13 April 2010

It's mid April and in the coyote world that means one thing: puppy time. Carrie gets the male's signal in the same area a lot of the time, so we decide to try and find the den based on her telemetry data.
We push through brush where there is no trail--except if you are something the size of a rabbit. Thin branches spring back and whip at our eyes. Thorny vines and bushes grasp at our clothing, and are almost successful at stealing my bandana. Over and under, forcing our way through almost impenetrable weaving of branches--and then there is a familiar sound that must surely mean good luck.
In Yellowstone, we were fortunate to film two different coyote dens with pups running about and playing with each other and the adults. For almost a week, I would wake up in my tent well before first light and make the beautiful drive from Lamar Valley up to Mammoth Hot Springs to claim my 3' square part of the pavement on the roadside. Over the course of each day, about a dozen photographers and filmmakers would come and go--all of us lining the street and acting as interpreters as park visitors would stop and ask what we were watching. At the Mammoth den, a ruby crowned kinglet sang every day in the morning and evening--it's song dominating my sound track. Later, while editing this extensive amount of footage, it was hard not to associate the kinglet with coyote pups.

Carrie, Ben and I come to a narrow runway created by a grouping of fallen down trees. Coming from above us I can clearly hear a ruby crowned kinglet singing. I tell Ben of the good luck that this means. He probably has no idea what I'm talking about, so I explain. When you edit your own footage you become intimately familiar with each little bit, and funny associations pop up now and then. For me, the kinglet's song will always take me back to filming coyote pups in Yellowstone.
The set of logs all lay parallel to one another and are almost piled on top of each another. Ben immediately climbs up to the top: over the broken base and along the log which is almost 5' off the ground. Coyotes use this path of least resistance too, and have claimed it as their own: there is all sorts of scat along the log. In a realm of thorn and brush, logs become superhighways. We all end up on the log just to have a look around. Ben walks to the opposite end first: traveling along the 40' cottonwood trunk toward the more narrow end. But some bark is apparently loose, and Ben crashes down through the layers of tree trunks and is swallowed up to his shoulders.
There is no apparent way to go once we reach the end of the log, so we turn around and begin to push through the brush again. We must crawl on the sandy ground which is littered with last falls leaves. And we come to another log. This time it leads us to a more welcome site: the edge of a swamp. Pushing through dried cattail stalks is much easier than the lattice of branches we forced our way through. Over one more log and Carrie quickly turns around. "I'll wait for you--you'll want to see this." Ben and I hurdle ourselves over one final log and back into the brush ahead. There, at the base of a fallen tree and very beautifully excavated is the coyote den.
With Presque Isle's soil being almost exclusively sand, it is almost impossible to think of a den existing in any other circumstance. The tree roots are mostly still in tact and act as a support system for the rather large holes that have been dug into the tree's former base.

Carrie, on all fours, peers down into the den with her night vision camera. She takes several photos only to see that the tunnel takes a sharp turn not far beyond the entrance and it is impossible to see down in any further without disturbing the structure. It appears empty--no one is home. Naturally, the adults would have fled upon our approach. Coyotes do not defend their pups in the den, but will return after any disturbance is gone. Had there been pups, Carrie would have weighed them, sexed them, and recorded their apparent age. All very important data points as Eastern coyote pups are developmentally a little different than their western cousins.
Gestation is about 60 days in coyotes. So, depending on when the two alphas mate predicts the puppies birth date. It is possible that the female is still pregnant and has not yet given birth. Younger animals tend to breed later in the year--but just by a few weeks. With our luck this morning, and the ruby crowned kinglet's song, we're hopeful that in a short time we can return to a den full of puppies.

Follow us on the Friends of the Tom Ridge Center blog at: http://www.friendsoftrec.org/community/blog.php?user=Tracy1

