Tag Archives: Fox

Natural History

A touch of winter at Wraysbury

Kestrel hovering over Wraysbury
Kestrel hovering over Wraysbury, under a wintry sky

Winter showed her wizened hand today. The bright sunshine of the morning quickly gave way to cloud under a chilly northerly wind. Zipping up my coat, I wondered if I’d see anything worth remarking, and plodded up the path in the flat light. I looked left at the river Colne, and a plump Water Vole splash-dived among some juicy Iris leaves that I guess it had been cutting. Once a common enough sighting, it’s now something very special.

The main lake was almost devoid of birds, a distant swan, a few black-headed gulls and a coot or two more or less summing it up, a dull day (apart from the vole). I rounded a bend and came face to face with a very fresh-faced, brightly-coloured fox. It stared at me for a glorious second, then turned tail and fled. Given the long narrow neck of land between the river and the lake, it must have run quite a way to escape.

Fungal mycelium in newly-fallen Willow trunk
Fungal mycelium in newly-fallen Willow trunk

Not much further, a riverside willow had fallen on to an ancient hawthorn, forming a striking arch. The broken trunk was quite hollow, only a couple of inches of the newest wood remaining as a thin fragile tube. These large trees grow rapidly to a considerable size — and suddenly fall. The wood is soft, and it seems that saprophytic fungi (or perhaps parasitic) can speedily destroy it. This tree was layered with a dry papery sheet of whitish mycelium, presumably whatever species it was that rotted the trunk hollow.

A dark brown Buzzard, almost without markings, floated broad-winged just above the small lakeside trees, almost close enough to touch.

Beside me, the lake suddenly exploded into a mass of pattering feet on water, as a dozen Gadwall rushed to take off. Perhaps these newly-arrived birds are from the frozen north, unused to the slightest human disturbance.

The end of the lake held a score of Tufted Duck, their numbers too increasing rapidly now, again presumably from colder lands to the north or east.

At the steel bridge, a Bullfinch repeated its insistent call, Deu, Deu. And over the grassy meadow, a Kestrel floated silently, hovered, drifted effortlessly upwind to hover again.

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

Animal Tracks in the Snow

Animal tracks: Fox, Crow, and Squirrel prints on a snowy boardwalk
Animal tracks: Fox, Crow, and Squirrel prints on a snowy boardwalk

Today we woke to a snow-covered city, just a light dusting; and as often with snow, the weather was appreciably warmer than before the snow arrived.

Down at the nature reserve,  the paths were empty of human footprints, but thickly sprinkled with animal tracks. Here some crows had walked to and fro across the path; there, a fox had jogged along the trail. But better was to come: the boardwalk across the pond was interlaced with tracks. On the left, a fox had gone the length of the boardwalk. In the centre, a crow had walked unsteadily along, the same way as me; and it, or another, had walked more rapidly back. On the right, more birds’ footprints: and the four-feet-together group of a squirrel, the smaller front prints clearly showing the marks of the sharp claws.

On a Birch branch above the anthill meadow, a Green Woodpecker hammered in search of food. Down by the ‘mangrove swamp’, a Jay screeched harshly, either for us or for a fox. Near the picnic meadow, a Sparrowhawk flew from its high perch, wheeled above the treetops, dived rapidly out of sight.

We carried tools and a ladder to visit the nestboxes and take down all that needed repairs. While I held the ladder, a party of four Long-Tailed Tits blew by, crossing from one Birch to the next one at a time. One of the boxes contained not just a mossy nest (like three others) but two old addled eggs, probably of Great Tit. While we struggled to prise off a somewhat too well attached box for maintenance, a Robin perched nearby, in hope of eating any grubs we might have disturbed. Several boxes had had their openings enlarged by much hammering by Blue Tits or Great Tits: nobody knows why they might do this, as it increases the threat to their nests from predators. We will make aluminium plates for the fronts of all the Tit boxes (the ones with circular holes): the Robin boxes just have a wide rectangular opening, which they definitely prefer. Inside one of the boxes was a mass of woodlice in the moss; another had a plump dead Noble False Widow Spider (Steatoda nobilis) inside.

Wildlife

Fashionable Urban Foxy Lady

At 3 am these last few nights, the streets round here have echoed to a series of brief, hoarse barks. You might think it some kind of dog, and you’d be right: it is a fox, or rather a vixen*, barking, either to advertise her presence to males, or it seems to hurry her cubs along.

What the urban foxes live on is easy enough to discover: anyone who incautiously leaves out a bin bag for collection overnight, finds it ripped to shreds in the morning, the inedible wrappers scattered about the street, any juicy bits of meaty leftovers or chicken carcases devoured.

Fox footprints on a car bonnet
Fox footprints on a car bonnet

The foxy ladies aren’t averse to a bit of motoring, either, or at least to clambering all over cars to have a good look at something. As to whether the vixens are fashionable or chic, I’ll leave that to the dog foxes to decide.

* I suppose this odd-seeming word for a female fox has some connection to German Füchse(n), vixen, via Old English.