Wednesday 5 May 2010

My Local foxes

Last night I went back to the spot where I had seen the foxes last and there was already a young fox about searching for food. This made it a bit difficult to get into position without spooking him but i managed to hide behind a fence line.



I have been very lucky to get permission to go onto some private land next to the farm land where the foxes live. I moved along the fence line, removing the camera from the tripod in hope that I would be able to crawl along the ground to a nearby bank that would give me cover and get me a lot closer. As I started to open the gate another larger fox appeared so I stopped and leaned against the fence.



This larger fox was obviously the dominant fox in the area as the fox I had been watching slunk to the ground and didn't move. He acted very submissively towards the larger fox and looked quite nervous. The larger fox walked around and around the other fox marking his territory everywhere before searching what food he could find.



The light had already gone so my shutter speeds were quite low and again had to use a high iso speed. I was shooting at around 1/30 sec but was hoping for some better images. Here is a selection of them.









The farmer is not keen on foxes and last year joked with a friend of mine that he had already killed 30+ foxes by May last year. This means I have to be very careful, the last time I saw the fox he was in the field near to where the farmer keeps chickens and not long after I started to shoot the fox I heard the farmers quad bike start up. I don't know whether he saw the fox or saw me but luckily the fox heard it too and was off like a shot.

2 comments:

  1. These are awesome, Paul! what a fantastic encounter! interesting too that you were able to see the interaction between the two, and the clear dominance of one over the other.

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  2. Thanks Pat. We had 4 foxes last night but they all seemed to treat each other as equals.

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