I was driving back to Tehachapi from Bakersfield last Friday morning. I took Bena Road, the old route that predates Highway 58, as I often do during daylight hours, looking for wildlife and checking out the scenery that changes season by season.
As I approached a gradual sweeping curve, I saw movement in the distance ahead of me: a medium-sized animal was moving through the landscape. With its size and the familiar, unhurried trotting that can cover many miles over the course of a day, I knew immediately that it was a coyote.
The coyote was probably a young male from a litter born last year, out on his own now and in an endless search for something to eat in a terrain that doesn’t offer much.
The coyote crossed the road and went up to the railroad tracks that parallel the old road. It then did something that I have never seen before: it trotted along the tracks using the concrete railroad ties like stepping stones.
Railroad ties are used for supporting steel rails, and they stick out about a foot on the outside of each rail. Rather than stepping on the track ballast, which consists of plum-sized gravel, the coyote strode from railroad tie to railroad tie like it was a deliberate pathway.
It’s easy to see why the coyote preferred walking on the smooth, flat tops of the ties rather than the track ballast. This is because ballast is typically made of crushed limestone or granite rocks that have fresh, sharp angular features that lock together better than smoother stones that have long been exposed to wind and weather.
Track ballast is not like small pea gravel that yields gently beneath your footsteps, accompanied by a soft, satisfying crunching sound. Ballast is much larger and uneven, and individual rocks can shift suddenly to put you off balance.
This coyote had obviously spent a lot of time moving alongside the railroad tracks, and had become adept at “tie-hopping” at is it sometimes called when practiced by members of the hobo or train-riding vagabond community.
Interestingly, tie-hopping is not a comfortable route for humans. The ties are spaced about 19.5 inches apart, so stepping on every tie requires a stride that is too short to be natural or pleasant, and skipping every other tie requires a stride that is too long for most people.
But the spacing seemed fine for the coyote, who was thus spared from having the pads of his feet come in contact with the sharp rocks of track ballast. I watched the coyote continue down along the tracks confidently like he was a railroad employee, until he disappeared in the distance.
It was just another example of the adaptability of these remarkable canines. They can survive and flourish without seeing a human being close-up their entire lives, and conversely they can also live right beside people in places like Los Angeles.
I have seen coyotes walking down the sidewalk in broad daylight in a housing tract in Santa Monica. They wouldn’t approach a person, or let a person approach them too closely, but they were clearly not alarmed at being embedded in a city and surrounded by houses and cars.
Though I’m not aware of any scientific census of coyotes in the Tehachapi Mountains, in general coyotes seem to be doing well in California. The state finally ended the practice of fur bearer trapping in 2019, which included coyotes, so they are no longer trapped, though they can still be hunted.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates that there are between 250,000 and 750,000 coyotes living within the state, which is an amusingly imprecise estimate — “There’s a quarter of million coyotes in the state. Or maybe three times that many. We’re not sure.”
I understand though, because coyotes live in so many different areas, and cover so much ground, that they cannot be very easy to count.
I know that I see and hear coyotes more than I did in Tehachapi 40 and 50 years ago. There are many nights when I hear their distinct sing/yap calling, usually around 11 p.m. or 1 a.m.
And I often see coyotes when I am driving or hiking around Tehachapi. Typically they trot away from you in a meandering route, pausing periodically to look back and see if you’re following them, or doing anything threatening. Sometimes they even tie-hop along the railroad tracks. . .
Have a good week.
Jon Hammond has written for Tehachapi News for more than 40 years. Send email to tehachapimtnlover@gmail.com.