite direction, coming from the south headed north toward the nature preserve. Alerted, she stopped to hide and watch. My friend Lynne was with me. When Mom hid I knew the show was over because Mom sits and watches for as long as I stay. So I left for the car. Lynne followed initially and then stopped as I continued toward the car. The show wasn’t over, though it took me leaving to get Mom to move again. Mom headed for the bridge to pass north into the nature preserve, yet she didn’t because Mom finally saw Lynne hadn’t continued to follow me. Consequently, Mom walked towards Lynne and then stopped to stare at her, a chain link fence between them and separated by about sixty feet. Lynne left and presumably Mom went into the nature preserve.
That was the first time I have been aware of Mom making a mistake. Apparently she thought bothhumans had left, freeing her to resume her walk north. Nevertheless, Mom recovered quickly from her misperception and proceeded to successfully move Lynne along.
Posting written by Charles Wood. Visit Charles Wood’s website for these and more coyote photos: Charles Wood. His work is copyrighted and may only be used with his explicit permission.
Saturday my leashed dog Holtz and I revisited my Los Angeles area coyotes’ field, taking a shortcut back to the car. Mom showed herself for a few moments and then crept back into the brush. There were also teenagers in the field playing with their assault air rifles. Although my path and theirs didn’t cross I would have liked to hear if they had coyote stories of their own to tell me. As Holtz and I left, the kids were cavorting and shooting their air rifles blindly into the brush, putting an end to my bird and coyote watching. There were many ears and eyes following those kids, all on the move away from them. If the kids decided to actually hunt they would have had trouble finding anything to shoot. Like Holtz, they lack stealth.
Earlier in the week I showed a photo of Mom to my veterinarian who confirmed Mom’s ear was infected or had mites, was a source of discomfort, and would eventually develop into cauliflower ear. Another concern is that this year, the brush in their field is being cut more frequently. In early December the brush was recovering from its earlier mowing, yet in mid-December the brush was mowed yet again. Last June, most of the field was a diverse puppy training ground and a small yet thriving ecosystem. That messy and dull looking area is quite different from both the neighboring golf course and public park. The golf course and park seem as deserts when compared to dull brush. Fortunately we also have a protected 100 acre nature center area that supports an assortment of living things providing each for the other, coyotes and hawks included.
I wonder what, if anything, could or should be done for Mom’s ear. I’ve learned from Janet’s blog that removing a coyote from its environ for treatment is a significant disruption of the group. Her two youngsters, neither yet a year old, still depend on her maturity and skills. Another consideration is that she is or will soon be in season. Holtz has had otitis caught early and the treatment was to irrigate his ears with Betadine followed by daily applications of ointment to his ear canal with oral antibiotics twice a day over a two week period. With Mom, she probably has damage to or a collapse of the ear canal and a cursory web search of the topic suggests treatment at this stage is more complex with no certainty of a successful outcome. Even were resources available to provide treatment, intervening might do more harm than good.
I don’t like that answer. Mom has grown to dislike me just as much as I have grown to love her. I do feel her jobs are of more concern to her than is the discomfort from her ear.
Posting written by Charles Wood. Visit Charles Wood’s website for these and more coyote photos:Charles Wood. His work is copyrighted and may only be used with his explicit permission.
These photos made a nice series: two eyes, one eye, no eyes! Small children play this game, though they use their hands to cover their eyes. In truth, there is more going one here: the right eye of this coyote has been infected for some time and most of the time appears smaller than the other with small amounts of secretions. Ailments are common in wild animals.
Zooming into one of my photos allowed me to see the sores and bugs that inhabit a coyote’s behind area. There are some ticks and some red, wettish skin which looks like it has been scratched and licked. Too bad a paw can’t reach this area for scratching. What ends up happening is that the coyote bites at it to help reduce its distress.
I’ve seen coyotes practically trip over themselves in their need to take care of the “itch” on their behinds right away — it must be an intense annoyance. Intense scratching and scooting are signs of intestinal parasites.
About My Site and Me: This website reflects my 17 years of intense, careful, and dedicated field-work — empirical observations — all photo-documented without interfering or changing coyotes’ behaviors. Be welcome here, enjoy, and learn!
Coyotes reappeared in San Francisco in 2002 after many years of absence, and people are still in the dark about them. This site is to help bring light to their behavior and offer simple guidelines for easy coexistence.
My information comes from my own first-hand observations of our very own coyotes here in San Francisco. They have not been studied or observed so thoroughly by anyone else. Mine is not generic information, nor second-hand.
Note that none of the coyotes I document and photograph is “anonymous” to me: I know (or knew) each one of them, and can tell you about their personalities, histories, and their family situations. There have been over 100 of them, distributed among over twenty families, all in San Francisco. Images and true stories have the power to raise awareness and change perspective.
Coyote Yipps 