I’ve been continuing to see at least one Eastern Coyote in the park over the last few days. What’s hard to say is how many coyotes we have in the park. They’re seen around the park from The Mount (aka Compost Heap) in the north, to Hallett Nature Sanctuary in the south, and often two are seen together. The question is how many do we have and when will they start to breed in the park. Rumors abound about them, including one where four pups were reported but I haven’t yet seen any good evidence yet.

Over the last week, I’ve had some good luck running across the park’s Eastern Coyotes. I’ve seen both a single Eastern Coyote and a pair that decided to howl at a raccoon. It’s good to see them become a regular occurrence in the park.

I wanted to wait a week to post these photos to ensure the Coyote had moved on to a more private sleeping spot. Depending on who you talk to we have either two or more Coyotes in the park. I’ve seen two together in the northern end of the park and in the center of the park others often see two together. These could be the same animals or two pair.

Other large cities have Coyote populations in the hundreds, so I suspect over time we’ll have more Coyotes in Central Park and Manhattan. Despite their reputation as being a danger to pets and livestock, Eastern Coyotes generally try to avoid people.

Yesterday, I discovered one of Central Park Eastern Coyotes in a location that has been used by coyotes on and off for a few years in the spring. I had seen it there a few days earlier and posted a few pictures on Instagram and posted a video on YouTube from yesterday without stating the location. But maybe I shouldn’t have.

Everything was quiet and the coyote was sleeping when I arrived, and I was the only observer. However, the coyote’s location had been posted on twitter, so more and more people started showing up, and you could see the coyote’s ears perk up repeatedly. Our presence was clearly annoying the coyote.

When I started watching a coyote years ago in Hallett Sanctuary, I blogged about the coyote for a month and started a good discussion about how we should treat coyotes that arrive in the park. It ended up with the police, parks and the NYS DEC develop a good policy about what to do about coyotes in Manhattan. At the time Hallett was still locked and not open to the public, so my blogging about the coyote didn’t threaten its welfare.

But times have changed and we now have at least two resident coyotes in the park. Now that they are residents, I realize this morning that it might be time to put “owl rules” in place to avoid any unnecessary harassment of the coyotes. By owl rules, I mean that to protect sleeping birds and animals from being disturbed that we keeping their locations off social media and delay posting photographs of the animals until they have stopped using the den or roost.

Our infatuation with birds and animals can sometimes do more harm than good. So, to be on the safe side, I’m going to take my time from now on and post coyote images a few weeks after they have moved on to new locations.

I stumbled upon a sleeping Coyote in Central Park today, while looking for American Woodcocks who should start appearing in the next few weeks.

The Coyote was sleeping peacefully on a protected ridge and was well camouflaged in the leave litter. The animal slept peacefully until disturbed breifly by an off-leash dog. When it did leave after dusk, it left quickly through some underbrush and was quickly out of sight.

Central Park most likely has three coyotes at the moment, although the count could be higher. They’ve been in the park for the last few years and there have been no issues. Coyotes are very shy, and do their best to avoid contact with people. However, it is very important not to feed them. Once people begin to feed them they can become very agressive.

A very nice surprise on Tuesday to find an Eastern Coyote in Central Park. It was using a location that a coyote used a few years ago. A few observers tried to keep track of it after it went off for the night, but we quickly lost track of it.