Coyotes are here to stay.
That’s the message from Arlington County’s top naturalist after a series of coyote sightings around the area.
Most recently, this past Thursday, an ARLnow reader saw a coyote “roaming around the Yorktown neighborhood, near 27th and Florida at elementary bus stop time.”
There was also a sighting of two coyotes in Lubber Run Park on Jan. 24, according to a Nextdoor post, and other recent sightings in nearby McLean.
It shouldn’t be that surprising, says Alonso Abugattas, Natural Resources Manager for Arlington County and the administrator of the Capital Naturalist group. Coyotes, while a bit bashful with humans, are now firmly a local species.
“There really is no need to report them as they’re all over many parks, [and we] have video of them and regular reports,” Abugattas said in an email to ARLnow. He wrote in depth a few years ago about the arrival of the Eastern Coyote to our area.
Abugattas noted that coyotes “can be a threat to outdoor pets such as feral cats or loose dogs, but otherwise harmless and shy.”
More from Abugattas, below.
Yes, those are eastern coyotes, and we have had them around for years. In fact, we’ve had roadkill ones as well, with our park rangers finding one dead 2 months ago. We get regular reports of them from the public. They are usually fairly shy and avoid people, running when they think they see a person. They can be a threat to outdoor pets such as feral cats or loose dogs, but otherwise harmless and shy. There really is no need to report them as they’re all over many parks, have video of them and regular reports.
One reason people might be seeing more of them right now is that this is the breeding season for them and they are looking for one another and denning sites. They may keep an eye on people that get close to their dens, but it would be extremely … rare for them to do anything more than watch. Sometimes you can startle them and show them that you are not friendly, as there are reports from Animal Control that some people may be trying to feed them, a terrible idea as they will associate people with handouts and lose their fear.
One thing that Animal Control have mentioned is to throw something that rattles or makes noise near them to scare them off. I’ve yelled and screamed at some that had lost their fear of people over the years, and they very quickly ran away. But people need not report them really unless they think one sick or think that people are feeding them. People have for the last 2 years reported a black one that wanders around some neighborhoods, as they think it is usual. Since all our eastern coyotes are a mix of western coyote, Algonquian wolf and domestic dog, they can be more than just the standard color. They have moved into our area to stay and we need to learn to live with them.
