Coyotes

Here I Come!

I have photographed a lot of coyotes.  Some look really healthy, some look bedraggled, in ill health with matted fur and generally appear in poor health.  For some of those who look sickly I am told they may suffer from mange.  At Point Reyes I have seen the whole gamut from really nice looking healthy creatures to scraggly, just barely getting by in locations not all that far apart from each other.

The coyote featured in this post was found at a park in southern Sonoma County in November of last year (2022).

This fella is among the healthiest coyotes I have seen.  To me he seems almost wolf-like in his beauty.  As I was taking pictures of him he kept coming closer and closer, seemingly undisturbed by my presence.

Seeing him up close like this never fails to give me a thrill.  What a beautiful animal indeed.

Having him look up at the sky while directly in front of me supports my sense that I was not a bother to him.  This pose is, in my experience, unusual as coyotes seem to be primarily nose to the ground hunting 

 or scanning the surroundings for prey or threat.  At this moment there were some very interesting things going on in the sky between a couple of white-tailed kites, which I will share in another post.