Coyote Brush Highway

Hot day on the Coyote Brush Highway for a coyote pup.

The game was up.  With their keen noses and my sensitive skin, I didn't expect to get additional close-up glimpses of the coyote pups as I did in June.  To keep track of their progress, I decided to place wildlife cameras near the brushy thicket where I frequently saw them. Not only did I suspect the coyote brush sheltered their den, but soon I learned how important the brushy structure was to many other types of wildlife.

By her exposed row of teats, this appears to be the dam of the coyote pack

Furthermore, the grownups had discovered me sneaking about.  Originally, I didn't see any adult coyotes when I was spying on the pups.  I assumed the parents spent the day napping in the brush after a busy night foraging for their growing family, while the unsupervised pups played and stalked grasshoppers "outside" in the pasture.

Another photo of the dam coyote

As a heavier and larger animal, this is probably an adult male coyote.  Both parents provide food for the young, and sometimes siblings from the previous year also help care for the young.

One of the coyote pups at the same location as the adults shown above.  Notice the shorter height compared to the grass in the background.  The legs are shorter and the nose and ears are smaller in proportion to the rest of the body.  Since coyotes are born in California from March to May, this pup is possibly 2 to 4 months old.

I grew impatient as my bug-bitten skin recovered from my hiding-in-the-bushes/spying-on-the-pups adventure.  I was frequently checking the coyote side of the property with binoculars.  One afternoon I saw movement over there and from my backyard I could make out two sharp ears flicking on a low hilltop.  The long, sharp nose was pointed downhill, so I guessed it was an adult coyote watching pups play in the sunny bowl I knew was on the far side of the hill.

Sentry coyote adjusting its napping position

Since the coyote was reclined and facing away from me, I decided to see if I could get closer.  If I followed a cow path on the lower side of the grassy hill, maybe I could get a peek at what was happening on the hidden side of the hill.  To avoid alerting the resting sentry, I tried to move like a cow - walk slowly, amble, never focus intently on one point (which would be predator behavior), and think like a big, harmless herbivore.  With sideways glances, I could monitor the coyote's silhouetted position on top of the hill.  As I got closer, I could tell it was definitely an adult by its size.  Every few minutes or so, the coyote would rearrange its reclining position or yawn, but it always faced the other direction and didn't look back towards me.  I was being a good cow.


Just as I rounded the protruding slope of  the hill, I was stopped by a rusty and sagging barbwire fence.  How was I going to get over or under the fence without ripping anything and still pretend to be a cow?  As I was pondering, I heard a noise and looked up just in time to see a brushy tail slipping over the hilltop.  With my cover busted, I ran up to the top of the hill and could see a pup silently running ahead of the adult coyote towards the brush line.

I rarely saw or got photos of more than one coyote pup at a time, so I was not able to clearly distinguish them as individuals.  This pup has a colorful coat and fluffy dark-edged tail.

This pup has a whitish cast to its fuzzy coat.

Is this the same whitish-fuzzy pup as in the photo above but 3 weeks later?

Is this long-haired pup a third individual?

On the top of the hill were many big and small scats, so I was sure the coyotes spent a lot of time there.  Now that an adult coyote had seen me creeping around the sunny playground, I knew I had better not come back without risking the adults deciding to move the pups.  First thing the next day in the office, I demanded a wildlife camera from The Roper for "important predator research".  In his usual good humor, he provided his loopy boss with a Recon camera, a Cuddeback camera, plenty of batteries, memory cards and a card reader.  I was ready for a digital safari and set up the cameras along the line of coyote brush the next day.

