Coyotes are taking over San Francisco, you guys. Though coyote sightings in the city are not new, they seem to be getting a lot more common this past year, suggesting that our local coyotes are both bolder and hungrier than they used to be — and there are probably more of them, though that's not confirmed. As Hoodline reports, via some postings on Nextdoor, there have been multiple coyote sightings around Corona Heights Park and the Panhandle, and dog owners especially are being told to be careful and keep their dogs leashed.

In one case just this past Sunday, a dog owner reported running face to face into a coyote along a trail in Corona Heights Park with her off-leash dog, at which point she "zapped into protection mode and made myself very large and waved my arms and screamed and barked like a maniac" to scare the coyote off. This worked, however she still nearly lost her dog who instinctively started running after it. Luckily, she was able to catch him/her and get the leash back on.

This follows on a coyote sighting in tony Pacific Heights last week, marking the first known case of upwardly mobile coyotes moving beyond the ghettos of our city parks.

Back in 2014, Chronicle nature writer Tom Stienstra estimated that SF's coyote population was about 100 strong. At the time, warning signs had recently gone up around the Presidio golf course because of a new den, or dens, of coyotes spotted in the vicinity, as KRON 4 reported.

But then, as now, Animal Care and Control assures us that coyotes don't really want anything to do with humans, and it's just your dogs, especially small ones, that you should worry about if they're running around off-leash — something, I hope, that dog walkers in Stern Grove have learned by now, after two small dogs have been mauled by coyotes there in recent months, one of them fatally.

Carol Singleton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, has been saying as of last summer that coyotes were roaming more into residential areas in search of food and water (in the drought), but now that we've had plenty of rain, water would not seem to be so scarce.

Pupping season, when coyotes tend to be the most aggressive in protecting their dens, is from April to August, so the coyote activity we're seeing now may simply be a result of lack of resources. They prey they're looking for: rabbits, raccoons, rodents, small pets, and ducks.

Coyote activity, also, tends to be concentrated in the evening and early morning.

Below, a video of a coyote yelping/howling one morning in 2012 in Glen Park.

Previously: Coyote Attacks Another Small Dog In Stern Grove, Big Dog Saves It 'Like Rin Tin Tin'