[The earlier version of this failed to show the video; I am hoping I’ve fixed the problem).
February is when coyotes mate, and two nights ago they held a party next to my driveway. Neither me nor our beagle saw or even heard a thing, but they didn’t clear up when they left, and so the signs were clear to see.
They came out of the woods, six or eight of them:
Some of them came towards the old stone wall by the driveway:
Others headed towards the vegetable garden at the top of the photo:
where they ran around in excitement:
Then they moved a little closer to the house and seem to have stopped for a while in a group hug:
Nearer the woods there was another gathering spot:
And then they left, some went back the way they came, and some loped off across the driveway and down the hill.
I have no idea what was going on. Usually a group is an adult pair and their young, aged one or two years, for a total of at most six coyotes, but this looked like more to me. Each gathering ‘hub’ had one urine mark, which suggests territorial marking. No scat anywhere, no kills, no signs of a female in oestrus. Mating does take place at this time of year, but it usually involves just the loving couple, not a rave.
Come spring, they will be taking solitary walks through the woods, fording the streams , and looking for prey:
Very occasionally one emerges from the woods at dusk in full view when I have my camera handy. This was in August, after the field had been mowed, perhaps stirring up small prey animals.
PS Coyotes in the northeastern USA are sometimes called coywolves. They’re a hybrid of a coyote and a wolf, and much larger than the coyotes of the western USA.
Photo credit: Justin Lee Hirten from The Canadian Field-Naturalist, from the website of Jonathan Way,
Eyes on the Wild 