Animal 411

New Canaan Police: Coyotes Dwell behind Norwalk Armory

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New Canaan police believe three new reported sightings of a “coywolf”—cross between an eastern wolf and western coyote—are the same animal. Animal Control Officer Maryann Kleinschmitt also said most of the coyotes in this area live in the wilderness behind the Armory right on the New Canaan-Norwalk line, off of Merritt Parkway Exit 38. “They run around back there, and a month from now the females will give birth so that the males become lone hunters,” Kleinschmitt told NewCanaanite.com. “That’s the only time the coyotes den, is when they’re giving birth, and then it’s a 10-mile radius for them to find food.”

Though the high season for coyotes generally doesn’t arrive until the weather is a bit warmer and females give birth, frequent sightings are popping up all over New Canaan. The coyote pictured at right was spotted off of Evergreen Road on Thursday (March 13).

Animal 411

PHOTO: Rare ‘Coywolf’ Spotted in New Canaan

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A rare eastern coyote—offspring of an eastern wolf and western coyote—was spotted (and photographed) in New Canaan up near the Scotts Corner line on Sunday, officials say. The Proprietors Crossing sighting comes on the heels of an active February, in which eight coyotes were spotted in New Canaan, and also follows a “red wolf” sighting in town in December. “This animal is just spectacular,” Officer Maryann Kleinschmitt of the New Canaan Police Department’s Animal Control Unit said of the coywolf, seen at right. The call reporting the sighting came in at about 2:30 p.m. on March 2, police say. Kleinschmitt says she’s hearing that there could be a pair of the animals in northern New Canaan.