Recording of coyotes in my neighborhood

I went out to get the mail this evening and my Los Angeles neighborhood coyotes were very excited. They sounded like enraged monkeys! I grabbed the tail end of the event using my iPhone's recorder. Link to MP3

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Ito Kagehisa

Monkeys and rattlesnakes.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=853875404 Morgan James Hanam

This is cool. I always look forward to when a (very popular) fox trolls my neighborhood.
voiceinthedistance

Coyotes. Right.
I know the sound of a Boing Boing editorial meeting when I hear it.
- David Pescovitz
  
  Only when Weisberger isn’t there to calm Mark down.
Schizno

Seems like they might’ve brought down one of your neighbor’s cats, Mark.
- wrybread
  
  Could be a lot of things. I camped for a few weeks in a campground kind of near the main garbage area, and once every few days a troop of coyotes would come through and have a garbage looting party, and it would sound just like this.
  
  In other words, no need to paint such a grizzly picture for us cat lovers without a lot more evidence…
  - Schizno
    
    Being a cat lover myself I’d like to think of my comment as more… pragmatic. Here in Los Angeles there has been an rash of loved family pets gone missing due to the local coyote population becoming much more comfortable living in urban environments, and taking advantage of pet owner’s carelessness or ignorance of the fact that their cat or dog could end up the meal of a wild creature. It’s becoming a bit of a stereotype to think of the well-fed coyote in Los Angeles as an eater of pets. It wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to apply that logic with Mark’s coyotes.
    
    My own two rescued cats would never be allowed outside for that very reason. I take the time, when I can, to point out that it can be fatal to let your cat out at night in LA.
    - wrybread
      
      When you hear car tires screech in the distance, do you posit that it sounds like another toddler has been run over by a drunk driver?
      - lewis_stoole
        
        i would not think that about a tire screech, but when i hear the coyotes in the distance, and the distance is the hollywood hills, and knowing that they even come down into sunset blvd/west hollywood foothills (i temporarily did handy work at a house with a sad tale of a 30lb dog dragged out of a backyard), i do imagine that it is a pet being killed.
    - lewis_stoole
      
      unfortunately, they like pets.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BOOM27DBLMZQIJVK4BQLE7K5YA Nagurski
    
    grisly
CiccilioBarco

Yes. Yummy little fat puppy snack.
Allegra Sloman

I went away and put a beat on it, and now it sounds to me like kids playing, or people yelling. I’m finding it quite mesmeric. The beat also took away much of the sting of the background noise, so now that crunching noise 2.3 of the way through has turned into a lovely cymbal crash and the warbling sounds timed.
Antinous / Moderator

Ours are a bit higher pitched and tend to do it in unison. They sound like a sound effect from a 50s sci-fi movie.
- Felton / Moderator
  
  Ah, the elusive canis theremins.
http://twitter.com/pruitphotos Ray Pruit

Here in Fountain Valley, CA we have coyote sightings all the time. I think they sleep in the Santa Ana River.
- http://twitter.com/spoonflipper spoonflipper
  
  I live in Los Feliz (east Hollywood) and I came back from a walk to see a coyote not five feet from my apartment door! And I live on a very high traffic boulevard! And it was only 8pm! I assume it was in the neighborhood to hang out at one of those hipster dive bars and discuss awards season.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

HAH! My dog pricked up her ears and slunk out of the room when I played that.

A smaller group of coyotes used to yap it up on the hillside behind my old apartment in Belmont, CA. You could hear the little ones trying to imitate the grown-ups; it was cute.

There are coyotes in my current neighborhood, but they don’t hoot n’ holler within earshot.

I saw a ‘yote in broad daylight (well, it was a bit overcast and foggy, but we’re talking 9:30 am at least) just last weekend. It was in a little park between the Tektronix office park and a shopping mall.

The little guy moved really strangely. A kind of gliding skip.