7 April 2010

Yesterday I received a phone call from Sara Sargent of PA Audubon. She was calling from her cell phone from Gull Point out at Presque Isle State Park--the very tip of the peninsula.
"There's a dead coyote that's washed up on the shore" she told me. She asked that I please notify Carrie as well. Two minutes later, I'm leaving a message on Carrie's cell phone. Not more than 10 minutes later, Carrie is en route to have a look.
Some time later she calls me back and explains the condition, age and sex of the animal. We make plans to go out the next morning for a more thorough investigation.
Ben, Carrie and I meet at the Gull Point trail head at 11am to make the now disorienting hike out to the very tip of the peninsula. So much erosion has taken place that the old trailhead, including much of the former trail, is now gone. Park staff carved a new trail out to meet up with the remnants of the old trail system. So, at the beginning of the new trailhead we are flanked by Phragmites rather than bayberry--a disappointing change. My dislike of Phragmites goes way back.
Thunderstorms lurk on the horizon. Bursts of cool wind ruffle our clothing. We walk quickly.
Two cutbacks in the shoreline traverse the new hiking trail. Each are about 5 feet deep, drop steeply to the waterline, and back up again: mini ravines. The mixture of heat and cool wind is nauseating. All of us carry packs: me with the camera, lenses, and various camera parts, Ben with the tripod and still camera, and Carrie with her pack containing sample vials, dissection kit, measuring tape, scale, ground cloth and GPS. Anything is heavy when hiking across sand dunes.
We arrive to an audience of cormorants and gulls. Coyote tracks meander across the shoreline and stop short of the one lying in the open on the water's edge. Ben and I approach the coyote first, setting up the camera in a way to help tell our story. A shallow sand spit curves sharply around to our right and the wind begins to blast. Surely the water will be pushed into the inlet and begin to rise. Carrie approaches, and swings her pack to the ground. Photos first. The coyote looks as though she's running on her side: but completely still.
She is not small nor large. It looks as though she may had suffered from mange at one time, but coyotes can survive being exposed to this tiny mite. Her paws are black as tar, and her tail has a potentially identifying characteristic: the tail spot. Every coyote I have seen has a spot on it's tail that coincides with the tail gland. It's about 1/3 of the way down from the base of the tail, and you can often identify individual animals by looking at the tail spot's shape, size and position. Some are larger, some are bigger, some are off-center. We may just find out if we'd photographed this coyote in the past on the park.

It's hard to know where this individual came from. Not more than a week ago there was still ice out near Gull Point, and coyotes certainly take advantage of this seasonal way to travel off and on the park.
Blood drips out of her nose. Her eyes are still in tact. This animal has not been dead long. Our guess is that she'd drowned. No broken limbs, no wounds of any kind to speak of, and thankfully bloat has not set in yet, either.
Carrie measures her total body length, and tail length: two standard measurements in field research. Next is the scale. Carrie's ground cloth has four grommets on it: one at each corner so that when gathered up makes a sling from which the coyote can hang in from the spring scale: 30 pounds! About the same size as the female that we collared. But there is no collar on this girl. There is a coyote-shaped depression in the sand where the coyote once rested.
Carrie then collects a few tissue and hair samples for the USDA, and we are done. It begins to rain.

27 March 2010

Carrie called me the other night and said "Can you hear that?" I listened carefully. Very faintly, I could hear static and the familiar beeping of a radio collar signal on a receiver. I said "Yes, where are you?" "That's Jack's signal! I'm on the park."
Obviously I'm confused at this point. We were just told hours earlier that Jack, a male collared coyote, had been shot in Ohio over the weekend. But that couldn't be Jack's signal.
I told Carrie that ten years ago a hunter tried to tell me he shot three coyotes on Presque Isle during deer season. (This would have been illegal, of course, because coyotes are protected on Presque Isle.) It obviously drove me crazy, until rumor flew around so much that finally I found out who the prankster was, and confronted him face to face.
But my hopes for trickery were dashed when Carrie explained that, no, it had been the collared female's signal that had disappeared only a few weeks ago. I had hoped that the female was preparing her den and maybe Carrie wasn't getting a signal because she was underground. But the way things were sounding, it was the interior resident female who is now lost to us.
I must say I am very impressed with the individual who shot the coyote. Not for his trophy, but rather for his honesty. He bothered to call Edinboro University's phone number that is listed on the collar. Today, we make that journey to collect the collar and to trade stories about the coyote research for his experience of hunting them on his property.
This is one of the main stumbling blocks of doing radio telemetry with coyotes. They are protected in very few places. And like any wild animal, they don't recognize our boundaries--they regularly go in and out from the area where they are protected into the vast area where they are not. In Pennsylvania, a hunter can shoot as many coyotes as he wants any day of the week (with the proper license, of course). So this makes keeping your research animals alive more a game of chance than prevention. All in all, though, an entire year of data is far beyond anything we have had on Presque Isle's coyotes yet. I'm hoping that "Jack" now decides to stay.

