In a Milestone for Manhattan, a Pair of Coyotes Has Made Central Park Their Home

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For six years, two photographers have carefully followed the canines and documented their secret lives

Key takeaways: What you need to know about coyotes in Central Park

A pair of coyotes named Romeo and Juliet have made their home in the giant green space in the middle of New York City.
If Romeo and Juliet have pups in the park, the event would be a milestone for the species, which has expanded its range across much of the United States.

We were in Central Park after dark scanning the shadows for movement. Every now and then a rabbit, raccoon or rat scurried by. But they weren’t the animals we were looking for. Suddenly, sirens punctuated the quiet as emergency vehicles sped along a nearby road. The park’s only resident pair of coyotes began calling as if on cue. We listened to their yip-howls, grabbed our cameras and hurried to the nearest lookout.

Central Park’s ghost dogs are famously good at hiding, but their loud howls enabled us to find them on a nearby lawn. Romeo and Juliet, as we’ve come to call them, were out in the open bonding affectionately with each other. Romeo, the smaller of the two, playfully lay on his back with his paws in the air, much like a domestic dog looking for a belly rub, while Juliet licked him on the face. Something caught Juliet’s attention, and she looked up, flashing her alert, amber-brown eyes. Romeo stood, and his upper coat—a mix of gray and brown with reddish hues—became visible. They trotted off together, and we photographed them while admiring their perky ears, long legs and bushy tails. Soon, they disappeared into the darkness.

Romeo has resided in the park since 2019. He lived alone for about four years until Juliet showed up. Coyotes often use railroad tracks to traverse urban environments. According to Chris Nagy, co-founder of the Gotham Coyote Project, the Central Park pair may have been born in the Bronx and arrived on Manhattan’s Upper West Side by way of train tracks that run alongside the Henry Hudson Parkway. How they got across town to the park is anyone’s guess, but they may have used small green spaces and medians to maneuver through the city streets.

We first encountered Romeo while birding in Central Park. Sightings of him over the years were incredibly rare, as coyotes are often shy and avoid humans. Besides a few daytime sightings during a period in 2021 when he slept in a rock crevice near the Lake, we scarcely saw him again until May 2023. We were in the northern end of the park late one night photographing Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl released from the Central Park Zoo by a vandal earlier that year. Flaco had just flown from a tree toward the ground in pursuit of a rat, and we were scanning for him with our scopes when Romeo suddenly appeared. Flaco flew off. When we refound him seconds later, he was eyeing Romeo from a pile of landscaping stones a short distance away—a moment detailed in our book, Finding Flaco: Our Year with New York City’s Beloved Owl.

Owling has continued to provide great opportunities to spot the Central Park coyotes. Last year, in January, we were photographing a pair of long-eared owls in the northern area of the park when we again saw Romeo, this time with newly arrived Juliet. We had heard of a second coyote appearing in Central Park from other members of the birding community, but this was our first time seeing her for ourselves. She was larger, darker and more skittish than her mate. We saw the pair a few more times during the weeks we observed the long-eared owls. One unforgettable February night, we heard these urban song dogs howl for the first time.

We have observed and photographed Romeo and Juliet regularly all throughout the park since then. We have seen them take down a Canada goose, walk gingerly across frozen ponds, cross busy intersections in and outside of the park, and jump gracefully over four-foot-tall fences. On Valentine’s Day, we watched the pair stand rear to rear in the brush for at least 20 minutes engaged in a copulatory tie, a form of mating common to canids.

Coyotes haven’t always been welcomed in Central Park. The first sighting of a coyote in the park was in March 1999. Marie Winn, the celebrated chronicler of the park’s wildlife who died last year, wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal. She recounted how the coyote (who was later named Otis) was aggressively pursued by the authorities. He evaded capture several times until he was darted and caught on April 1, then shipped off to the Queens Zoo. Winn questioned why New York City’s Parks Department tacitly permitted dogs to run off leash illegally in Central Park, but would not allow coyotes to remain.

Since that incident in 1999 and the capture of another coyote nicknamed Hal in 2006 that resulted in his death, the city launched WildlifeNYC in 2016—a campaign to increase awareness about urban wildlife through public policy and educational initiatives. That shift in approach has permitted coyotes to remain in city parks. “The Wildlife Unit [of NYC Parks] has worked closely with partners including the New York City Police Department and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to promote the safe coexistence between people and wildlife like coyotes,” says Katrina Toal, deputy director of the unit.

Winn believed coyotes might do some good in the park. Her books Red-Tails in Love and Central Park in the Dark have greatly influenced our thinking about the park as a dynamic and vibrant environment for urban wildlife. Romeo and Juliet’s presence is a sign our ecosystem is becoming cleaner and healthier. Coyotes can also help manage the city’s rodent problem and keep other wildlife populations, like Canada geese and raccoons, in check.

