Will he, won’t he?

Will he or won't he turn up? That's the question this weekend. We haven't seen the dog fox since his second mange treatment last Sunday, and he's due a third tomorrow night. The fairly constant rain and wind no doubt has had an effect. He hates the wind, and I hate the rain so we may simply be missing each other. But at this time of year he tends to be elusive and may have found other hunting grounds. I was checking back through photos from last winter and although he appeared most nights in November, he vanished almost entirely through December and only appeared intermittently after that for a number of months. One other possibility is that he's paying close attention to a vixen as we near the mating season. A handful of sultanas can hardly compete with that!

On other fronts, I've added a photo of an extremely greedy crow in the Flying album. It's been suggested that it could in fact be a raven, but I'm not near expert enough to tell the difference. Ravens would be rare down here though.

I've also been religiously completing my 365 album which is part of a project where so far about 100 contributors are posting a photo a day for a year. There are also recent additions to the South Downs photos for any tree lovers lurking!

I just checked outside again and the sultanas have vanished, so one of the foxes is around. I'll be more vigilant tomorrow.

Tonight's picture:

Tags: , ,

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. musickna

    18 Nov 2006

    Lovely photograph – Mr. Toad at home. 🙂

  2. SittingFox

    18 Nov 2006

    Hmmm…tough one with the corvid ID. Long ago in Jasper I saw a raven perched on a roof ridge next to a magpie, and it was BIG – about three times as large! :eyes: These guys are bigger than buzzards. The heavy bill and throat feathering do look rather like a raven, though. Was it kind enough to show you its tail shape?

    Well, when I was living in East Anglia a snowy owl (a stowaway on a boat from Canada!) turned up in Felixstowe, so anything's possible 🙂

    Edit: I found you a Canadian raven from my 2004 trip for comparison 💡

  3. Words

    18 Nov 2006

    Hi SF,

    I've posted over on the Wild About Britain site to see if they can help. I suspect it'll be down to beak size. The more I look at it, the more I'm veering to 'raven'. Somewhere I used to have a WinAmp 'Raven' skin but I lost that when I changed machine. If this turns out to be the flesh and blood equivalent, I'll download it again!

    My fieldguide suggests that they don't appear in the South East, but I'm convinced there are a couple or more in London! 😉

    Edit: I'm back to thinking it's a crow. Apparently ravens are unmistakeably HUGE.

  4. SittingFox

    18 Nov 2006

    That's that myth that England will suffer a terrible evil should the ravens ever leave the Tower of London. If they've moved to the South Downs…:no:

    Size-wise, well, yes, when they're sitting next to magpies 😉 but some species have a mysterious ability to change their size at a distance, don't they.

    We've had a buzzard, hen harriers, an escaped green macaw :eyes: all sorts around here. The best thing about bird books is that birds don't write them 😀

  5. Words

    18 Nov 2006

    The consensus over on Wild About Britain is "crow". This is based on tail shape in flight in this slightly blurred photo:

  6. SittingFox

    18 Nov 2006

    Yes, ravens have wedge-shaped tails. Next time, grab a feather for DNA analysis – maybe it'll turn out to be a crow / raven hybrid 😉

Comments are closed.

Close Menu