4 CIRCULAR 1, FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



Dens may be found in a canyon, wash-out, or coulee, on a bank or 

 hillside (fig. f , 5), in a rock bluff, or even in level ground, as in a wheat- 

 field, stubblefield, or plowed field. They have been discovered under 

 deserted homestead shacks in the desert, under grain bins, in a drainage 

 pipe, in a dry culvert under railroad tracks, in a hollow log, in a 

 thicket, and under a clump of thistles that had blown into a canyon. 



B34748; B3075? 



Fisure 2. — A, Entrance to a coyote den in a dry creek bank, Morrow County, Oreg./ 

 B, a former predator-control leader at the mouth of a coyote den dug out near Coke- 

 vilie, Wyo. (Remains of three lambs in foreground, including two skulls out of which 

 the brains had been lapped by coyotes.) 



As a rule, instead of digging entirely new dens, coyotes will enlarge 

 abandoned badger or rabbit holes or use deserted porcupine dens in 

 rocky promontories or canyon walls. Usually they start cleaning 

 out the holes several weeks prior to whelping. They generally claw 

 out the dirt in one direction from the mouth of the den, where it piles 

 up into a mound, although some dens have no such mound (fig. 2, ^4). 



The female conlinu(>R digging and cleaning out den hol(>s, sometimes 

 a dozen or more, until the young are born. Then, if one den is dis- 

 turbed the family moves to another. Sometimes the animals move 

 only a few huiuhcd yards, apparently just to have a cleaner home, 



