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A Cape Cod Notebook can be heard every Tuesday morning at 8:45am and afternoon at 5:45pm.It's commentary on the unique people, wildlife, and environment of our coastal region.A Cape Cod Notebook commentators include:Robert Finch, a nature writer living in Wellfleet who created, 'A Cape Cod Notebook.' It won the 2006 New England Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Radio Writing.

Not Your Everyday Encounter: Meeting a Coyote Among the Wild Blueberries

Renée Johnson / flickr

This is the peak week for wild blueberries on our part of the Cape. So after lunch my dog Sam and I head to the open, bearberry-and–crowberry-covered hills of Bound Brook Island Once we emerge from the woods and out onto the open ridge overlooking Cape Cod Bay, thick blueberries line both sides of the path. There seem to be three distinct types of berries here: one is a true low-bush variety that hugs the ground. It has small light green leaves about 1 inch long, with finely serrated edges and produces large, dusty-blue fruit, averaging a quarter inch or more in diameter. The second type is a higher variety, some 9 to 12 inches tall, with longer, slimmer and more coarsely serrated leaves. Its fruit is much darker, almost blue-black – more like huckleberries.

The third type is higher still, up to eighteen inches tall, a kind of low highbush variety with even longer leaves – coarser, shinier, and darker - and totally black fruit.

It’s a perfect day for blueberry picking. The open sunlight and southwest breeze keep away most of the mosquitoes. The baby blue waters of the bay seem infused with an inner light of their own, and in the distance the unmistakable silhouette of the Provincetown skyline shimmers like an enchanted city. It seems too much, but it’s true nonetheless, that some of the best blueberry picking on the Cape is located in one of the most beautiful spots on the Cape. I pick nearly a quart in less than thirty minutes.

As I’m about to head back, Sam suddenly begins barking at something on the ridge to the south. Looking up I see, about a hundred yards off, the large unmistakable outline of a coyote. Even at that distance I can tell that its gaze is clearly on us. I suspect that he has been taking berries, too.  No doubt he saw us first, as the wind is from the southwest, in his favor.  He stands in profile, his head turned toward us with a steady, confident gaze, not so much curious as wondering if he should be bothered to be annoyed. He seems to inhabit a gray form surrounded by an aura of tawny, almost golden fur. Through my binoculars I can see the watery blue-gray eyes, the reddish legs, and the long flat tail raised nearly parallel to the ground. We stand looking at each other a long time. I cannot remember the last tine I have been looked at so unannounced, so focused, so piercingly.

Then, lowering his large tail, the coyote drifts calmly off to the east in a long, slow, unhurried pad, stopping once at the edge of the woods to give us a parting gaze, as if to let us know he will return once we leave.

Robert Finch is a nature writer living in Wellfleet. 'A Cape Cod Notebook' won the 2006 New England Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Radio Writing.