Following a Trail

I hear coyotes fairly often - I think they include my property in their loop every few days, sometimes a little more frequently.  

The other night, one sounded closer than normal - I was guessing he was on the other side of the log pile circled in the photo below: 

Today I went out to see if I could find tracks.  To my surprise, it looks like the coyote actually came much closer than that.  I followed his path for a while, and it was fascinating to see how he moved. 

He actually first came out of the trees about here:

He kept going to the left, behind the solar panel, taking advantage of bits of cover, and sometimes taking a few steps toward the dome, probably to keep an eye on the dogs.  

To the left of the solar panel, there is a snow bank and a brush pile.  He came over the snow bank and circled through the pile of brush, coming to within maybe 25-30 feet of the fence surrounding the dome.  I'm guessing that's when I got home from work, or maybe the dogs started barking, because it looks like he then jumped back up over the snow bank and took off running through the trees.

The pawprints were spaced about 4-6 feet apart while he ran.

I widened my circle and found a few more tracks, probably from the same coyote or his mate.  I would have guessed there were a lot more based on all the noise they make, lol, but I only found 2, maybe 3 sets of tracks.

I'm guessing this is one of the spots where one paused to "sing":

The snow isn't a great type for holding the shape of the tracks, but I got one picture of the pawprint:

So anyway... that was kind of a neat experience.  I'll have to dig out the trail cam and see if I can catch the coyotes on video again.

I hope everyone is having an awesome Monday!  :)