Coyote hunting

At noon on Sunday, I watched a coyote hunting in a large field of snow. I saw it pounce, dig in the snow, and come up with something in its mouth (right). It is likely that it caught a vole. Voles run around under the snow gathering food, and the coyote would be able to listen for them and know where to dig.

I knew about this behaviour, but had never seen it before. I had been running an errand, but had allocated enough time to stop if I saw something interesting beside the road. This was it. This coyote clearly merited taking out a tripod and a longer lens. As I measured it later (using Google Earth), the distance to the animal was about 300 meters.

The Kootenay Lake website offers more pictures of local coyotes.

The sequence of pictures (below) shows the results. They are not superb, but the behaviour was fun to watch. The coyote first looked around (but, did not notice me); it listened intently to something under the snow; it pounced; it dug; it came up empty. I did not see it catch another vole, and eventually we each wandered away.