{"id":124283,"date":"2022-11-26T03:44:11","date_gmt":"2022-11-26T10:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=124283"},"modified":"2022-11-26T03:44:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-26T10:44:11","slug":"two-coyotes-hunting-and-the-last-moments-of-a-vole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/26\/two-coyotes-hunting-and-the-last-moments-of-a-vole\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Coyotes Hunting And The Last Moments Of A Vole"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I rerun an older post that most current blog followers have never seen. This one was published just short of eight years ago. For this version I’ve edited the text, tweaked the formatting and changed the title.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I photographed this pair of coyotes up close as they hunted voles along the Antelope Island causeway.<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1\/ ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 310mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When they’re on the island itself coyotes usually don’t allow such a close approach but the causeway is narrow and loaded with voles so the coyotes sometimes tolerate the nearby traffic and go about their business. I was close enough that I had to use my smaller zoom lens for this sequence.<\/p>\n

Both coyotes studiously avoided looking at me, though they were keenly aware of my presence. I had to stoop to trickery to get anything that resembled eye contact. Here the coyote had been looking behind it with its head turned backward to my right. In order to get a look at its eyes I deliberately timed a burst of shots as it was in the process of turning its head to look forward again. I did catch a glimpse of its eyes but it isn’t really looking at me or my pickup.<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1\/ ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 390mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0This is the other coyote. I recognize this one because of the distinctive Z-shaped scar on top of its snout.\u00a0I sometimes call this coyote Zorro.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6\/ ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 300mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Coyotes typically hunt voles by smell. They’re very, very good at detecting the smell of vole urine near their burrows, even when covered with snow. Here both coyotes are investigating a potential rodent meal under the snow.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/7.1\/ ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 260mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This coyote mostly had its back to me when it snagged a plump vole from beneath the snow but occasionally, while it was chomping it down, the coyote turned slightly to give me a look at the rodent as it was about to go down the chute.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

A large crop of the same image reveals that it almost looks like the vole is standing up on the floor of the coyotes mouth and investigating the path that it was about to follow down the throat.<\/p>\n

Photos like this one make me appreciate the involuntary sacrifice many voles make for the greater good.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PS – And speaking of “dogs” – beginning with today’s post his old dog (me) is attempting to learn a new trick. Ever since I began learning to type in high school in 1961 I’ve been putting two spaces between sentences but yesterday (1\/7\/15) I learned that it’s now proper to have only one<\/a><\/span><\/span>. Yep,\u00a0I can be\u00a0a slow learner. <\/em><\/p>\n

Hopefully this is a habit I’ll be able to break. Apologies to those of you who have winced painfully as you’ve read my blog posts in the past.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And attempting to break a very old habit. (5 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,374,8,392],"tags":[31,401,98,6629,311,315],"class_list":["post-124283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-coyotes","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-canis-latrans","tag-coyote","tag-how-many-spaces-between-sentences","tag-utah-2","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/coyote-5001b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-wkz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124283"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124328,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124283\/revisions\/124328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}