Dense growth form and habitat of coyote brush

Coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis) is a nondescript evergreen shrub up to five feet in height with dense branches that provides important wildlife habitat.  It is tough and adaptable and provides protective shelter for wildlife throughout all of California and just beyond its boundaries. Deer generally do not browse it, but its flowers and leaves are food for many types of insects.  As a pioneer plant, it readily seeds into any bare soil downwind of the female plants in early winter.  In this dioecious species, the male flowers are on separate plants than the female flowers.  Coyote brush plants with dusty yellow tips in August and September are pollinating males.  Coyote bush plants covered in white puffs in October and November are female, fertilized and ready to release their seeds to the world.  Throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains, you will see waving lines of coyote brush advancing and retreating as they respond to short-term phenomena like grazing, burns, land clearing and landslides.

The scurry zone

Have you ever noticed a bare patch of soil completely circling a stand of brush?  What causes that?  Various explanations I have heard are:  allelopathy, scurry zone, grazing, fire patterns, insect herbivory, soil permeability and surface crusting.  I've pretty much concluded that bare ground around brush in the Santa Cruz Mountains is probably a scurry zone - a clear patch caused by small rodents and rabbits that  continuously browse in the open a few short hops from the protective cover of brush - the retreat they scramble to whenever predators appear.  On grazed properties such as the Dipper Ranch, the cattle also regularly walk along the edge of the brush and keep the strip clear through trampling and grazing.

Brush rabbit - primary engineer of the scurry zone

It was on this waving line of bare soil next to the dense coyote brush thicket that I had frequently seen the coyote pups and found their tracks, scat and chewed branches and bones, so that is where I set up the two wildlife cameras.  Over the next few weeks, the cameras took photos of large and small coyotes traveling along the brush-grass corridor during the night and day.

California thrasher and spotted towhee in the scurry zone

I was surprised, however, to see photographs of other animals frequently utilizing the same area.  Brush rabbits emerged from the thicket to browse at almost the same locations I had seen or the cameras had taken photos of coyotes a few hours earlier.  If I was glassing the area at sunset, I almost always saw a doe emerge from the same general spot in the brush line and browse the same direction along the curved edge of the hill.

Scrub jay hunting in the scurry zone

The wildlife cameras took images of scrub jays, California towhees, spotted towhees and California thrashers scratching and running in the clear zone.  I have read about the huge diversity of insects that utilize coyote brush (and discovered their itchy presence while hiding in the brush myself).  From my observations and the camera evidence, it seems that late afternoon sun in the scurry zone may stimulate swarming of insects that attracts the birds.

Bobcat heading east in the scurry zone.

Dam coyote heading west in the scurry zone one hour before the bobcat above.

A few times, the cameras even caught photos of bobcats using the same travel way.  Coyotes do not always tolerate bobcats as competitive predators and will kill them, so I was surprised to see them in proximity to the coyote den.

Bobcat heading west in the scurry zone on a foggy night.

The humble native coyote brush was providing shelter for all sizes of mammals.  As an insectary, it was multiplying the local food supply, and providing food and shelter for birds.  Most interesting of all, the very animals which utilized it for cover were shaping the brushy habitat and its nearby landscape to create The Coyote Brush Highway simultaneously used by many types of animals.

Cuddeback wildlife camera set up on fence line in the brush.

Although I couldn't observe the coyote pack in person at close range, the wildlife cameras were teaching me about the daily habitats of the coyotes and their fellow brush associates.  As the pups grew and the fall weather approached, I was once again provided the opportunity to observe coyotes first hand.


To be continued - this is the second of three parts in The Coyote Brush Highway series.  Part One is here.  Part Three is coming up soon.

Just another critter caught traveling The Coyote Brush Highway.

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See also:


All the photos above with date/time stamps and the Cuddeback symbol in the lower corner where taken by an automatic wildlife camera and I did not approach the coyotes that closely or that often in person.


Wild Mammals of North America:  Biology, Management, and Conservation.  George A. Feldhamer, Bruce C. Thompson, Joseph A. Chapman, editors.  2nd edition.  John Hopkins University Press.

California's Wildlife. Vol. I-III. D.C. Zeiner, W.F.Laudenslayer, Jr., K.E. Mayer, and M. White, eds. 1988-1990. California Department of Fish and Game, Sacramento, California.