Thanks to Kathryn in Delridge for the snippet of video/audio recorded last night when, she says, a neighborhood dog’s barking touched off an unseen pack of coyotes yipping. Even if you’ve never heard them, they’re in most neighborhoods – just scroll through our archive for evidence!
Thank you for this! I love the sound of yipping coyotes. Whenever I stay with a friend in rural New Mexico, her place is surrounded with them at night. It’s always interesting to hear just how close they will come – which sometimes depends on whether or not the cougar is visiting that evening. In the nineties there was a wonderful book called Skywater, kind of a Watership Down with coyotes. Highly recommend it, especially for coyote lovers.
We’ve heard them a few times in our neighborhood, you can definitely tell this is not a dog barking.
Coyotes seem very skittish or indifferent around people, but they have an ugly, unruly bark and they howl along with sirens. I wouldn’t want them at all around pets, but they seem otherwise unremarkably lovable alongside raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, crows, and other urban green-dwelling neighbors/nuisances. Bob Kettle, moral scolds, and school-marms be darned, live and let live I say, it’s all good.
Nature is so cool. When Coyotes yip like that, it can mean they’re being territorial to other coyotes but also can mean they’ve caught prey and are ringing the dinner bell to those in their group.
I used to live on Yuma Proving Ground outside of Yuma, AZ. The stars at night were amazing, but the coyotes were even more so. One night, fairly late, I took out the garbage to the back alley. As I put the bag in the can, closed the lid tightly, and turned around, I noticed one sitting there–silent as can be. I didn’t yell, but I quickly retreated to the house!
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