The other individuals assist with babysitting duties, hunting, and defending the territory. Coyotes are opportunistic, which means they will consume what is easily available to them. However, particularly with needy young pups in early spring and summer, coyotes simply have more mouths to feed and thus more foraging to do. Escorting is when a coyote is non-aggressively following a person on a trail, most often seen during the summer months.
While this might be unnerving, it is likely due to the fact that someone has unknowingly wandered a bit too close to a coyote den. Snakes, grass, fruit, and insects are also on the menu.
However, when food sources are scarce, coyotes will happily turn to scavenging for any source of food in suburban and urban areas of cities and in small towns. They are known to get into garbage and dig in trash cans to pull out any leftovers. Coyotes start mating from mid-January. The breeding season for coyotes is in the spring months, peaking in late February and early March. The gestation period is 58 to 63 days on average. Spring marks the start for females to begin preparing their dens for new pups.
A mom coyote awaits her pups to be born somewhere between mid-March to mid-May. Coyotes can become more dangerous during their breeding season as the males will want to protect their territory from other males. Also, female coyotes will protect their pups and make sure they are not seen by any predators, thus they can get dangerous in some circumstances.
During this time of year, coyotes will pose a major risk to smaller pets, and the risk increases even more during their mating season. As coyotes populations continue to expand at a steady rate, human encounters have become more frequent. Pups are close to adult size at about nine months, when some will begin to leave the pack while others may remain with their parents. When living in close proximity to humans, coyotes tend to be nocturnal but may also be active in the early morning and at sunset.
In areas with little or no human activity, coyotes will hunt during the day, and when a litter of pups needs to be fed, they may have to hunt around the clock. Coyotes normally hunt alone or in pairs and rarely as a pack, unless the prey is a deer or other large animal.
The coyote is a very vocal animal with a varied repertoire of calls. It uses a long howl to report its location, short barks to warn of danger, yips when reuniting with pack members, growls when establishing dominance, whines and whimpers when bonding, and high-pitched barks to summon pups. A pack is a coyote family dominated by an alpha male and female who form a breeding pair. The size of the pack will depend on the amount of food available to sustain it. If the pack relies on a natural diet, its numbers will tend to be smaller.
But if the diet is subsidized by humans, either intentionally or unintentionally, its size could be considerably larger. Coyotes also use scat to mark the most heavily defended core areas unlike dogs. Breeding and Litters Coyote breeding season is from February to March.
Only the alpha male and alpha female of a pack breed. A baby coyote is called a pup and the group of pups is called a litter. The average litter size ranges from 4 to 7 pups but can be larger or smaller. Litter sizes are based on the current population and food supply. Sadly, most of these pups will not survive their first year of life.
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