The habit of many wild species of being most active at dawn and dusk is something of a mixed blessing from a photography perspective. The colours are often at their richest when the sun is close to the horizon, but the overall light levels are often quite low, which isn't a help when you're targeting fast moving, shy creatures. But I'm still glad to catch a fox with the evening light on its back





Of course, sometimes a silhouette can tell a full story - no colours or detail required!

Robin with prey



Bird activity is quite high right now - I saw four or so blackcaps on my last walk - but the dense spring foliage makes photography quite hard. Unless the bird perches on a wire:

Dunnock



...or is swimming across a pond...

Great crested grebe



...or is visiting the garden...

Bullfinch



...or is something that you just have to photograph even if it's a very, very, very, long way off!

Female sparrowhawk



She was circling over a distant copse; I caught a glimpse of her while scanning the meadows for foxes. The weather has been extremely pleasant recently which has, not unreasonably, encouraged a lot more people than usual to try out the walking trails around here. If this continues, I might have to resort to getting up at 6am to avoid the crowds and find the shyer wildlife!

The magpie is to the fox what the raven is to the wolf: ever-present thief, playmate, annoyance, and herald. They are intelligent. They are adaptable. They must have realised from the first instant that foxes set foot in the North Downs that a land-bound creature worth dogging had entered their world, and now they pester them, daily, with clinging curiosity; foxes pull magpies in their wake like gulls after a tractor

But only rarely do I witness an interaction quite as remarkable as this


__

Spring brings more changes to nature, of course, than just flowers and baby animals. Foxes slim down en masse as their winter fur falls out and their sleek summer coat takes its place. It seems to make them rather itchy. Well, that, and perhaps an invertebrate "passenger" or two



I saw three foxes on my walk this afternoon: the one above having a scratch, a second who disappeared very quickly, and this one, a little vixen wandering about with the horses.



She was the picture of spring health



She wasn't obviously hunting, but she seemed to eat something after sniffing at this tussock clump.



A magpie took an interest in her soon after, but she kept heading closer to the lane where I was standing on just the other side of the fence. I hesitated, not wanting to startle her, but she pre-empted my flight by flattening herself down in the grass. She didn't seem overly concerned, however.



The magpie certainly didn't worry itself about me - clearly it had more important things to think about!



Notwithstanding the fact that magpies have wings, which foxes are not blessed with, it seemed to be putting itself at considerable risk Though, thinking back to how the SV and the Scraggly Vixen were attacked quite viciously by magpies in the garden last year, my first assumption was that this magpie was actually on the warpath. But the vixen didn't appear to think so at all.



It kept taking nips at her back. Removing something - possibly loose fur for nestbuilding, although magpies are more famous for putting shiny stolen objects in their nests. I think that this one was actually removing fleas or ticks from the fox.



An unlikely partnership! It is commonplace to see oxpeckers and other small birds tending to antelope and other large animals in this way, but the size difference between a fox and a magpie is much less marked, and being that foxes are predators that are quite capable of killing a large bird, there must be some level of understanding between the two.



But I wonder how long their truce will last!

Our local mammals have changed... The dates given below refer, as much as possible, to south-eastern England. They are, of course, somewhat approximate.

Aurochs
Bos primigenius
Extinct - Bronze Age

This very large relation of the bison was the ancestor of our domestic cattle, but it died out in England long ago. It disappeared from the planet altogether in the 17th century.



Brown bear
Ursus arctos
Extinct - Roman times

Yes, this is a photo of a Canadian grizzly European brown bears are smaller, but they are the same species. There are still a handful left in France.



Eurasian lynx
Lynx lynx
Extinct - 500 AD? (Yorkshire)

Our last truly "big" cat disappeared from Britain in rather uncertain circumstances; until some bones from a cave were carbon-dated, it was thought to have vanished before historical times.



Grey wolf
Canis lupus
Extinct - 1212

In the early 13th century, a bounty of five shillings was paid to a man near Freemantle, Hampshire, for killing a wolf, perhaps a young disperser from packs in the southwest; there may be some later records but it's safe to say that there haven't been wolves here for a very long time The wolf in the photo is of the Spanish subspecies. (Needless to say, I detest keeping wolves in zoos, but I was visiting that particular zoo to garner signatures for a petition to protect wild wolves and it seemed crazy not get some photos...)



Fallow deer
Dama dama
Introduced - 1223

Fallow deer died out after the Interglacial era and were reintroduced by the Romans, some say as early as the first century AD. However, they were certainly being hunted in the New Forest by the 13th century.



European rabbit
Oryctolagus cuniculus
Introduced - 1235?

Rabbits were introduced by the Normans from Spain, and a warren was kept by the King by 1235 in Guildford, Surrey, although they were introduced earlier to the southwest and the Channel Islands. Once their warrens were highly prized - today, their national population has been estimated at 40,000,000



Forest wildcat
Felis silvestris
Extinct - 16th century

The smaller of our two native cats has had a very rough time at the hands of gamekeepers and is now only found in northern Scotland, where it is still threatened by illegal killing and, ironically, hybridisation with the domestic cat, the descendant of the African / Middle Eastern wildcat.



Brown rat
Rattus norvegicus
Introduced - 1720

Rats go where people go but the brown rat has almost totally displaced the black rat in the UK. Neither are native. (I was relocating this particular rat for someone and it was released unharmed from the livetrap.)



Pine marten
Martes martes
Extinct - 1850

This is an American marten Martes americana that I saw in Jasper years ago. It's actually a still off the video camera; they're a dreadfully difficult family to capture on camera Our European marten is bigger and has more yellow on its throat. Another victim of gamekeeping.



Polecat
Mustela putorius
Extinct - 1880

Trapped almost to national extinction by gamekeepers. I occasionally see feral ferrets here, the free-roaming offspring of domesticated polecats.



Grey squirrel
Sciurus carolinensis
Introduced - 1902

I read that 100 squirrels, fresh from America, were introduced to Richmond Park in 1902 Today, they are absolutely everywhere. And into absolutely everything



Red squirrel
Sciurus vulgaris
Extinct - 1960s

This is our only native squirrel, but it is almost extinct in southern England now, out-competed by the grey squirrel which is better adapted for our modern landscape.