{"id":28846,"date":"2015-01-08T07:28:17","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T14:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=28846"},"modified":"2015-01-08T07:53:15","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T14:53:15","slug":"two-coyotes-hunting-and-the-demise-of-a-vole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/08\/two-coyotes-hunting-and-the-demise-of-a-vole\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Coyotes Hunting And The Demise Of A Vole"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago I photographed a pair of coyotes up close\u00a0as they hunted voles along the Antelope Island causeway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

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

When they’re on the island itself they usually don’t allow such a close approach but the causeway is narrow and loaded with voles so the coyotes sometimes\u00a0tolerate the nearby traffic and go about their business. I was close enough that I had to use my zoom lens for this sequence.<\/p>\n

These coyotes studiously avoided looking at me though they were keenly aware of my presence.\u00a0I had to stoop to trickery to get anything that resembled\u00a0eye contact.\u00a0Here the coyote had been looking behind it\u00a0with 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.\u00a0Though I did catch a glimpse of its eyes it isn’t really looking at\u00a0me or my pickup.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"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><\/strong><\/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

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6\/ ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 300mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Coyotes typically hunt voles by smell.\u00a0They’re very, very good at detecting the smell of vole urine near their burrows, even when covered with snow. Here both coyotes investigate a potential rodent meal under the snow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"coyote<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1\/ ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 260mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0This coyote mostly had its back to me when it snagged a plump vole but occasionally it turned slightly to give me a look at the meal going down.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/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 is soon to follow down the throat.<\/p>\n

Images like this make me appreciate the sacrifice of the vole for the greater good…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – And speaking of “dogs” – this old dog (me) is learning a new trick. Ever since I\u00a0began learning to\u00a0type in 1962 I’ve been putting two spaces between sentences but yesterday I learned that it’s proper to have only one<\/a>. Yep,\u00a0I can be\u00a0a slow learner. Hopefully this is a habit I’ll be able to break. Apologies to those of you\u00a0who have winced painfully as you’ve read my text in the past.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Two days ago I photographed a pair of coyotes up close as they hunted voles along the Antelope Island causeway.<\/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":[3,334,374],"tags":[31,401,539,98,178,316],"class_list":["post-28846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-coyotes","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-canis-latrans","tag-causeway","tag-coyote","tag-hunting","tag-voles"],"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-7vg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28846","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=28846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124282,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28846\/revisions\/124282"}],"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=28846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}