THE COYOTE AMBLED into the clearing on the first of September, a warm night lit by a thumbnail of moon. She’d spent the evening padding through juniper and pines near Colorado’s Arkansas River: snuffling after rabbits, pouncing on mice, inspecting fox scat. At precisely 10:48 p.m., she passed the Reconyx PC800 camera that I’d strapped to a ponderosa, which snapped three portraits of her lit by infrared flash — head high, eyes aglow, the embodiment of her confident, curious species.
I learned about the coyote over a month later, when I retrieved the Reconyx and downloaded its photos. It was among eight cameras I’d set for Snapshot USA, a nationwide census of mammals with around 150 participants, most affiliated with universities or nonprofits. For two months, we canvassed forests, wetlands, deserts, prairies, urban parks — anywhere a deer might set hoof or a
