I'm a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog, and lone;
I'm a rough dog, a tough dog, hunting on my own!;
I'm a bad dog, a mad dog, teasing silly [photographers] ;
I love to sit and bay the moon, to keep fat souls from sleep.

Not for me the other dogs, running by my side,
Some have run a short while, but none of them would bide.
O mine is still the lone trail, the hard trail, the best,
Wide wind, and wild stars, and hunger of the quest!
- Irene Rutherford Mcleod, 1920


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Oct 11th Part 1; some photos from Oct 12th



It's 6am. The moon is hovering amidst a halo of ghostly cloud and hoar frost covers the steps in a veneer of crunchy cold. It's eleven degrees below zero, and the car windscreen needs some substantial heating before visibility is restored. I am slightly chilled despite being decked out in winter gear but it hardly seems to matter. Out to the east, over the frozen grasslands and small clusters of wooden houses, a melodic howl is rising As the sun breaks the dark, keen, lean forms are visible here and there across the prairies, trotting, trotting, watching, watching...



Coyotes!





This is the brush wolf, the prairie wolf, the American jackal or (out east, where it has hybridised with the red wolf) the tweed wolf. It is the smallest of North America's three wolf species and has endured the seemingly endless human persecution that has severely dented the populations of its larger cousins. Few animals in the western world have suffered as much pointless cruelty as the coyote. But this morning at least, they are free to run and howl and hunt.



They are intelligent. They are adaptable. They will survive on whatever the land produces, from water melons to deer. But they are principally the hunters of small mammals, and often seem an exquisite mix of fox and wolf. They have the cat-like pounces of the fox, but something of the social order of the grey wolf, albeit in packs that are less enduring. Coyotes can breed in their first year; the larger wolves do not reproduce until they are two or three years old, so coyotes are inclined to disperse from their parents much earlier. Alone or with a pack, they will survive, if people leave them in peace.



Their howls are the music of the prairie wild

But they are not the only species of wild dog here. Long ago, large packs of grey wolves hunted the bison out on the plains. The attempts of settlers to poison the wolf also contributed to the extinction of the tiny swift fox. Happily, the fox has been reintroduced, although actively bringing the wolf itself back would be far too controversial. Finding swift foxes is still not easy, but I'm looking. And in the meantime, I discovered while photographing hawks that something that looks rather familiar is watching me!



I am starting to believe that red foxes are following me around the world!