Nebraskaland

50 Nebraskaland • December 2023 I fi rst saw the big, beautiful coyote in early January last winter during an evening jog with my dog, Ree, around a grass fi eld on the outskirts of Aurora. He stood rock-solid about 40 yards away at the edge of a creekside woodland and stared at us. We stopped and stared back. He held his ground for a minute or two until we started walking toward him, at which point he scampered into the woods. A few days later, as I made another lap around the fi eld, he appeared on a low, grassy knob at the edge of the woods. Again, he watched us with no apparent fear. Perhaps, living near town, he had grown accustomed to humans. We encountered the coyote sitting or lying on the knob several more times during the next few weeks. He often showed up after we had run past a time or two, and I believe he either smelled or heard us from the comfort of his den and came out to observe. Ree, who is friendly with other dogs, instinctively knew something was diff erent about this "dog" and never tried to approach it, but she also did not fear it. In early February, I decided I wanted to photograph the coyote. For several evenings, I brought my camera and tripod to the fi eld and set them behind a cedar tree and proceeded to run laps. The coyote never appeared: He was either camera shy or my luck was bad, and I gave up on the photo idea. Then, on a windy, cold, snowy evening in late February, I was thrown for a loop: two coyotes were on the knob, the male and a smaller female. Coyotes form pairs in January and February for breeding and pup-rearing, and the male obviously had a mate. Thinking back, there were probably two coyotes all along, as some evenings I thought the coyote on the knob looked smaller. I ran home, grabbed my camera and drove back to the fi eld. The coyotes had left the knob and moved down the woodland edge about 80 yards away. With the wind shaking my tripod and snow sticking to my glasses, I snapped a few quick photos of the coyotes before they slipped into the trees. After that encounter, the coyotes made no other appearances on the knob: Perhaps they had moved to a more secluded den for pupping. My coyote photos fall well below the standards of professional wildlife photographers, most of whom would have set up a blind and waited, hoping they would return. I pondered the idea, but sitting in a blind is not my style, and being sneaky would have been a violation of my unspoken, unaggressive pact with the coyotes. Although they are not wall hangers, someday down the road my photos will bring back fond memories of the curious coyotes. In this case, that is good enough for me. By Gerry Steinauer, Botanist CURIOUS COYOTES Two coyotes peek through grass at a fi eld outside of Aurora. GERRY STEINAUER, NEBRASKALAND THE LAST STOP

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