Perhaps I ought to be I am writing this at 10:30pm, and I would be somewhat surprised if the two foxes in my last post don't arrive in the garden within the next half an hour, but the vixen has already paid a visit tonight! She caught me quite off guard at 9:30pm. The light is very poor at that time of night, but I got a few photos of her.



To be precise, she actually made several short visits in quick succession. I thought that she had continued on her nightly route after the first one, and carefully slipped out into the garden. But she was watching me, sitting just the other side of the hedgerow and peering through the branches - obviously content that there was a barrier between us!

She's a pretty fox, very graceful in her movements. I am struggling with a name for her; "Tip Vixen" just seems too obvious (she has the tiniest little white tip on her brush). I am sorely tempted to go with "Pickpocket Vixen"



It's been another hot day, and very little was moving during my walk this morning except butterflies around blackberry bushes. The fruit are still completely green, of course, but many creatures (including local humans!) will take advantage of them once they have ripened. In the meantime, meadow browns utilise the flowers



Meanwhile, a collared dove rested on a telegraph pole; perhaps the choice of wires for perching was too overwhelming!



And while I see gliders very frequently here, I rarely observe three in the sky at once, so I thought that it warranted a photo.



But the main interest for me today has been the arrival of a package from the USA My new trail cam is primed and ready for action. It's a considerably better model than the one which Andrea cached, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it can do

Summer evening in the North Downs: the light is golden and the moon is high...



...and crows keep watch over the softly darkening land



I played hide and seek with a fox tonight. High up on the ridges near a farmhouse, a small, very lightly-boned fox was racing past an assorted jumble of cross country horse jumping obstacles and directly towards the lane where I was standing, setting off barks from the fenced farm dogs en route. Anticipating the fox's path, I moved forward, hoping to catch her after she had crossed the lane and entered the much more open field on the far side. But nothing doing; I searched, but she seemed to have melted away into the evening sky

Then I looked behind me. And there she was, having run into the lane on paws as soft as those of a cat. I never heard a sound.





Further along, I came to the large sloping field mown by the tractor last weekend, where now the newly-built haystacks throw long shadows. After seeing the gulls and kestrel taking advantage of the tractor on Sunday, I was hoping that dusk would lure other scavengers out of the wood. And, indeed, it had



He moved swiftly across the field, showing little surprise at its transformation from meadow to stubble.



I was not surprised that he was there. The mowing had created an opportunity in the form of exposed rodents, and foxes are opportunists, always.

But they're not the only ones to exploit their local situation

I made to continue down the track. But I was brought up short in shock. Something huge was right in front of me: a young pony on the lam!



I was momentarily at a loss to know what to do. Trying to coax it back into its paddock seemed a hopeless task on a straight and very narrow track; I was afraid that if I startled it further, it might race off into the forest for the night

Fortunately, after shuffling up and down the trail a few times, it thought better of its adventure, and squeezed itself back through the barbed wire of its own accord.



As I passed the spot, I looked into the field to see the errant youngster nonchalantly flicking its tail, as if nothing had ever happened



Jaywalking horses, soft-footed foxes...just some of the small scenes that you see if spend long enough wandering around the countryside