We Know Less About Coyotes Than I Would Have Guessed:  Mostly because they are so elusive.

Coyotes have managed to elude much serious scrutiny by being exquisitely wary, so much so that even dedicated coyote scientists can struggle to find ways to lay eyes on them, not to mention hands. Dr. Laura Prugh, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said trying to survey a population of coyotes in Alaska was "like working with a ghost species."  To even have a chance of catching a coyote, she said, traps must be boiled to wash away human scent, handled with gloves and then hidden extremely carefully with all traces of human footprints brushed away.  Even then, the trap is likely to catch only the youngest and most inexperienced of animals.

(They may be so wary in part because we killed the ones that weren't, for many years.)

There's much more in this Wikipedia article, including this:

Coyotes thrive in suburban settings and even some urban ones.  A study by wildlife ecologists at Ohio State University yielded some surprising findings in this regard.  Researchers studied coyote populations in Chicago over a seven-year period (2000—2007), proposing that coyotes have adapted well to living in densely populated urban environments while avoiding contact with humans.  They found, among other things, that urban coyotes tend to live longer than their rural counterparts, kill rodents and small pets, and live anywhere from parks to industrial areas.  The researchers estimate that there are up to 2,000 coyotes living in "the greater Chicago area" and that this circumstance may well apply to many other urban landscapes in North America.

Pretty amazing, even when you remember that "greater Chicago" includes suburbs and exurbs, as well as the big city.

The Times article includes a description of coyote sounds; here's a brief sound clip if you would like to hear some of the sounds Carol Yoon describes so vividly.