Pennsylvania’s 661 coyote records run from the Lake Erie shore at Presque Isle State Park through the big woods of Sproul State Forest to the suburbs of Allegheny and Philadelphia counties, a spread that would have been impossible a century ago, before the first coyotes reached the state.
A colonist that took to the big woods
The coyotes that spread into Pennsylvania during the 1900s are the larger eastern form, animals carrying some wolf ancestry, and they proved as comfortable in forest as on the plains their kind came from. They hunt mice, rabbits, and fawns, scavenge winter-killed deer, and den on brushy slopes; records from Monroe County’s Pocono ridges west to Armstrong and Clarion show farm country, big woods, and suburb all in use.
A winter-weighted record
January and February produce the year’s strongest counts, when breeding pairs travel and vocalize and snow lays tracks across open ground; August runs lowest, when family groups with nearly grown pups keep to cover. Most Pennsylvanians will never see one. The species stays largely nocturnal near people, and night howling is the standard evidence of a resident pair.
Status in Pennsylvania
NatureServe ranks the coyote S5, Secure, in Pennsylvania, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
