![\"coyote](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/coyote-3094b-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nNew Year’s morning on Antelope Island was a cloudy, low-light affair.\u00a0 It turned mostly sunny as we left for home in late morning and on the causeway we passed\u00a0flocks of birders on their way to the island for their first day of birding in the New Year.\u00a0 I couldn’t help but notice the irony –\u00a0us photographers who needed good light didn’t get any and the birders who don’t, did…<\/p>\n
But despite the low light I was able to\u00a0photograph\u00a0two coyote hunting techniques that I thought were interesting.<\/p>\n
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\u00a01\/800, f\/8, ISO 500,\u00a0 100-400 @ 150 mm, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n This coyote was on the edge of a large hill overlooking the frozen shoreline of the Great Salt Lake far below.\u00a0 I was very close to the animal but it was so intent on scanning the marshy area below for prey that it simply ignored me.\u00a0 At one point it stood on its hind legs with its front legs on a large, snow-covered boulder to give it an even more elevated view of the hunting grounds down below.\u00a0 I hoped that it would look back at me but it never did, though I think this pose, with just enough of the muzzle in view to show the direction the coyote was looking, well illustrates the hunting behavior.<\/p>\n I was pleasantly surprised with one element of this photo.\u00a0 I was much too close to this coyote to use my 500mm lens so I had grabbed my other 7D with the 100-400 attached and backed the zoom\u00a0down to 150mm.\u00a0 I’m so used to the extremely narrow\u00a0depth of field of the larger lens that I expected the background in this shot to be unidentifiable.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I think the shorter focal length gave me just enough depth of field to make this hunting behavior image more effective because you can identify the area being scanned by the coyote.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/6.3, ISO 640,\u00a0 100-400 @ 400 mm, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n A few minutes later we found another coyote hunting voles.\u00a0 I caught this one in mid-air as it pounced but this time it missed the vole.\u00a0 I liked the full extension of the body and the flying snow under the tail.<\/p>\n I always enjoy watching coyotes while they hunt.\u00a0 They’re very good at it and I’m often impressed by their amazing bursts of speed.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New Year’s morning on Antelope Island was a cloudy, low-light affair.\u00a0 It turned mostly sunny as we left for home in late morning and on the causeway we passed\u00a0flocks of birders on their way to the island for their first day of birding in the New Year.\u00a0 I couldn’t help but notice the irony –\u00a0us photographers who needed good light didn’t get any and the birders who don’t, did… But despite the low light I was able to\u00a0photograph\u00a0two coyote hunting techniques that I thought were interesting. \u00a0 \u00a01\/800, f\/8, ISO 500,\u00a0 100-400 @ 150 mm, natural light This coyote was on the edge of a large hill overlooking the frozen shoreline of the Great Salt Lake far below.\u00a0 I was very close to the animal but it was so intent on scanning the marshy area below for prey that it simply ignored me.\u00a0 At one point it stood on its hind legs with its front legs on a large, snow-covered boulder to give it an even more elevated view of the hunting grounds down below.\u00a0 I hoped that it would look back at me but it never did, though I think this pose, with just enough of the muzzle in view to show the direction the coyote was looking, well illustrates the hunting behavior. I was pleasantly surprised with one element of this photo.\u00a0 I was much too close to this coyote to use my 500mm lens so I had grabbed my other 7D with the 100-400 attached and backed the zoom\u00a0down to 150mm.\u00a0…<\/p>\n![\"coyote](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/coyote-3114-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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