Several mornings ago, Tuffy P was taking Memphis for her morning constitutional, when she came across another dog owner in Sam Smith Park. This fellow owned a hound dog who had just tracked and rousted a coyote down by the yacht club.
A couple evenings later, two dog-owners were in the park, a little to the north, when they saw a pack of four coyotes emerge from the woods. The animals trotted up the hill, walked along part of the filtration plant, down the other side and then along Lake Prominade.
As my friend Dinners would say, let’s be careful out there.
27th Street 
I think the law of unintended consequences may be coming into play here. A major food source for all sorts of predators from coyotes to hawks and owls is mice. There is less and less spraying for weeds with stuff like 2-4-D in fringe areas and this has led to an explosion in the mouse population and an appropriate increase in the predator population. In my rural area the township used to send out a tanker every June to spray the land between the roads and the fences with herbicides that killed broadleaf plants but which didnt harm grasses. The result was nice clean ditches and an overall clean look. That routine stopped several years ago and the vegetation at the sides of the roads has become unmanageable. Poplars are filling the ditches causing drainage issues, hydro lines are being threatened and townships must spend big bucks fighting a losing battle against shrubs and trees with mechanical tools. The extra vegetation causes dangerous snowdrifts in winter and plows must clear the roads more often to keep them safe. The vegetation harbors insects which damage crops increasing food prices. The whole deal is just bad news. I guess this is progress somehow and the tree huggers who live on the 18th floor of a concrete jungle congratulate themselves on a job well done. They havent figured out that the cost to fight against the encroaching vegetation with backhoes and flail mowers mounted on huge tractors is much higher than any damage done by 1 spray a year.
If you are seeing coyotes in daytime it likely is a sign that their food supply is stressed. Given enough land it is very rare to see one up close as they are quite shy and secretive.
The morning and evening sitings were both in the cover of darkness. Something must have changed in the urban food supply this year, as I have heard about a number of sitings in and around the city this year.
No Road Runners then?….;-)
Dude-I can’t handle all that nature!!
Any roadrunners nearby?