Here’s why we’re seeing more coyotes this time of year in Fort Worth

If you think you’re seeing more coyotes roaming Fort Worth city parks and streets this time of year, you are not hallucinating.

This is the season when two-year-old pups are normally kicked out of packs, ahead of new litters arriving in early spring. Single animals skulking in the shadows is not an aberration. It is simply part of nature’s cycle.

“It could be one of the pups from last year that got kicked out of his territory, (and now gets) to live between the territories or between the spaces where the adults would defend,” said Mike Bodenchuk, a wildlife biologist who heads the Texas Wildlife Services Program, a consortium of federal and state agencies working on wildlife issues..

The wild dogs stick around because of the abundance of food. From piles of garbage to, well, your house cat.

“They hunt them, they kill them, they pack them back and they feed their puppies,” Bodenchuk said. “And so if you’ve got a healthy cat and you like it, keep it indoors. (Cats are) a major source of food for urban coyotes.”

What are coyotes

Native to North America, they are smaller cousins to the wolf. They are a resilient species that can be found roaming ranch land or creeping around darkened urban street corners and alleys. They are opportunistic feeders — equally content in killing a pet cat or foraging through a pile of garbage.

Coyote packs usually consist of an adult pair, three to four pups and the yearlings from the previous year. They breed around Valentine’s Day and the females give birth to a new litter by April or May.

Once a coyote pup reaches two years of age, they are normally kicked out of the pack.

“Coyote packs start shedding members right around late fall, getting ready for the breeding season,” Bodenchuk said.

Urban coyotes tend to build dens on secluded spots along sloping terrain.

“They’ll dig a hole into a bank like against the river,” Bodenchuk said. “A lot of times they’ll dig under the root of the tree.”

They’ll dig a hole into the slope. Unless you are looking for it, it is easy to miss a coyote den, the biologists said.

And it is common for the next generation to use an existing den, “Because it’s a good place usually.” he said.

Aggressively protecting their territory.

An urban coyote’s range is roughly one square mile, or 600-650 acres, according to the biologist. City coyotes can thrive in a much smaller area because of an abundance of food.

As the breeding season rolls around, the adult male of the pack will aggressively defend its territory.

“He keeps other males out of there from the previous year,” Bodenchuk said. “And the closer we get to pups being born in April and May, they get very aggressive towards other canines in their territory.”

This is where conflicts with humans occur, he said.

“This gets directly to the kind of conflicts that we might see in an urban area,” Bodenchuk said. “Somebody’s walking a dog or somebody’s dog is off the leash. (The coyote) isn’t looking at food, it’s looking at another canine in their territory and they will try and run it off. Or even attack it.”