Black, or melanistic, coyotes aren't particularly rare, but they sure are gorgeous! This one has been spotted a few times in Arlington. Coyote coat color and patterns can vary quite a bit, especially with Eastern coyotes, but this is one of our favorites. Check out this article for some good pictures and video of her!

DCP is sending out a huge congratulations to one of our own, Lindsay Powers, on finishing her Master’s degree at American University. Lindsay did her research on coyotes in DC, including looking at their diet and activity patterns. We're so glad she's staying on with us and looking forward to sharing the results of her research, some of which you can find summarized on our research page. Stay tuned for more great ecological projects in the works! You can find her full thesis here.

Lindsay Powers, a grad student at American University, and her advisor Chris Tudge continue to get some great shots of DC's coyotes. We're proud to be working with Lindsay on her project to learn more about our local coyotes!

Lindsay Powers, a graduate student at American University, has been working with DCP team members on her thesis. She's gotten some great photos of both coyotes and foxes on the trail cameras she's put up in some of DC's parks. Thanks to Lindsay and her supervisor, Dr. Chris Tudge, for letting us use these images!

Megan Draheim and Joshua Mills, along with Zuriel van Belle from the Portland Urban Coyote Project (PUCP), presented a poster at this year’s International Urban Wildlife Conference in Portland, Oregon!

The poster provided details about how DCP and PUCP's maps were created and how we use them. Zuriel provided some assistance to both Josh and Megan when our map was being developed, and we decided we should put our heads together to see what we could come up with that would be useful to other incidental sightings projects, canid or not.

In addition to presenting the poster, it was great to meet new urban coyote folks, see old friends, and learn more about the state of urban wildlife research. The next IUWC will be held here in Washington, D.C., in 2021! So stay tuned.

The Washington City Paper recently published a great story about DC coyotes, and featured DCP and our citizen science project! If you haven't already, don't forget to log your sightings onto our map, and be sure to spread the word.

Thanks to Edith Blackwell of Falls Church, Virginia (a suburb outside of Washington, D.C.) for sending us this great photo of a coyote in her backyard! She set up a trail camera back there, and often gets shots of both coyotes and red foxes. In some places, coyotes exclude red foxes from their territories, but this anecdotally demonstrates that this isn't always the case in at least parts of the DMV, at least for now. The District Coyote Project is hoping to further investigate the interactions between all of our native canids: coyotes, red foxes, and the often-elusive gray foxes.

The RiverDogs, a Charlestown minor league baseball team, was visited by a gray fox during a game a couple of weeks ago. This happened back in 2016 on a fairly regular basis, but s/he didn't show up last year (if it is the same fox).

This time around, immediately after the fox showed up, the RiverDog's shortstop Wilkerman Garcia hit a walk-off home run in extra innings. Gray foxes are generally shy animals that avoid contact with humans, so this is an extra-special sighting.