In the 35 years that we have lived in Nolalu I have never seen more than one coyote at a time. The same holds true for my trail cameras. Every coyote photo has been of a single animal, never a pack. That has changed suddenly.
I got my first photos of at least three of the wily canines traveling down one of my trails. I didn't use any of those shots here because they were taken at night and weren't the best quality. But here is one of the pack in the daylight.
I was first alerted to the presence of coyote packs about six weeks ago when I heard them yipping at night. We normally hear timber wolves, not coyotes.
We live right on the edge of coyote country. Just a few miles east of here coyote packs are the norm and wolves the exception. That is probably because there is more farm country to the east. Here it is mostly bush.
I had just gotten the pics of the coyote pack on my trail cam when I noticed dozens of coyote tracks right around the house. What were they doing here? My best guess is they were after a red fox that had been coming to our bird feeder.
The next thing was I spotted a big coyote walking in the field right in front of the house. There was a large whitetail doe eating at the feeder at the time and while she didn't instantly bolt, she was alarmed and moved off as soon as the coyote went out of sight.
Meanwhile wolf tracks are few and far between. My conclusion is that something has happened to the wolves and the coyotes have filled in the void. We haven't seen the fox recently either.
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