Duet

 

A few nights ago, around midnight, we heard something that reminded me of one of the Random Acts of Culture. Maybe you saw the YouTube film of Macy’s department store in Philadelphia, suddenly transformed by anonymous singers who were performing the Messiah. This was a little like that: suddenly, through the cold, silent night, we heard singers, two bright voices, harmonizing in an exquisite and nerve-wracking duet. Their song was eerie and haunting, lunar in its cold loveliness. The night was transformed.

Coyotes, of course. Cornwall has an active resident population. My cousin Fred Scoville told me that a pack of them took eleven of Thalia’s geese in one night. Which sounds like a good-sized pack, though it was probably only one pair of parents and their pups. Connecticut coyotes hunt in packs only until the pups are grown, and then disperse.  Coyotes are monogamous, and the main social unit is the mating pair.

The coyote (canis latrans) is a medium-sized member of the Canidae family. Originally from the western plains, they’ve moved east, breeding with big Canadian wolves, so our Connecticut coyotes are slightly larger than their western cousins. They’re beautiful animals, with luxurious bushy coats, slender pointed noses and long prick ears. They’ll  breed with dogs, though coy-dogs are rare. (Mixed offspring rarely survive, since pups need both parents for support. Also, like mules, coydogs are often infertile.) Coyotes are opportunistic, and will eat almost anything, which is why they’re so successful as a species. They’ll eat garbage, insects, mice, rabbits, small deer - even small pets, I’m sorry to report.

And they’re singers: they have at least ten different variants of vocal sounds, including growls, woofs, barks, howls and yelps. Woofs and growls are short-distance threats, barks and bark-howls are used in greeting, lone and group howls provide location information during separation, and a group yip-howl occurs after a reunion.

The song we heard the other night was clear, passionate and very potent. At first I thought they were hunting. I’ve heard them sometimes in full cry, voice after voice declaring itself, yodeling up to the top of the scale, then drifting into strange, four-part harmony. But this was different: discrete, full of sudden energy, rising at once to full pitch, and then, just as suddenly, stopping.

Coyotes breed once a year. In Connecticut, this happens between January and March.  The female is only in estrus for 4 to 15 days, so there’s a small window of opportunity. According to my book, there’s one other occasion on which coyotes vocalise: before copulation, the pair may sing a duet.

I don’t want to start rumors, but I think last week our local  coyotes had a date night.

                                                                                    February 2012, Connecticut