{"id":7690,"date":"2012-09-15T07:01:12","date_gmt":"2012-09-15T13:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=7690"},"modified":"2012-09-15T10:27:45","modified_gmt":"2012-09-15T16:27:45","slug":"coyotes-grazing-on-grass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/15\/coyotes-grazing-on-grass\/","title":{"rendered":"Coyotes Grazing On Grass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Please don’t expect great photography with this post.\u00a0 My purpose here is simply to document an interesting behavior.<\/p>\n

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years observing coyotes and I’ve seen them eat a variety of rodents (especially voles), birds and carrion but yesterday on Antelope Island I observed something new – grazing coyotes!\u00a0 I found a group of four of them on a steep hillside next to the road and they were very definitely eating grass.<\/p>\n

I’ll simply let these images speak for themselves.<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

This was the only half-way decent image I was able to get with my 500mm that included all four coyotes.<\/p>\n

I guess the thought of coyotes eating grass is just something I’d never considered before but I shouldn’t have been surprised.\u00a0 Most domestic dog owners are well aware that their pets occasionally eat grass.\u00a0 Studies have shown that grass appears in 14 – 43% of all wolf scat in North America and grass in coyote and fox scat is so common as to be unremarkable.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0watched as\u00a0three of these four coyotes\u00a0consumed grass and I suspect the fourth one was doing the same but it was mostly hidden behind sagebrush so I couldn’t be sure.\u00a0 There is just something so very incongruous about a group of canine carnivores slowly\u00a0moving across a hillside while grazing on grass, like a herd of bison or elk.<\/p>\n

I thought it was an interesting behavioral display.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Please don’t expect great photography with this post.\u00a0 My purpose here is simply to document an interesting behavior. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years observing coyotes and I’ve seen them eat a variety of rodents (especially voles), birds and carrion but yesterday on Antelope Island I observed something new – grazing coyotes!\u00a0 I found a group of four of them on a steep hillside next to the road and they were very definitely eating grass. I’ll simply let these images speak for themselves.                       This was the only half-way decent image I was able to get with my 500mm that included all four coyotes. I guess the thought of coyotes eating grass is just something I’d never considered before but I shouldn’t have been surprised.\u00a0 Most domestic dog owners are well aware that their pets occasionally eat grass.\u00a0 Studies have shown that grass appears in 14 – 43% of all wolf scat in North America and grass in coyote and fox scat is so common as to be unremarkable. I\u00a0watched as\u00a0three of these four coyotes\u00a0consumed grass and I suspect the fourth one was doing the same but it was mostly hidden behind sagebrush so I couldn’t be sure.\u00a0 There is just something so very incongruous about a group of canine carnivores slowly\u00a0moving across a hillside while grazing on grass, like a herd of bison or elk. I thought it was an interesting behavioral display. Ron  <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,374],"tags":[31,401,98,107,845,846,267,311],"class_list":["post-7690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-coyotes","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-canis-latrans","tag-coyote","tag-diet","tag-eating-grass","tag-grazing","tag-ron-dudley","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-202","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7690","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=7690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}