224 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



feed greedily upon figs and prunes that fall to the ground, and at cer- 

 tain times of the year feed "entirely upon grapes in one locality, melons 

 in another, figs in another and prunes in another," damaging the date 

 crop in the Imperial Valley, and using manzanita berries as their prin- 

 cipal food where they abound. 19 "In one instance in the Morino Valley, 

 Riverside County, these animals cleaned up the entire crop of melons. 

 . . . Coyotes have frequently been known to take practically every 

 bunch of grapes in small vineyards." 20 One stomach contained plums 

 and another contained mesquite beans. 21 Many writers testify to their 

 fruit-and-melon eating habit. A trapper informed us that coyotes are 

 especially fond of green corn and demonstrated it the same evening by 

 catching a coyote in a trap baited with an ear of corn, within 100 yards 

 of a camp. 



In balancing the evil and beneficial habits of the coyote one fact 

 must not be overlooked. It is notably a carrion eater. Hence the dis- 

 covery of a coyote eating a dead domestic animal or the finding of 

 horse or cow hair or sheep wool in a coyote stomach does not prove 

 that the coyote has killed one of those animals. After stating that car- 

 rion in a stomach may be distinguished from meat eaten while fresh, 

 Dixon says: "After impartial study I have come to the conclusion that 

 one-half of the domestic stock, one-fourth of the game and one-eighth 

 of the rodents found in coyotes represent carrion and not animals the 

 coyotes themselves killed." He reports that rodents were found in 47 

 stomachs, domestic stock in 70, game in 53, fruit in 10, fish in i, insects 

 in 5 . 22 



Of the Texas coyote (Canis nebrascensis texensis) Bailey says: 



The bulk of his food the year round consists of rabbits, prairie-dogs, ground 

 squirrels, wood rats, mice and all the small rodents that come his way. An 

 unusual increase in jack rabbits in any region is always followed by a corre- 

 sponding influx of coyotes, which probably accounts in part for the often 

 observed fact that in the years following their maximum abundance jack rab- 

 bits are unusually scarce. At times the food of the coyote consists largely 

 of fruit, including that of several species of cactus, juniper and forestieria 

 berries, persimmons and the sugary pods of mesquite; but in times of scarcity 



19 Poole, Coyotes not strictly carnivorous, California Fish and Game, xiv, 151, 

 1928. 



20 Coyotes damage fruit crops in southern California, California Fish and Game, 

 x 94-95, 1924; Weekly News Letter, U. S. Dept. Agric., Jan. 26, 1924; Warren, 

 Mammals of Colorado, p. 248, 1910. 



21 Lantz, U. S. Biol. Surv. Bull No. 20, 1905. 



22 Dixon, Food predilections of predatory and fur-bearing mammals, Journ. 

 Mammalogy, vi, 39-40, 1925. 



