As we approach Valentine’s Day, people aren’t the only Boston residents looking for love. From now through March coyotes are in their mating season, meaning sightings of the animals will be more common throughout the city.

Alexis Trzcinski, director of Boston Animal Care and Control, says that the department receives calls about coyotes regularly throughout the year, but uptick of those calls during mating season and a few months after.

“Coyotes are highly versatile animals. They adjust well to most environments. In the city and urban environments, they have access to adequate food sources, shelter and water,” she said. “They’re opportunistic, so they’ll take advantage of unsecured trash, rodents sometimes even people’s small pets.”

Because of their adaptability, Trzcinski says that coyotes can be found in most neighborhoods in Boston including, while less common, the downtown area. Around this time last year, sightings of the animals in Back Bay and the South End circulated on social media.

They have also been spotted around the more than 1,100 acres of the Emerald Necklace system of parks, which provides diverse terrain fit for many types of animals, including coyotes.

“It’s hard exactly to know because I’m sure people are seeing tons of things that they’re not necessarily reporting,” said Jack Schleifer, field operations manager at the Emerald Necklace Conservancy. “But I can say that we get calls occasionally, maybe once a month or so maybe a bit more frequently, to our visitors center.”

Those calls range from concern, often people with small dogs checking to ensure that things are safe, to excitement, people checking in to let them know that they saw something cool. Schleifer himself has seen one or two while out in the field in his three years of working at the conservancy.

Schleifer added that coyotes have been living in the area for quite a long time and participate in the ecosystem. Coyotes now fill an ecological niche left vacant by other, larger, predators formerly present in the area.

During the mating season coyotes go out to look for partners and then places to den, making them more visible throughout the city. The higher influx of sightings reported to the city usually tapers off after May, said Trzcinski.

They can also be more territorial during this time, Trzcinski added, increasing the potential for conflict with dogs and other small animals.

“Coyotes rarely represent a risk to human beings, they tend to shy away from us, and we recommend that people see them, haze them,” she said. “Let them know that they’re not welcome in your space.”

Hazing can include yelling, spraying them with a hose, tossing something in their general direction, and doing these things thoroughly until they go away. Trzcinski said that it’s important to establish a natural aversion to humans, because the most sustainable way to coexist is to prevent any kind of conflict in the first place.

In addition to scaring them away, removing access to food, water and shelter, securing trash and keeping pets on a leash or otherwise in the house are also important in preventing conflict, she said. If a coyote appears to be sick or injured, you should call Animal Care and Control.

Schleifer couldn’t estimate how many coyotes might be living in the Emerald Necklace, but that a species density survey might be something to investigate in the future.