{"id":28671,"date":"2014-12-30T06:45:16","date_gmt":"2014-12-30T13:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=28671"},"modified":"2014-12-30T07:40:44","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T14:40:44","slug":"coyote-and-magpies-scavenging-a-deer-carcass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/coyote-and-magpies-scavenging-a-deer-carcass\/","title":{"rendered":"Coyote and Magpies Scavenging A Deer Carcass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday\u00a0was a good day for some of the scavengers on Antelope Island.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"jackrabbits<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 170mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lower parts of the island had been virtually snowless the day before but overnight about 7″ of fresh snow fell and I was the first one to plow through it on most of the roads.\u00a0 You can see by the drag marks in-between the tracks that the snow was deep enough\u00a0that many vehicles were pushing snow in front of them. \u00a0 Jackrabbits find it tough going through that much snow so they love to follow the tracks.\u00a0 I include this photo partly so you can see what shooting conditions were like, especially early on.\u00a0 It was cloudy with relatively low light so once again I was shooting at\u00a0high ISO’s.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,\u00a0 Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc\u00a0, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first time I approached this deer carcass there were two coyotes feeding on it but they soon ran off carrying some of the spoils.\u00a0 Later we found\u00a0this lone coyote\u00a0feeding on the unexpected bounty .\u00a0 This coyote was extremely nervous and wary.\u00a0 It kept a sharp lookout in all directions and jumped and ran off a few yards at the slightest perceived indication of potential danger.\u00a0 It wasn’t nervous about my presence on the road so I’m pretty sure it was afraid that the original two coyotes would return.\u00a0 Coyote fights over food can be vicious.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D,\u00a0 Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc\u00a0, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Magpies probably consumed more of the carcass than the coyotes did.\u00a0 The coyote and the birds mostly ignored each other but a couple of times the coyote rushed at the birds to flush them off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,\u00a0 Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc\u00a0, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0It surprised me a little\u00a0that the coyote spent most of its time feeding on the head of the buck while the magpies were busy at the body.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D,\u00a0 Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc\u00a0, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

At times you could barely see the carcass for the magpies.\u00a0 There were sometimes twice this many on it but they were difficult to photograph in these conditions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,\u00a0 Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc\u00a0, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The magpies had so much food available that they didn’t seem to know what to do with it all.\u00a0 They would gorge themselves at the carcass and then fly to a nearby perch in groups to rest for a few minutes and then return to the deer and have at it again.\u00a0 Many of the magpies flew off with food scraps (caching them perhaps) and individuals sometimes landed very close to my pickup with those scraps in their bills.\u00a0 Sometimes the food item was just a small piece of flesh but occasionally…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,\u00a0 Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc\u00a0, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0one of them was carrying very large scraps like this piece of frozen\u00a0hide and hair.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,\u00a0 Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc\u00a0, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love the shape of the magpies tail when it’s fully flared like this though I wish I had a catch light and the antler tine wasn’t poking into its head.<\/p>\n

I have no idea why this buck died but I’ll admit to some curiosity about it.\u00a0 There are no predators on the island that would be likely to\u00a0take down a healthy buck so perhaps it had some health issues and was winter-killed.\u00a0 And as long as this fine animal had to die I’m glad the coyotes, ravens and magpies benefited from its demise.<\/p>\n

Scavengers have to\u00a0eat too…<\/p>\n

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

Yesterday was a good day for some of the scavengers on Antelope Island.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28678,"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":[3,334,363,374],"tags":[57,1733,2223,98,2138,2360,311],"class_list":["post-28671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","category-coyotes","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-black-billed-magpiei","tag-cache-food","tag-coyote","tag-jackrabbit","tag-scavengers","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/coyote-9524-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7sr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28671","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=28671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}