In most American cities, coyotes have become a familiar part of the surroundings. They are extremely beneficial in keeping away rodents and acting as a nice prop for photos. Generally, coyotes are scared of human beings. But as they colonize the human habitats regularly, they become less afraid and more aggressive towards humans.
Coyotes are also dangerous for your canine and feline friends. There are numerous ways of keeping coyotes away, light being one of them. So will lights keep coyotes away from your human surroundings? In this article, we will discuss whether lights are effective in keeping coyotes away and if yes, then which lights are suitable for this purpose.
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Will Lights Keep Coyotes Away?
Yes, lights are a great way of keeping coyotes away from your home. However, it’s very important to choose the right kind of lights designed for such purposes. It is because normal lights that you often use to illuminate the porch of your home aren’t as effective for scaring away coyotes. Besides choosing the right kind of light, another important thing to keep the coyotes away from your home is to ensure that there are no food items in your porch or garden that may attract the coyotes.
Do Lights Scare the Coyotes?
Yes, light scares the coyotes away from your home, only if you are using motion-sensitive lights like strobe lights and predator-deterrent lights. On the other hand, porch lights do not cause any motion-sensitive action. Therefore, porch lights are effective in scaring the coyotes only if the coyotes approaching your surroundings are adapted to living and hunting in the dark. If the coyotes are adapted to the kind of porch lights and there is enough food to tempt them, then you will need to either change the lights or use the existing lights with some other way of scaring them.
In addition to this, floodlights are much more effective than porch lights in scaring away the coyotes from your home. It’s because floodlights are brighter than the normal porch lights. This is just another temporary solution as the coyotes may learn to hunt in these lights as well. Besides the kind of lights, the color of lights plays an equally important role in determining whether the lights in your home will help keep the coyotes away.
Red lights are not really good for scaring off the coyotes, despite the fact that most predator-deterrent lights are red-colored. It is because the red color appears to be very dark to coyotes. Since coyotes perceive all the colors in the shades of yellow and blue, the red color doesn’t seem to be a danger for coyotes. On the other hand, the green light is effective in doing the task for you.
What Lights to use to Keep Coyotes Away
Some lights like strobe lights help to keep coyotes away from your house. These lights work by emitting a kind of light beam that keeps the coyotes away. Let’s check them out.
Strobe Lights
During a research when strobe lights were used in combination with fearful sounds to scare the coyotes, it was found that the combination was a great way to keep the coyotes away from the area in observation. Even strobe lights alone were enough to deter the coyotes away from the food. However, during the same experiment with the sound as the only source of stimulus, it wasn’t much effective as they became adapted to it after some time.
Predator-Deterrent Lights
Predator-deterrent lights are another great option for keeping the coyotes away. Not only are these lights effective in scaring away the coyotes, but also other animals like deers and raccoons. These lights work by tapping into the instincts of the coyotes and other animals and making them believe that predators are approaching them. With this fear of being caught by another hunting animal, they retreat to their homes and safe habitats. These are much more effective as they mimic the lights reflecting from the predators of coyotes like mountain lions and wolves. Since coyotes are naturally conditioned to be scared of their predators, they will never become adapted to these predator-deterrent lights.
It is important to keep enough predator-deterrent lights around your home and a certain distance above the ground to effectively do the job for you. The predator-deterrent lights must be placed about twenty to thirty inches above the ground. Also, it is important to keep each of the lights at least a hundred to two hundred feet apart from each other.
10 Tips for Keeping Coyotes Away
- Do not ever feed coyotes intentionally.
- Never keep any kind of food outside in the porch or garden, not even pet food.
- Always keep the garbage covered and if possible, get it picked by the garbage collector in the morning, rather than in the evening.
- Never add meat or bones to the compost pit. Keep it covered.
- Keep your feline and canine family member indoors. It is because your pets are a delicious treat to the coyotes.
- Do not welcome the coyotes anywhere in your neighborhood. You should always chase them away.
- If you have a fruit tree in the backyard or porch, always pick up the fallen fruits as they can attract coyotes.
- Be aware of a coyote following you or your pet to the neighborhood. If there is any coyote behind you, wave your hand up and appear to be large to scare them away.
- Keep a soda bottle filled with coins or whistles to make fearful noise that scares the coyotes away.
- Place rocks or branches around your garbage bins and compost pits to scare the coyotes away.
Conclusion
Coyotes will become use to regular lights such as porch lights and flood lights making them increasingly less effective at scaring them away. Therfor, it’s better to use strobe lights and predater-deterrant lights to scare away coyotes. Avoid using red lights as these are less effective on coyotes