{"id":1139,"date":"2008-05-24T01:05:40","date_gmt":"2008-05-24T00:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1139"},"modified":"2013-11-20T21:48:10","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T21:48:10","slug":"three-foxes-and-a-big-surprise-in-the-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/three-foxes-and-a-big-surprise-in-the-woods\/","title":{"rendered":"Three foxes and a big surprise in the woods"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

I'm going to start with tonight so that the surprise in the woods is kept to the end. But I will say that it's nothing to do with foxes.<\/p>\n

This evening was a series of visits, starting with the dog fox. He caught me by surprise (I was at the rear of the garden looking for insect to photograph), but as ever he was happy to wander around, dig up previous caches, and pose for pictures.<\/p>\n

Posing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span> Grooming<\/span><\/p>\n

I was outside again a little later. It seemed relatively quiet until I sneezed. That brought out the nicked-ear vixen. She seems to live in one of the neighbouring gardens, so although we see less of her than we do of the dog fox this is probably her home territory. She's heavily into her summer moult, and the darker under-fur is very visible at the moment.<\/p>\n

Nicked-ear vixen<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

While I was occupied with her, the bold vixen sneaked up behind me. Foxes have this knack of appearing and disappearing without a sound, and although I should be used to it there's always something quite special about being out with two foxes just a few feet away. I was happy, but the nicked ear vixen less so. She didn't go into the extreme posturing that she offers the dog fox, but she did beat a fairly rapid retreat over the rear fence. <\/p>\n

The bold vixen<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

That was this evening. Earlier today I spent an hour by the dew pond. No dragonflies today but a good selection of beetles and bugs, including this scorpion fly.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It was when I was heading back to work that I ran into the big surprise. There have been several reports of sightings over the past week, but I was yet to see the unusual newcomer. I caught a fleeting glimpse as I was crossing the car park. He was in heavy shade on the edge of some woodland, but unmistakable for all that.
<\/span> <\/p>\n

Yes, we seem to have acquired a stray peacock. He's surprisingly difficult to see. He emerges as far as the edge of the dense undergrowth. If he retreats back into the wood he disappears from sight almost instantly, despite his size and vivid colour. Most of the shots I fired off were unusable, but I did manage another this evening when I was leaving work. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

A very surprising end to the week.<\/p>\n

Camera note: both pictures of the dog fox were taken with the Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG macro lens (the second had the 1.4x teleconverter added). The vixens were photographed with the EF70-300mm f\/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM lens. The scorpion fly was taken with the Sigma and TC combination (and external flash), and is a stack of three shots. Finally, the peacock was badly photographed with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980,4,991],"tags":[1128,232,422],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","category-foxes","category-insects-2","tag-fox","tag-insect","tag-surprise","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}