While looking for Central Park’s Snowy Owl, which has stayed much longer than expected, we ran across an Eastern Coyote.
It was in the North Meadow, and fairly relaxed before deciding to bolt northeast towards the compost heap.
Some resources about Eastern Coyotes:
You may have seen some news about the Coyote that’s been seen in Central Park lately. We’ve had sightings consistently over the last few years in the park. Late winter is a common time for sightings. Many young Coyotes are pushed out of their family units in the late winter, and a few have been wandering into Manhattan each year.
I followed a Coyote in 2010 and had a wonderful experience. At the time, we’d had some negative outcomes with previous Coyotes in the Manhattan, and I wrote about the issues. The questions at the time was do you try and capture the Coyote or just let it stay. Given the experiences of other cities, the answer seems to be just let it be.
If you use the category search on the right, and select Central Park Coyote 2010, you’ll see what I wrote back then.
A new resource that might be helpful if you’re interested in Urban Coyotes is the Gotham Coyote Project website.
It's wonderful when governmental agencies do something right. Last week, city agencies rescued a frightened coyote from Tribeca, transported it to Animal Care and Control (ACC), and quickly released it into a more wild area of New York City.
The Parks Department, Animal Care and Control, the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit, New York State's DEC and the city Health Department all worked together to ensure that this animal was treated humanly. A young female coyote that got lost in Tribeca, and could easily have been killed in traffic, was relocated to a more suitable area to continue her life.
Behind the scenes, members of these organizations had already been meeting to discuss the proper handling of coyotes in the city and had developed a protocol to handle them humanly when relocation is needed.
Now that coyotes are breeding in the Bronx, we'll have more and more encounters with them in New York City. It's not going to be perfect. Both man and coyote will have to cooperate, and occasionally, an aggressive coyote habituated to humans may have to be destroyed. But in general, with educational efforts, I think man and coyote have a good chance to leave together with minimal conflict in the Big Apple.
The coyote had trouble exiting the sanctuary tonight. As it would leave, someone would end up walking on the path, and it would jump back into sanctuary. We waited and waited, and of the four of us watching, two gave up.
Just as I was going to give up, one of those who left, said, the coyote had already left and had been all over the southern end of the park from near the Essex House and up to the playground. It either used the exit on the other side of the sanctuary or gave us the slip.
We were able to find it coming down a ridge west of the Center Drive. It then went west down the path that separates the Heckscher Playground from the Heckscher Ballfields. We then lost it.
For all that waiting, I got a few blurry pictures. Who would have thought Screech-Owls would be easier to photograph than a much bigger coyote?
One nice thing that has happened over the last few weeks. The dog walkers and other late night users of the park, don’t seem to be worried about the coyote anymore. Instead, they’ve gotten excited about trading stories of sightings. I guess after six weeks, folks realize it just another small town boy or girl, who has moved to the Big Apple to begin their adult life.
The Central Park coyote left late this evening around 7:40 and when north. It went over the hill and I lost track of it near the ice rink. I asked a couple with two young children, if they had seen it. The mother said, “Yes, it went that way.” pointing north.
The father said “Is it yours?” They had been so nice, I held my laughter until after I was out of earshot.
The Wild Dog Foundation, Wildlife in Need of Rescue and the Urban Park Rangers are hosting a talk on coyotes later this month. Given all of the coyotes in the Manhattan these past few weeks, it comes at a great time for those interested in these animals. The details of the talk are:
New York City Coyotes: Return of Native Wildlife
Balancing Urban Ecology or Conflict in the Concrete Jungle
by The Wild Dog Foundation, Wildlife In Need Of Rescue & the Urban Park Rangers
Sunday, March 28th, 2 pm
Central Park North Meadow Recreation Center
(Enter the park at 97th and
Central Park West and walk east or enter the park at 97th and 5th avenue and walk west.)
The wild coyote has a long history intertwined with man, present in Native American
folklore through to today's modern news clippings. Please join Frank Vincenti of the
Wild Dog Foundation, Bob and Cathy Horvath of Wildlife In Need of Rescue and the
Urban Park Rangers, to further explore their fascinating ecology and potential in
New York City.