Coyotes

When we first built our place six years ago it was common to see coyotes around here.  They used to love laying right behind my first chicken coop.  Gradually though we took over more of our land and started cutting hay on our front pasture and turned the field west of our home into gardens.  This pushed them further from the house into areas they didn't have to be seen by us.  Until a few nights ago it had actually been a few years since we'd  heard coyotes singing at night or spotlighted them in the field.  But we've heard them for a few nights now which always causes an uproar in the dog pen in the evening.

Two mornings ago though I was standing in the kitchen at the toaster watching one of our barn cats making his way through the first garden when a large dog appeared behind the trailer parked between the two gardens.  At least dog was my first thought....it took a second to register that  it was a coyote.  And it was in a stand-off with one of my cats...who was quite a ways from the closest treeline or fence post.  Luckily for the cat they were so close to the barn that I won that stand-off.  And luckily for that cat I didn't stop to grab my camera before running off the coyote.

So the picture I took was actually of the second coyote that ambled up the driveway on the scent of the first, trailed it to the stand-off and back across the pasture through the treeline.  By the time I actually had a camera in hand with a decent lens on it though the coyote was pretty far off.  So I apologize for the highly pixellated photo.  He was far away and blended in pretty well with all the gray around here right now. (note the green cover crop of rye and clover I obviously planted for the deer to bed down in every evening).