Part 19

The forage beats of several coyotes were discovered in connection with trapping specimens of these animals. In January, 1952, two coyotes, probably a mated pair, traveled nightly from the slopes immediately west of Evey Canyon, at about 3100 feet, down into the sagebrush adjacent to the west side of San Antonio Wash, at about 1700 feet elevation. The route led down open ridges, then for about one half mile across a level, cultivated plateau, and then swung over the eroded banks near the lowermost point of the plateau onto the level sage flats. The distance covered by this route from the foothills down to the flats was somewhat more than a mile, with about a 1400 foot difference in elevation between the daytime retreat and the nocturnal forage area. Another route, seemingly used by only one coyote, was somewhat longer. This animal followed fire breaks and ridges from above Thompson Canyon down onto a fire road, and then into the lower end of Palmer Canyon where it entered the flats. This route covered about three miles in coming from the foothills to the flats. Feces of this coyote often contained the remains of white leghorn chickens which had been found at a refuse pile near several chicken ranches one-half mile from the base of Palmer Canyon.

Although no definite idea could be gained of the population density of coyotes in the area, it was clear that in certain localities they were, as carnivores go, abundant. After one large male was obtained in the flats at the base of Cobal Canyon, at least two other individuals were heard howling in this immediate area, and their tracks were noted repeatedly on dirt roads. One night early in January, 1952, immediately west of the head of San Antonio Wash, the voices of six coyotes could be picked out separately from a chorus of coyote howls which came from several different directions in the wash.

Many field examinations of coyote feces left the impression that chickens and lagomorphs made up the bulk of the coyote's food on the coastal slope. To check this a study of 39 sets of scats collected at various localities on the coastal slope was made in the laboratory, the results being shown in Table 10. Remains of one of the three species of rabbits, cottontails, jack rabbits, or brush rabbits, occurred in 72 per cent of the feces examined. Cottontails, it will be noted, were preyed upon more heavily than any other wild species, remains of this form being found in 33 per cent of the feces. The prevalence of chicken remains in coyote feces does not imply that these animals were killed by the coyotes. All of the chickens could have been found dead in the refuse piles of the many chicken ranches. In addition, the chickens were raised in wire cages above the ground where they were nearly invulnerable to predation. That coyotes may at times kill deer in this area was suggested by the finding of tracks in the sand in San Antonio Wash which clearly indicated that a deer had been closely pursued by a coyote. The tracks were lost in a stretch of brush so the outcome of the chase could not be determined. Near the mouth of Lytle Creek Canyon, in November, 1951, coyote feces contained mostly remains of grapes from nearby vineyards. Also, above Cucamonga, coyotes were found to be feeding heavily on grapes. This must be a rather unsuitable form of nourishment for coyotes, for many of the grapes in the feces appeared nearly unaltered despite their trip through the alimentary canal.

TABLE 10.--RESULTS OF EXAMINATIONS OF THIRTY-NINE SETS OF COYOTE FECES FROM THE PACIFIC SLOPE OF THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS. FECES WERE DEPOSITED IN AUTUMN AND WINTER (SEPTEMBER TO FEBRUARY).

=================================================================== | Number of | | sets of feces | Percentages Food item | which contained | of occurrence | food item | ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ chicken | 18 | 46.2 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Sylvilagus audubonii | 13 | 33.3 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Lepus californicus | 10 | 25.6 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Sylvilagus bachmani | 5 | 12.8 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Odocoileus hemionus | 5 | 12.8 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ rodents (unidentified) | 5 | 12.8 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Dipodomys agilis | 4 | 10.3 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Neotoma species | 3 | 7.7 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Mephitis mephitis | 3 | 7.7 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Carrion beetle | 2 | 5.1 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ passerine bird | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ bot fly larva | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ snail shell | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ scorpion | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Jerusalem cricket | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ sheep hair | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Lynx rufus | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Kitten of wildcat or housecat | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ Lophortyx californica | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ grapes | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------ grass | 1 | 2.67 ------------------------------+-----------------+------------------

The six coyotes taken on the Pacific slope are fairly uniform in coloration; the occurrence of white tipping on the tails of most of the specimens, instead of the usual solid black tip, is notable. Three skins, those of a male and two females, have patches of white hairs at the tips of the tails; two skins, of a male and a female, show only scattered white hairs at the tips of the tails; and the skin of one female has a solidly black-tipped tail. An additional female, trapped by David Leighton in Thompson Canyon, had a large patch of white hairs at the tip of the tail. Grinnell, Dixon, and Linsdale (1937:501) mention that only an occasional individual (female?) has a white-tipped tail.

Weights are available for four specimens: two coyotes trapped in San Antonio Wash, a male and a female, weighed 20.5 and 23.2 pounds respectively; a female from the mouth of San Antonio Canyon weighed 21.6 pounds; and a large male from the mouth of Thompson Canyon weighed 29.3 pounds.

Specimens examined.--Total, 6, distributed as follows: Los Angeles County: Live Oak Canyon, 3000 ft., 1; mouth of San Antonio Canyon, 2000 ft., 1; 4 mi. N Claremont, 1600 ft., 2; 4 mi. NE Claremont, 1600 ft., 1; 3 mi. NE Claremont, 1600 ft., 1.

TABLE 11.--CRANIAL MEASUREMENTS OF CANIS LATRANS OCHROPUS FROM THE COASTAL SLOPE OF THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS.

