Behind the Lens

Playful coyote

We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors;
we borrow it from our children.

~Native American proverb

The image above and those shown at the end of this blog post are a series of images showing a playful coyote, presumably young based on its behavior, that were taken during one of my best wildlife outings ever. Living in the suburbs outside Boston, I don’t get to photograph larger mammals very often, but to be honest, I also don’t go out specifically looking for them either. Except this time. I had heard that there were some coyotes being seen frequently at a national wildlife refuge on the south shore of Boston, so I dragged my keister out of bed early one Sunday morning in January 2023 to go down.

It was a blustery FRIGID morning at 8^o F and what felt like hurricane-strength gusts of wind. You know the kind of day…where your snot freezes the instant you step out of your car! I spent about 2 hours exploring the refuge, seeing a lot of winter birds but no coyotes. Just as I was giving up and heading back to my car, with my eyes watering and tears frozen to my eyelashes, I came across this coyote at the transition between the marsh and a large open field. Suddenly, it was no longer cold outside! The coyote was chewing on leftover prey. Based on its behavior, I presume this was a young coyote because a few minutes later, it started throwing something into the air, which I later determined to be the dried remnants of black bird’s wing. The coyote would crouch down, slowly approach, and then pounce on it, throw it up into the air, and try to catch it mid-air, over and over and over again. This must have lasted at least 5 minutes before it decided to mosey along. What a treat to witness!