My dog growled and barked at it. It paid almost no attention, but kept looking over its shoulder, as though expecting its bud to show up. After a half a minute it crawled under a fence into a fenced-off, heavily wooded and overgrown wetlands area. No bigger than a typical yard, but it must have offered enough cover for a coyote lair.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  If you see that particular coyote out again in broad daylight, call animal control ASAP. Rabies, you don’t want it.
dicebourbon

I live in rural Iowa. My wife has a crazy aunt who lives in a bigger city who is always excited to hear the coyotes when she visits. But she never hears them, even when the rest of us do. Maybe I should just put a loop of this mp3 on a cd and give it to her for Christmas.
Mike Kim

Mark, was this last night (12/20/11)?

My cycling buddies and I live in the Burbank area and we were doing a road ride through the Griffith Park/Observatory around 9:30PM. We heard all sorts of coyote ruckus while we were climbing up Ferndell/Western Cyn on the backside of the observatory. Were you recording in that area?
- lewis_stoole
  
  i saw one in the picnic park near the railroad museum. it just stared at me, not really afraid.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

Coyotes howling in the Solstice?

If the little pet-nippers had a mythology it would probably require them to howl the sun back our way.
SumoAllstar

Most likely they were outraged by your large collection of ACME anvils.
obeyken

I actually speak a little coyote. They’re saying “dude, we’re totally going to get on boingboing!”
http://orbitnet.com JIMWICh

That was codeHound and his droogs, sharpened up on vellocet at the milkbone bar, and out for a little bit of the old ultraviolence.
Jay Aldred

Did is really have to be an iPhone recorder, would ‘recorded it on my phone’ not have done the trick?
- jaypee
  
  Heh. Obvious troll is obvious.
  
  In other words, who cares?
- EnglebertFlaptyback
  
  No, it’s important that it’s an iPhone. Marketing is all.
MarcVader

So, no Roadrunner sightings? :(
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  We have those every day. They’re scarier than the coyotes. And they make a much more upsetting noise.
http://twitter.com/wildbell Will Campbell

The children of the night, how beautiful they sing.
muckdriver

I happen to be reading the http://www.dailycoyote.net RIGHT NOW.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_33BOPH3OIQRHXN5QZ7Y2KUZ4VM chris

I hear this sort of thing quite often on the farm here in Illinois. I was told that it’s the sound of them working out who will be the alpha male for that night’s hunt. It still raises the hair on the back of my neck when you hear it in the middle of the night.
http://twitter.com/bigbadchang Chang Terhune

If that sound is all coyotes then I am never visiting my friends in LA again. Sounds like a posse big enough to haul off lil’ old me.
- EnglebertFlaptyback
  
  It always sounds like there are more than there are (though there’s usually quite a few of them). And they always sound closer.
mneptok

Coyotes?

There’s an app for that.
Gordon McMillan

I’m in Maine, and our coyotes are a bit different. But that’s the noise of the pack teaching the young’uns to hunt. They hunt more effectively in smaller, quiet packs.
- http://twitter.com/dhparlee dhparlee
  
  I’m in Maine too. Our coyotes make western ones look like little skinny lap dogs. Wolf hybridization did it. Coyotes are pretty amazing creatures. Some of the most vocal animals on the planet, not to mention the most adaptable.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Our coyotes make western ones look like little skinny lap dogs.
    
    The ones here in the desert are about the size of a really big housecat.
    - http://twitter.com/dhparlee dhparlee
      
      Average coyotes here are in the 30 to 35 pound range, with some specimens coming in closer to the 50 pound mark when they are really well fed.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Mostly 15 pounders here, although I did see a German shepherd-sized one across the street a couple of years ago.
  - wrybread
    
    Interesting about wolf hybridization. I was just in Jackson, Wyoming, and was told that as the wolf population bounces back in Yellowstone, they get less and less coyotes around since the wolves munch or otherwise kill the coyotes. I wonder if there’s going to be a little hybridization too…
apple_man9

Are these the ones that got your chickens?
Palomino

I got kicked out of a friends house after we got into a very heated argument about coyotes living in the dark corners of Manhattan. He still doesn’t believe me.

No, I didn’t read it at first. I’m from Washington State, they are everywhere. Now I live in Phoenix Arizona, and they sound just like your recording, we see them in the streets all the time. Once your hear them, you never forget the sound. When I was in Central Park late one night, I heard them. So I know first hand they are there.
lewis_stoole

i also followed a buck in my car as it ran down outpost dr.
lewis_stoole

bloop
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Debbie?