Nature Where I Live: San Francisco: Coyote in the Dell

Resting Coyote, Rhododendron Dell

I went for the birds but stayed for the coyote. (Hi ho, the derry-o, coyote in the dell.)

I'd been walking my bike through the dell for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes with no luck on any bird action. The most interesting thing happened out of sight -- a bunch of dogs were going crazy, barking as if they'd seen a chupacabra down on JFK Drive. I wondered if they'd run into a coyote.

I was looking in the tree canopies for birds the whole time the dogs were going insane, and when the ruckus stopped I walked over to a guy with binoculars who pointed out the coyote ambling into the dell when I asked if he'd seen any interesting birds.

I enjoyed watching the coyote relaxing and grooming until it wandered off a short ways to find a resting spot with less foot traffic, where I left it alone. As the coyote sauntered toward its new resting place, an unaware squirrel took off like a bolt of gray lightning when it suddenly realized the coyote was right behind it. The coyote was obviously not hunting, but the squirrels were making alarm calls from all over the place.

I did see my first-of-season hermit thrush and yellow-rumped warbler today, and I also had a good sighting of a black-throated gray warbler. So the bird action was okay too. I also spotted some dragonflies laying eggs in the little lily pond next to the de Young Museum.

I brought the compact camera on my walk again this morning and couldn't resist this pretty housecat resting on some Forest Hill steps (connecting Sotelo and Pacheco).

At Golden Gate Heights Park, a handful of pygmy nuthatches was gathering seeds from the ground, where they were occasionally (and only temporarily) chased off by larger, bossy juncos. I also heard but did not see a red-breasted nuthatch at the top of the park.

A nearby squirrel alarmed just as I was leaving the park, and I looked up just in time to see this young red-tailed hawk land on a tree branch just outside the tennis courts.

Coyote wets its nose to keep its sniffer working right.

Coyote looking for a place to rest.

Coyote finds a place to rest. Here, its head was lying on the ground.

It wasn't a position the coyote kept for long, with so much going on around it.

Some folks paid the coyote no mind; others turned around and took a different route to avoid passing it.

Back in the sun, coyote does some grooming.

And more resting.

Thinking about finding a new place to nap (with a redwood twig stuck to its haunch).

Gnawing at fleas, I suppose.

There were some stairs leading to the top of a small rise, which the coyote evidently knew well. It climbed half-way up, then lay down to rest in the shade to be out of the limelight for a while.

A pair of hermit thrushes flew into the same cotoneaster that recently hosted a juvenile rose-breasted grosbeak, then dropped to forage on the ground. They didn't forage long before one of them gave chase and both flew out of the area.

I can never resist trying to photograph these tiny Townsend's warblers.

It had to flare out its wing to catch itself as it almost slipped off the branch.

At the time I snapped the photo before it quickly flew away, I didn't know what bird it was. Only when I opened the image in Photoshop did I see that it was a yellow-rumper.