{"id":23348,"date":"2014-04-21T05:00:26","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23348"},"modified":"2014-04-21T05:17:27","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T11:17:27","slug":"a-coyote-hunting-then-killing-and-eating-a-vole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/21\/a-coyote-hunting-then-killing-and-eating-a-vole\/","title":{"rendered":"A Coyote Hunting, Then Killing And Eating A Vole"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s nice to see coyotes and other predators on Antelope Island\u00a0hunting successfully for voles once\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

For the last year or so there’s been an apparent crash in the vole population on the island (vole populations are normally cyclic).\u00a0 I used to regularly see coyotes, raptors and even shrikes hunting them and I’d often spot the little rodents scurrying around in the sagebrush or crossing the road in front of me but such occurrences have been rare for many months now.\u00a0 Only recently have I noticed a rebound in their numbers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 160 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning as we were leaving the island we encountered this coyote hunting the causeway (while processing this shot I noticed it’s a “twofer” – there’s a bird perched behind the coyote).\u00a0 It was very close to the road and so intent on finding food that it barely glanced my way.\u00a0\u00a0Here it had located potential prey\u00a0by smell (most likely a vole) and did a little digging\u00a0for it but came up empty.\u00a0 So\u00a0the coyote\u00a0proceeded a little further\u00a0east and almost immediately…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 150 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0came up with a vole.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 150 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

At this point coyotes are in danger of being bitten.\u00a0\u00a0Those powerful little rodent teeth can make a coyote pay a dear price for its meal, something I’ve seen (and\u00a0documented<\/a>)\u00a0many times.\u00a0 It appears that the coyote\u00a0is using its incisors to grasp the prey by its front feet which puts the voles teeth dangerously close to lips, nose and tongue so…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 150 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

the coyote very quickly gave the rodent a little toss…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 150 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0and repositioned the vole…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 150 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

so it could quickly chomp down and kill the prey\u00a0with a\u00a0serious bite to the head.<\/p>\n

At this point the coyote swallowed the vole but sadly I missed much of that action.\u00a0 I was so close to the coyote that I was using my backup 7D with attached zoom lens and I had inadvertently stuck in a slower memory card so my buffer filled up at this critical point.\u00a0 So frustrating to once again make a rookie mistake!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 150 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Then the coyote continued east as it searched for another meal.<\/p>\n

I’m encouraged to see evidence of a rebound in the vole population.\u00a0 Perhaps this will soon draw more raptors to the island – they’ve been woefully scarce out there for much too long.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

It’s nice to see coyotes and other predators on Antelope Island hunting successfully for voles once again.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23353,"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":[3,334,374,392],"tags":[31,401,539,98,1976,1977,1975,315],"class_list":["post-23348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-coyotes","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-canis-latrans","tag-causeway","tag-coyote","tag-cyclic-population","tag-full-buffer","tag-population-crash","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/coyote-1227-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-64A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23348","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=23348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}