====================================================================== | Four females | Two males | Averages Extremes | Averages Extremes ----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------- Condylobasal length | 180.67 174.2-183.3 | 188.35 179.2-197.5 ----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------- Palatal length | 91.57 88.0-95.0 | 97.15 91.6-102.7 ----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------- Zygomatic breadth | 90.15 88.9-92.0 | 95.60 88.8-102.5 ----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------- Interorbital breadth | 29.12 27.9-29.9 | 31.45 28.1-34.8 ----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------- Length of | | maxillary toothrow | 85.00 80.4-89.80 | 88.00 83.4-92.6 ----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------- Length of | | upper carnassial | 18.30 17.8-19.0 | 18.70 18.1-19.3 ----------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------

=Canis latrans mearnsi= Merriam

Coyote

Coyotes are common on the desert slope of the San Gabriels below about 6000 feet elevation. They seem not, or only rarely, to penetrate the yellow pine forest belt, but tracks have been found occasionally near the lower edge of the forest, as at the head of Mescal Canyon. In the more open parts of the pinyon-juniper association, sign of coyotes was noted and they were the dominant carnivores in the juniper belt and Joshua tree woodland.

In the upper part of the pinyon-juniper association coyotes travel and forage in sage flats, along ridges, and in sandy draws, avoiding the extensive patches of scrub oak and mountain mahogany, and the steep, rocky, pinyon-covered slopes. It is apparent that the local ranges of the coyote and the gray fox in the pinyon-juniper belt are complementary, the gray fox keeping to the more thickly wooded or brushy parts of the area, and the coyote staying in the relatively open sections. Probably there is little competition for food there between these two canids.

As evidenced by tracks, coyotes commonly traveled and hunted along desert washes, probably because of the larger population of rodents and rabbits there. Below Graham Canyon three fairly recently inhabited dens of coyotes were found in the cutbanks at the edge of a dry wash in December of 1951. The cutbanks were six to ten feet high, and the dens were dug into the banks about three feet above the floor of the wash.

On the evening of October 20, 1948, near Desert Springs, Steven M. Jacobs and I set out a line of fifty wooden live traps for kangaroo rats. That night we slept about 300 yards from the middle of the line which was roughly three quarters of a mile long. When we tended the traps the next morning we found the tracks of a coyote over our own tracks of the previous day, and the first trap that had seemingly held a kangaroo rat was chewed and dragged for about fifty feet. Each trap that had held a rodent had been turned upside down so that the door had opened. At one point in the line where we had walked for about two hundred yards without setting a trap the coyote had followed every twist and turn of our trail. The animal had followed out the entire trap line and removed approximately eight rodents from the traps, reducing our take to one Dipodomys and one Peromyscus.

Examinations of feces showed that in the period from 1948 to 1952, while populations of jack rabbits were low in the Mojave Desert, the coyotes had fed extensively on smaller mammals such as kangaroo rats, and to some extent on fruit. By contrasting the present food habits of coyotes on the desert and coastal slopes of the mountains support is afforded for Errington's (1937:243) statement that predation is "a by-product of population." On the desert slope, with low populations of rabbits, the coyotes have turned to lesser species of prey; while on the Pacific slope, where populations of rabbits were high, the rabbits made up the major portion of the coyote's diet. On the desert slope, remains of the following food items were identified from coyote feces: kangaroo rats, mule deer, jack rabbits, passerine bird, manzanita and juniper fruit, beetles, grapes and apples. Near Valyermo, coyote feces were composed mostly of apples from nearby orchards. A female coyote killed below Grandview Canyon had its stomach and intestines stuffed with apples in large chunks. In the juniper belt, berries of juniper were often eaten by coyotes.

The three specimens of coyotes from the desert slope are clearly referable to the desert race C. l. mearnsi, both with regard to cranial and pelage characteristics. Although I collected no specimens from Cajon Pass or the passes at the west end of the range, it is in these places that intergradation might be expected to occur between the desert race C. l. mearnsi and the coastal and valley subspecies C. l. ochropus, as the higher parts of the San Gabriels seem to constitute a barrier to coyotes.

A subadult female coyote taken in the Joshua tree belt near Graham Canyon weighed 20.8 pounds.

Specimens examined.--Los Angeles County: 6 mi. E and 2 mi. S Llano, 3600 ft., 3 (2 PC).

=Vulpes macrotis arsipus= Elliot

Kit Fox

The kit fox barely enters the area under consideration. In the Joshua tree belt, below about 3500 feet elevation, tracks were most often noted in washes and on the adjacent sandy ground. The highest place where tracks were seen was a small sandy draw below the mouth of Graham Canyon at an altitude of roughly 3900 feet.

In the Joshua tree belt many old burrows were found but none was occupied. I believe these foxes are returning to this area where once they were common. In the winter of 1948 no sign of kit foxes was found, although intensive field work was done in the Joshua tree belt in the Mescal Canyon area. In December of 1951, in the same locality, sign was obvious and an individual was trapped below Grandview Canyon at 3500 feet elevation. Possibly since the use of poison for carnivores has been discontinued in this district the foxes are repopulating the area.

The one specimen taken, a sub-adult female, weighed two pounds and fourteen ounces.

Specimen examined.--Los Angeles Co.: 6 mi. E & 1 mi. S Llano, 3500 ft., 1.

=Urocyon cinereoargenteus californicus= Mearns

Gray Fox