I've always thought of the bosques something distinct: a seasonally flooded oasis that may have some ponds or the like near the river beds, dotting with cottonwoods. TBH, I never quite thought of it as forest proper, but...perhaps that is because I was used to the ponderosas in the Jemez and the Sangre de Cristos.

Coyotes is Northern California, at least the SF Bay Area, seem to start their howls in day time when the fire engines come down for one of the inevitable car crunches on Highway 24 as it passes through Orinda and Lafayette. I'll be about 100 yards away when they go off when I am hiking in the morning over the de la veiga trail. As you said, it was a horribly beautiful cacophony.

Interestingly, it seems as though there are two populations of coyotes here based on my personal experience. The first is what I would expect from a 'yote: about knee high (18"/45 cm), lighter coloring and the most vocal. However, there is a pack over in the Lafayette area, if you can call it a pack, that seems to be larger. They have similar coloring, but seem to be about 6" taller and they actually appear to hunt deer.

I saw one chasing a deer late night on Mt Diablo Road. It appeared to be doing what the coyotes back home used to do for cats: one chases it into a group. I didn't seem the group, but the deer ran across the street and in front of a car. The car stopped and the deer didn't so it was able to escape. The 'yote stopped in front of the car and looked at it. Then it sauntered off. I was rather surprised at the size of the canid. The coloring, as much as can be seen in car headlights, was similar to a normal coyote's. This one was just significantly bigger.