| Four females | Two males | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Averages | Extremes | Averages | Extremes | |
| Condylobasal length | 180.67 | 174.2-183.3 | 188.35 | 179.2-197.5 |
| Palatal length | 91.57 | 88.0-95.0 | 97.15 | 91.6-102.7 |
| Zygomatic breadth | 90.15 | 88.9-92.0 | 95.60 | 88.8-102.5 |
| Interorbital breadth | 29.12 | 27.9-29.9 | 31.45 | 28.1-34.8 |
| Length of maxillary toothrow | 85.00 | 80.4-89.80 | 88.00 | 83.4-92.6 |
| Length of upper carnassial | 18.30 | 17.8-19.0 | 18.70 | 18.1-19.3 |
Canis latrans mearnsi Merriam
Coyote
Coyotes are common on the desert slope of the San Gabriels below about 6000 feet elevation. They seem not, or only rarely, to penetrate the yellow pine forest belt, but tracks have been found occasionally near the lower edge of the forest, as at the head of Mescal Canyon. In the more open parts of the pinyon-juniper association, sign of coyotes was noted and they were the dominant carnivores in the juniper belt and Joshua tree woodland.
In the upper part of the pinyon-juniper association coyotes travel and forage in sage flats, along ridges, and in sandy draws, avoiding the extensive patches of scrub oak and mountain mahogany, and the steep, rocky, pinyon-covered slopes. It is apparent that the local ranges of the coyote and the gray fox in the pinyon-juniper belt are complementary, the gray fox keeping to the more thickly wooded or brushy parts of the area, and the coyote staying in the relatively open sections. Probably there is little competition for food there between these two canids.
As evidenced by tracks, coyotes commonly traveled and hunted along desert washes, probably because of the larger population of rodents and rabbits there. Below Graham Canyon three fairly recently inhabited dens of coyotes were found in the cutbanks at the edge of a dry wash in December of 1951. The cutbanks were six to ten feet high, and the dens were dug into the banks about three feet above the floor of the wash.
On the evening of October 20, 1948, near Desert Springs, Steven M. Jacobs and I set out a line of fifty wooden live traps for kangaroo rats. That night we slept about 300 yards from the middle of the line which was roughly three quarters of a mile long. When we tended the traps the next morning we found the tracks of a coyote over our own tracks of the previous day, and the first trap that had seemingly held a kangaroo rat was chewed and dragged for about fifty feet. Each trap that had held a rodent had been turned upside down so that the door had opened. At one point in the line where we had walked for about two hundred yards without setting a trap the coyote had followed every twist and turn of our trail. The animal had followed out the entire trap line and removed approximately eight rodents from the traps, reducing our take to one Dipodomys and one Peromyscus.
Examinations of feces showed that in the period from 1948 to 1952, while populations of jack rabbits were low in the Mojave Desert, the coyotes had fed extensively on smaller mammals such as kangaroo rats, and to some extent on fruit. By contrasting the present food habits of coyotes on the desert and coastal slopes of the mountains support is afforded for Errington's (1937:243) statement that predation is "a by-product of population." On the desert slope, with low populations of rabbits, the coyotes have turned to lesser species of prey; while on the Pacific slope, where populations of rabbits were high, the rabbits made up the major portion of the coyote's diet. On the desert slope, remains of the following food items were identified from coyote feces: kangaroo rats, mule deer, jack rabbits, passerine bird, manzanita and juniper fruit, beetles, grapes and apples. Near Valyermo, coyote feces were composed mostly of apples from nearby orchards. A female coyote killed below Grandview Canyon had its stomach and intestines stuffed with apples in large chunks. In the juniper belt, berries of juniper were often eaten by coyotes.
The three specimens of coyotes from the desert slope are clearly referable to the desert race C. l. mearnsi, both with regard to cranial and pelage characteristics. Although I collected no specimens from Cajon Pass or the passes at the west end of the range, it is in these places that intergradation might be expected to occur between the desert race C. l. mearnsi and the coastal and valley subspecies C. l. ochropus, as the higher parts of the San Gabriels seem to constitute a barrier to coyotes.
A subadult female coyote taken in the Joshua tree belt near Graham Canyon weighed 20.8 pounds.