Justin Brown, a National Park Service ecologist, says he’s seen people actively feeding wildlife. And then occasionally also especially in urban environments there’ll be anthropogenic materials, so things like paper towels, food wrappers, barbecue chicken, we saw once, so a great diversity of different foods,” Wold says.
They’re omnivores so they eat a lot of fruits and berries and things like that. “If you have a scat that you think is coyote, it’ll probably have bones or fur or seeds. Binta Wold, a National Park Service intern working on the Urban Coyote Project, helps volunteers distinguish coyote scat from bobcat scat. The contents can also help determine the animal who left the scat behind. They’re a little bit smaller than dog scat usually,” Wold said. “Often coyote scat has a characteristic twisted appearance. Bobcat poop, for example, is shaped like a ball-and-socket joint. She says one way to tell the different kinds of scat apart is by the shape. They're huddled around a table, looking at bowls of dried poop: bobcat and coyote.īinta Wold helps run the Urban Coyote Project for the National Park Service. When the National Park Service started recruiting people like her for a study on the diet of coyotes, she jumped at the chance to start collecting coyote droppings - also known as coyote scat.Ībout 30 volunteers gather at the Audubon Center in Debs Park. Symonds has spent 18 years as docent at Pasadena’s Eaton Canyon Nature Center. “People don’t like to have certain vermin around, rats and mice, and actually do a tremendous job to keep the numbers of rodents in check,” she says. In fact, Symonds believes we should be grateful.
Still, when the occasional hen is lost to a predator, she doesn’t hold it against them. Symonds closes up her chicken coop at night and keeps a close watch on the flock.