But not every New Yorker is happy about the idea of coyotes living among us. People occasionally call the cops on Romeo and Juliet. But such human fears are mostly misplaced. As Toal explains, in general, “it is rare for a coyote to bite people or their pets.” We have not been able to find a single report of either of the Central Park coyotes ever harming a person or pet. The likelihood of a person being attacked by a domestic dog in and around the park is much greater. According to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 2,092 recorded dog bites occurred in the ZIP codes that cover Central Park and its surrounding neighborhoods from 2015 to 2023. We have witnessed off-leash dogs behave aggressively toward other dogs and even chase Romeo and Juliet around while their owners stand by and do practically nothing.

NYC Parks encourages parkgoers to leash their dogs and maintain a respectful distance. “If you cross paths with wildlife, respect them the same way you would any other New Yorker and give them plenty of space,” says Toal. “Approaching a coyote or offering it food can lead to human-wildlife conflict.”

“Only call 911 to report wildlife sightings if there is a clear threat to public safety,” she adds.

People are learning how to live with coyotes in other large cities in North America like Chicago and Los Angeles. Originally a species of the Great Plains and Mexico, coyotes expanded across North America in the 20th century by taking advantage of the human-caused decline of other apex predators like eastern wolves. More than a decade ago, when coyotes were still limited to the Bronx, researchers including Nagy described New York City and Long Island as “the last frontier” for the species in North America. Since then, according to Nagy, populations have emerged in Manhattan and Queens and across Long Island. At least one coyote has also been spotted on Staten Island, and there have been reports of possible coyote scat in three different parks in Brooklyn.

Coyotes Romeo and Juliet in Delacorte Theater

Coyotes are monogamous and mate for life. The deep bond between Romeo and Juliet makes us hopeful that they will someday have pups. According to Nagy, coyotes have never been confirmed to breed in Manhattan. This would be a major milestone for the species.

When Romeo and Juliet didn’t have pups last spring, we thought it might have simply been too soon after they paired up. This year, we observed them copulating regularly from January through March. We watched carefully for signs that Juliet might be pregnant—her belly did seem to swell and appeared more rounded at times. In April and May, however, she was maintaining her normal activities at a time when a mother coyote would typically tend to her young. We knew then that they hadn’t been successful. But we didn’t know why.

We wanted an expert opinion on the matter, so we invited Nagy to join us coyote-watching in Central Park earlier this spring. We brought him to one of Romeo and Juliet’s usual rendezvous spots and loaned him thermal monoculars so he could see in the dark. Soon after we arrived, we heard a rustle in the brush to our right. We trained our optics in the direction of the sound, and the two coyotes came into view. Nagy was excited. He has been setting camera traps in the park to study them for years, but this was the first time he laid eyes on them. The pair began their nightly ritual of alternating between resting contentedly and patrolling a small section of their territory. Nagy immediately commented on their difference in size and relaxed demeanor. He was surprised that they didn’t begin hunting and foraging immediately after dark. We explained that we typically see them get active late at night when the park quiets down.

Nagy offered several possible explanations for the couple’s apparent difficulty breeding. In their first season together, Juliet may have been too young. However, that shouldn’t have been an issue this year. Perhaps one or both is infertile. Or perhaps they were inhibited by some sort of disturbance, human-caused or otherwise. According to Nagy, the pair may have “attempted to den and had some pups but had to abandon them for whatever reason—maybe they were disturbed too much by people, dogs or even a few of the larger raccoons.”

Central Park receives over 42 million visitors each year, and people traffic virtually all of its 843 acres, even the precious few fenced areas that are supposed to be off-limits. Many dog owners also permit their dogs to run off leash at times and in places not allowed, or to disturb wildlife. Romeo and Juliet may not have been able to find a sufficiently secluded location to den. Nagy wondered whether the couple might try again next year or move on in search of more hospitable territory. He believes that, if Romeo and Juliet are able to overcome these hurdles and raise pups in the domesticated wilderness of Central Park, it would perhaps be the greatest testament to the species’ adaptability and resilience yet.

Debates are ongoing about whether coyotes should be allowed to become established in cities. For example, this argument is raging in San Francisco, which has become home to a stable coyote population in recent years. There, one lunged at children, a behavior considered unusual for animals known to fear people, resulting in local and federal agencies agreeing that it must be shot. According to New York Times reporting, officials are awaiting a necropsy to determine whether there were any underlying diseases that may have explained the canid’s aggression toward humans. While fears persist among some city residents that coyotes pose a danger to small pets and people, many others have been in awe of the creatures, and murals have been painted celebrating them. Given how polarizing the presence of these animals is in other urban areas around the country, we think it’s important to promote positive stories about the Central Park coyotes so that New Yorkers learn to accept and appreciate them.

On a recent night, we watched a man in his 50s stop in the middle of a paved path as he noticed Romeo trotting by. The man was not the least bit scared. He smiled from ear to ear. We invited him to sit down next to us on a park bench as we waited for Romeo to circle back. The man told us that it was a year to the day when he had seen his first coyote in the park. He said he couldn’t believe his luck.

What each of us takes away from a chance meeting with the Central Park coyotes is highly individual, but we hope more people will share our respect and admiration for them. After all, Romeo and Juliet are New Yorkers, too.