17 March 2026

ICYMI (In Case You Missed It):

Last Saturday night around 8:00pm the sound of sirens in the Monongahela Valley near Glen Hazel prompted a nature sound below the eagles’ nest.

The female eagle, nicknamed Mom, was sleeping and ignoring the sirens (“it’s just more of that human noise”) but she woke up and watched when coyotes answer the siren’s wail. PixCams moved the camera to see if he could find the coyotes, but no.

It should be no surprise there are coyotes on the wooded hillside near the eagles’ nest. They have been in the Pittsburgh city limits since at least 2003, my neighbors saw them in Greenfield in 2017, and I regularly see coyote scat in Frick and Schenley Parks.

Some people are afraid of coyotes but are they dangerous?  Not to us humans but myths abound, apparently borrowed from our myths about wolves. 

• No, coyotes won’t eat your kids.
• No, coyotes won’t lure your big dog away to eat him. Coyotes play with big dogs (video). Their DNA is 10% domestic dog!
• No, coyotes will not be gone from your neighborhood if you remove the one you’ve seen. New coyotes arrive soon to take its place.

Some of our fears, not based in modern experience, seem to be bred-in-the-bone from prehistoric time. For example, some people automatically fear snakes even though they will never encounter them. This makes sense as an ancient fear spawned from early humans’ experience in Africa.

Legend has it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland(*). Does anyone in Ireland fear snakes anyway? Interesting question.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

(*) In fact, Ireland was already snake-free when St. Patrick arrived. All the snakes died during the Ice Age and never came back.