Coachwhips have perhaps the most varied suite of foraging behavior of any North American snake. They have been seen pushing their heads into loose sand to search for sleeping lizards. Ornithologists have reported seeing coachwhips repeatedly visit a shrub where a bird was building a nest over several days, but not climb until the bird was sitting on eggs. Coachwhips have been found trying to swallow small mammals caught in snap-traps during field surveys, and seen taking bats in flight at the mouth of a cave at twilight.

Coachwhips do indeed eat birds, eggs, and nestlings along with amphibians, other reptiles including other coachwhips, reptile eggs if they find them, small mammals, meal-sized recently dead animals such as something dropped by a predatory bird, fish and even insects. If it walks or crawls and it's meat, it's going down the pie-hole.

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