An Evening With the Central Park Coyotes

“There they are!”

A hush fell over three humans with cameras, as a doglike shape emerged from the shadows, followed by another, smaller dog shape. For a nanosecond the creatures were silhouetted by a streetlamp.

It was just after 8:30 p.m. on a footpath in Central Park, not far from the Delacorte Theater, where “Twelfth Night” was in progress, and the coyotes had appeared.

The couple, named Romeo and Juliet by their fans, have been living together in the park for over a year.

In the summer of 2024, she was joined by a male coyote, a little darker and slightly larger, and their love story made headlines.

(Previous reports have erroneously identified the genders of the coyotes, but the larger, newer coyote is the male.)

For most New Yorkers, spotting the coyotes in the park is a rare bit of serendipity.

But two of their biggest fans, the photographers David Lei and Jacqueline Emery, have spent more than a year watching the pair and have learned the coyotes’ habits and routines. The photographers have discovered when and where the coyotes are likely to appear and recently invited a New York Times reporter to join them for an evening of coyote observation.

Among the early lessons Mr. Lei and Ms. Emery learned: The Central Park coyotes are extremely shy.

“They definitely avoid people and stick to shadows,” Mr. Lei said.

Ms. Emery agreed. “We’ve watched that in action time and again,” she said.

Another lesson: The coyotes have plenty to eat. “We’ve seen them chase rats into the water,” Mr. Lei said. “They can swim faster than the rats.” He also watched them catch and kill a Canada goose.

Coyotes have been spotted in and around New York City since the 1930s, though their population is mostly concentrated in the Bronx and Queens.

But now and then, there are sightings of coyotes right in the middle of Manhattan, in Central Park. Romeo and Juliet are just the latest to call this dense part of the city home.

In the winter of 2010, a coyote was seen crossing an icy pond near Hallet Nature Sanctuary, a wooded area in the southeast corner of the park, just steps away from the Plaza Hotel.

In 2006, a kerfuffle erupted when a coyote named Hal was pursued by police and park officials, while helicopters hovered overhead. He died shortly thereafter, because of stress, heartworms and rodenticide.

In 1999, someone called the cops on a coyote called Lucky Pierre, who was living in a Central Park cave, across Fifth Avenue from the Pierre Hotel. He was caught and sent to live in a zoo in Queens.

But coyote experts insist that people should not fear them.

Reached by telephone, Chris Nagy, a wildlife biologist and co-founder of Gotham Coyote, was emphatic that seeing coyotes in the park is no reason to call the police.

However, he said, “Don’t try to take a selfie with them. Don’t feed them. Appreciate them or value them — but from a distance.”

Dr. Nagy, who is keeping an eye on the Central Park coyotes as part of his research, also urged dog owners to leash their dogs if they find themselves near the coyotes. Being pursued by off-leash dogs, he said, is stressful for the coyotes.

“They may, at some point, defend themselves, not be in the mood to play,” he said.

Mostly, the coyotes live quiet lives, sleeping a lot and hunting together, despite making a home in a park that gets around 42 million visitors a year.

Mr. Lei and Ms. Emery, the coyote photographers, first met while birding. Their initial project together involved observing and photographing Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who lived in Central Park for a year — and about whom they wrote a book.

They can appreciate the humor in their current situation: They are a couple, often spending their evenings watching another couple.

“On Valentine’s Day, we were watching them mate,” Mr. Lei said.

Did they consider that a romantic Valentine’s Day?

Ms. Emery laughed. “It was a unique one,” she said, “where we observed a new behavior.”

Dr. Nagy hopes that, unlike Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” this love story will have a happy ending, with people accepting urban wildlife and peacefully coexisting. “Coyotes are basically in every city,” he said, “and civilization continues.”

For the next hour or so, the coyotes stayed hidden in the brush, as Shakespeare continued in the distance, with laughter and singing echoing in the otherwise quiet park. A raccoon crept across the path. Mice scampered toward the base of a tree.

An unleashed dog, wearing an illuminated collar, sniffed the air nearby. Its ears perked up. It jumped the fence and sniffed around in the grass.

The coyotes, mere feet away, remained hidden. The dog’s owner called out, and the dog jumped back over the fence and trotted after its owner, who probably had no idea how close the encounter had been.

Then, as thumping dance music signaled the “Twelfth Night” curtain call, the coyotes again emerged from the brush. They turned away from the sound of cheers and applause, heading north, into the darkness.