sholio | (no subject)

Coyotes woke me up howling last night - well, I say "night", it was around 5 and the sun had been up for hours. They must have been pretty close to be that loud. I got up just on the off chance I could see anything from the window, but they weren't that close. I like listening to them; we had coyotes around where I grew up, so it's familiar, and this is the first year they've really been around here - Orion and I both spotted one along the highway a couple of years ago, but I think we must have had a pack move into the area just recently. Howling wolves are haunting and eerie - we have those too; it's a low, mournful wail that you usually hear at dusk in the winter - but coyotes just sound kind of cheerful and friendly to me with their high-pitched yipping voices.

Perusing wild coyote videos on Youtube (procrastination, thy name is me) I came across this hypnotically soothing video: One year on a game trail in Northern Minnesota. Game camera video footage of a very actively trafficked bear trail - lots of wild critters, very fun to watch!

ETA: From the department of "Nature, why are you like this," I give you ... rockhopper penguins. Especially the last half of the video where they're frantically and on the whole unsuccessfully trying to out-hop waves to reach their nesting grounds.

Anyway. Working now.

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So did you notice that the wolves are roughly the same size as bears?? #nope

Doesn't it just make you want to get a nice little cabin in the northwoods and move there. :DDDD

One of my main takeaways from the game trail video is that moose are ENORMOUS.

I had that EXACT reaction. I mean, I already know they are, theoretically, but every once in a while it just hits you like that.

Awww, I miss hearing coyotes singing! It was a regular feature of my falling asleep when I lived further north.

Oh, that's cool! Yeah, there were quite a lot of them around where I grew up, so we would often hear them at night. Hearing them last night took me right back.

Interestingly, we do have some here, though I haven't personally seen them. The lab where I work is north of the city and sometimes we get warnings like 'coyotes spotted on the trails, watch out'. We also get deer, which I have seen, but I don't think we had anything else recently. One of the interesting things about Toronto is because there are wild ravines going through the whole city, you can actually have wild animals living (or visiting?) right in the middle of a very populated area.

About a third of the way through, I said to the cat, "So what I'm getting from this is that Minnesota is full of bears." :D

Loved seeing the wolves, the bobcat, and the marten (?) - what neat critters they are! The Northern flying squirrel is a cutie, too. ♥

SO MANY BEARS. It was also really interesting to notice that all the little scurrying creatures came out when the bears were hibernating in the winter!

What got me was watching the bears get wider - the spring and summer bears were so skinny! And then by September they started looking much rounder and properly padded. (Presumably the reason lots of small scurrying things weren't visible.) :D

That's awesome!! And it made me think of this: https://smile.amazon.com/Born-to-be-Wild/dp/B00CO0MR82 Hubby and I watched it years ago on TV and bought it on both bluray and digital when we found it. It's got really amazing animal footage from all sorts of places that are just really incredible, and I love to share it ;-)

Oh cool, thank you for the link!

That rockhopper video really brightened my evening! And the evenings of all the friends who got links to the vid as well. :D Those eyebrows are BIG.

Heee! I'm glad to share some joy! Poor l'il penguins. What ridiculous animals.

When I was growing up, we'd frequently hear coyotes at night; by the time I came back from college, the area had grown up enough that the coyotes were pushed out. It's been about 20 years since I heard any.

I miss the coyotes... Our old place in the woods was only 4 miles from here, but it felt like a whole world away. In town, we get whole herds of my least favorite forest creature roaming the streets (deer, UGH) but no coyotes to hunt them!

The trailcam footage draws you in! And it makes you realise how tall wolves are, and how massive moose are! But I also love all the little critters too, and of course the bobcats - one of which seems to have lost an eye. Though I kept thinking that 'scent tree limb' was going to snap under the attention of the bears, but clearly it's made of sterner stuff than it looks!!

Rockhopper penguins are cute and Very Determined to get where they're going! I watched the series that's from, and there was a penguin (not sure which species) that took a fancy to the penguin-cam!! Oh dear, that's not going to work!!

You should totally watch this one about an abandoned baby stoat, so cute!
https://youtu.be/2HFSaxIsJCE

Edited 2021-06-19 15:07 (UTC)

My grandfather had a farm (well... tiny ranch? big farm?) in Central Oklahoma and he could howl at the right time of day and the coyotes would howl back at him.

You can imagine just how much this impressed all of us when we were little. Our grandad can talk to the coyotes!

The check-in tree that everyone had to rub against, pee on or just sniff, was hilarious. Is that deer-like thing a moose? I hadn't realised that they are so big!

Around here, the biggest wildlife would be the stray dogs (barring the occasional cobra or python). They are the Default Dog - light brown, slim, prick-eared, sharp-muzzled and sometimes curly-tailed. Urban dingoes, basically. They howl every night at some time between midnight and one am, more or less in unison. Currently a litter of six puppies is growing up on the street outside my office building.

Edited 2021-06-19 17:28 (UTC)

We have coyotes in my very urban neighborhood in Florida! They occasionally kill pets, and there are people who think drastic measures must be taken against the coyotes (and who think small children will be next). I have not heard them. I saw one years ago, in the car with Brilliant Husband and progeny, and they did not see it and then didn't believe me for years—I must have seen a dog, they said—until the neighborhood Facebook group started erupting about what a terrible menace they are.

I'm with the people who note that the coyotes were here first, that they have not bothered any people, and that we'd do well to keep our pets inside at night.

No one has mentioned hearing them, now that I think about it. I wonder why?