24 March 2010

Working with wild animals seems, from the outside, to be an exciting and exhillarating thing to do. Obtaining the initial permit ten years ago to trap and radio collar coyotes on the peninsula took an entire year. Red tape, upon rejection upon doors being slammed, and "no, no, no!" fell on deaf ears, and blind eyes. I would not take no for an answer, and I still don't.
When Carrie applied for her trapping permit, things went much more smoothly the second time around. I was so excited that this project was again moving forward; wondering what could be learned this time. For there is very little information known about wild Eastern coyotes. Little field work has been done on them.
Last year, with extreme difficulty, we were able to trap two coyotes despite the immense amount of snow we received. Our first coyote trapped this time around was a male near the Stull Interpretive Center. He was an average sized animal--nothing remarkable about his appearance.
Telemetry is a remarkable thing. It lets you monitor an individual animal from a distance. If you are lucky, signals from three different locations allow you to pinpoint the coyote's location. A tremendous amount of information can be collected from just knowing where the animal is spending his time.
So as a field biologist, you spend a lot of time walking around in search of your collared animals. You begin to wonder what exactly they are up to the moment you hear the "beep, beep, beep" on the receiver. All this work carries over into your daily life, and you begin to wonder at other times what your research animals are doing. Just like a parent wondering when their teenagers will come home at night.
Upon the initial release from trapping an animal, I worry about the 48 hour acclimation period. A free, wild animal now has something foreign around its neck and getting used to it takes some time. Many animals spend an excessive amount of time grooming themselves. Can you blame them? They have to get the human stink off somehow! Once an individual passes this acclimation period, most carry on as usual.
Part of radiotelemetry and biology in general is to not become attached to your research animals. Well, you might as well tell a colony of ants to ignore that ice cream cone that just smashed on the sidewalk. Perhaps if I were researching snails it would be different. But coyotes? They look just like a dog! Beautiful, intelligent, and mysterious. When handling these animals, it is clear there is something going on behind their striking eyes. I cannot explain it--I just know there is sentience there. The coyote demands respect. They are highly adaptable--and therin is the key to the coyote's success. And his greatest downfall.
Because these animals are so smart, people take great pleasure and pride in hunting them. Should we or shouldn't we is another matter entirely; and I certainly have my own private opinion about this practice. But when it's your animal that is shot, when it is your coyote, the one you caught, the one you got to know, the one that took ever so long to catch and radiocollar--it's a different story entirely.
"Jack" -- as he was known between just Carrie and I -- was shot along with his mate in Ohio this past weekend. It's hard to know how to feel. Angry. Frustrated. Dissapointed. Sad. Sure, all those mixed together create an ugly feeling inside. You wonder the exact details, which can never be known. Why did this happen? All that work has now ended--quite abrubtly and with great suprise and sadness.

We have been formally approved to provide Act 48 Credit to Northwest Tri County Intermediate Unit #5 Science Teachers! On Tuesday, April 13th, Tracy and Ben will give a lecture on coyotes at IU#5 in Edinboro, Pennsylvania.

This is a wonderful step forward in our efforts to produce a documentary film on coyotes at Presque Isle State Park. Our working partnerships are what will make this project succeed and help educate area students, adults and tourists not only about coyotes, but scientific research, too.

We have spent over ten years working directly and indirectly with coyotes. From our company's beginning in 1999 we have in major and minor ways kept a finger on the pulse of this wild Canine. I filmed my first coyote on May 1st, 1999 and since then it has been an addiction that cannot be quenched. I produced a short film on Presque Isle coyotes as an undergraduate student, filmed them in Yellowstone National Park as a graduate student, and trapped and radio collared them in 2000 and 2009 on Presque Isle. We hope that the telemetry side will continue as a long term research project.

We are optimistic that our presentation at IU#5 will recruit teachers who will help write science curricula that will accompany our theatrical release in 2012. With educational curricula written, this production has a high educational value!

moving forward

I am pleased to announce that some of our grant money has been reissued and the project is beginning to find an avenue to move towards success again.

I had a fantastic meeting with Northwest Tri-County Intermediate Unit #5 staff yesterday. We will begin planning on how to recruit science educators to help write the accompanying curricula to go with the coyote documentary. We meet again in April.

Telemetry continues to be done several times per week, and I simply cannot wait to catch up with what Carrie has been finding lately. She has some preliminary results of the dietary study, and has some additional lab work to complete which I hope to participate in.

There has been an observation of coyotes driving a deer into the lake (to no avail, I might add), and then tending to a packmate with a broken leg. Special thanks to the Park Rangers, who continue to report these things to us.

We have submitted for additional grant funding for Environmental Education, and have a very long list of granting agencies to inquire with. Due to grant timelines, specifically the time lapse that takes place between the actual proposal submittal and when funding is released, we will become quite aggressive in tracking down potential funding sources. The project simply cannot be put on hold indefinitely as the field research will go on regardless of the film production. It simply must: as battery life on the radio collars is a few years at best.

We also will be continuing to partner with one of our funding organizations, who will have an exciting addition in helping our efforts. Check back here in January for this exciting announcement.

5 October 2009

Unfortunately, the coyote project has been put on hold due to lack of funds as of August 1st. Please check back with us soon. We are dedicated to this production, and will continue to search for grants elsewhere.