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.