Category Archives: Foxes

A collection of foxes

Foxes Mating

After a decade of photos and trail cameras I found my first image of mating foxes on the most recent set of trail cam videos. The video itself was woefully over-exposed and almost pure white. I almost missed it when I was scanning the footage (literally a white screen with the barest flicker of movement on it).

It was captured at the time of day when the camera stays on night-infra red mode, but there is sufficient light for everything to burn out. It only captured a few seconds. None of my video editing tools would cope with the exposure problems, but I was able to play around with it just enough extract a frame as a still. I then had to force the contrasts to an extreme level to get a viewable image.

Foxes mating, extracted from trail cam video

Also posted in Behaviour

That Rarest Thing, a Fox

Or to be exact… two foxes. Just quick shots taken in the garden last night, but the first I’ve managed of foxes in quite a long while. Two different foxes (a bonus!), both cautious about coming too far forward; and I was equally circumspect, keeping still at the other end of the garden and risking just one photo of each. The distance creates the eye-shine, which is a little extreme in the second photo. Both looked in fine fettle, with healthy winter coats developing.

Fox number one peering out from behind a garden bush.

Fox number one peering out from behind a garden bush.

Fox in garden

Fox number two, with a nicked ear, stayed further back, but stayed there for a couple of minutes. Progress!

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM lens.

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El Zorro

El_Zorro___DISPO_55e5e45f398d2A real treat arrived in the post for me today. The Spanish edition of Joan Burrell and Isabel Mate‘s (both of the University of Barcelona) academic monograph on the fox, El Zorro. Sadly, it’s in Spanish so I can’t read it, but the book spans some 400 pages on the evolution, ecology, biology, behaviours and cultural significance of the red fox. A previous version appeared in Catalan under the title La Guineu a Catalunya’ (I couldn’t read that one either).

The new edition is even more extensively illustrated than the first, and includes 21 of my photos among the nearly 200 photos and illustrations. The full contents of the book for those who can read Spanish is on ResearchGate.

This is a book that absolutely needs a UK publisher to translate.

El Zorro is published by Tundra in the Monografias Zooligicas – Serie Iberica (volumen 3)

 

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