Coyotes Grazing On Grass
Please don’t expect great photography with this post. My purpose here is simply to document an interesting behavior. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years observing coyotes and I’ve seen them eat a variety of rodents (especially voles), birds and carrion but yesterday on Antelope Island I observed something new – grazing coyotes! I found a group of four of them on a steep hillside next to the road and they were very definitely eating grass. I’ll simply let these images speak for themselves. This was the only half-way decent image I was able to get with my 500mm that included all four coyotes. I guess the thought of coyotes eating grass is just something I’d never considered before but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Most domestic dog owners are well aware that their pets occasionally eat grass. Studies have shown that grass appears in 14 – 43% of all wolf scat in North America and grass in coyote and fox scat is so common as to be unremarkable. I watched as three of these four coyotes consumed grass and I suspect the fourth one was doing the same but it was mostly hidden behind sagebrush so I couldn’t be sure. There is just something so very incongruous about a group of canine carnivores slowly moving across a hillside while grazing on grass, like a herd of bison or elk. I thought it was an interesting behavioral display. Ron