) but all were well after dark, and so I have no photos. This is a shot I took some years ago on a badger watching event in Essex.
The badger crossed the road ahead of the car, and disappeared down a trail. A fox trotted down the same trail shortly afterwards, and then shot back out again! 
But they usually co-exist fairly peacefully; some gardens have both species turning up at the same time for handouts.
M is for Meadows
Sunday, 31. January 2010, 15:16:07
It's a little while since I've been out there 
Perhaps "M" is also for "Mid-winter" - we may be well past the winter solstice, but January and February are usually our coldest months, and the wind is still tending to blow from the East.
"Tis good for neither man nor beast" so the saying goes, but I disagree
These frozen, bright conditions with only a dusting of snow...
...are near perfect for fox-watching Only a few horses are in the meadows are present, and those are keeping close to stables. The local sheep pasture has been heavily trampled and grazed down to the ground, but the rough, tussocky landscape left behind in this virtually unused horse pasture is excellent for voles. And voles mean foxes!
I've been this large male fox with his distinctive black brush on-off for a year or so now. He wasn't inclined to come too close when I spotted him yesterday morning, but he's certainly in fine shape
But there was something else moving down the lane - something that I don't usually see in a cooperative mood
A green woodpecker! You can see the red moustache - it's a male. But for all his bright colours, he blends in beautifully with the backdrop!
Not far away, and insanely well camouflaged, a redwing flock was scurrying about in the fallen leaves. I counted nine of them in this photo but I'm open to revised suggestions
__
In other news, there was an intriguing twist in the drama of the garden foxes yesterday A strange fox - tall, thin, with a heavily scarred muzzle and short red brush - is lurking around, eyeing up the peanut butter on the bird table 
and generally scrounging. I suspect he is a young vagrant who is wandering, as male foxes do in January, in search of both a vixen and a vacant territory. He looks as if he's had a fight or two already 
but he is less robust than the Silver Dogfox, whom I suspect he will avoid if he can 
I've also finally uploaded an album of my winter photos. Please have a look!
Perhaps "M" is also for "Mid-winter" - we may be well past the winter solstice, but January and February are usually our coldest months, and the wind is still tending to blow from the East.
"Tis good for neither man nor beast" so the saying goes, but I disagree
These frozen, bright conditions with only a dusting of snow...
...are near perfect for fox-watching
Only a few horses are in the meadows are present, and those are keeping close to stables. The local sheep pasture has been heavily trampled and grazed down to the ground, but the rough, tussocky landscape left behind in this virtually unused horse pasture is excellent for voles. And voles mean foxes!
I've been this large male fox with his distinctive black brush on-off for a year or so now. He wasn't inclined to come too close when I spotted him yesterday morning, but he's certainly in fine shape
But there was something else moving down the lane - something that I don't usually see in a cooperative mood
A green woodpecker! You can see the red moustache - it's a male. But for all his bright colours, he blends in beautifully with the backdrop!
Not far away, and insanely well camouflaged, a redwing flock was scurrying about in the fallen leaves. I counted nine of them in this photo but I'm open to revised suggestions
__
In other news, there was an intriguing twist in the drama of the garden foxes yesterday
A strange fox - tall, thin, with a heavily scarred muzzle and short red brush - is lurking around, eyeing up the peanut butter on the bird table and generally scrounging. I suspect he is a young vagrant who is wandering, as male foxes do in January, in search of both a vixen and a vacant territory. He looks as if he's had a fight or two already but he is less robust than the Silver Dogfox, whom I suspect he will avoid if he can
I've also finally uploaded an album of my winter photos. Please have a look!
Sirius (-1.46), the neck of the jumping up dog in Canis Major, is on the top left here 
the start of the Pleistocene. That is heavily in the era of the great sabre-tooth cats 
) and while my wholly subjective opinion is that the tiger is the most impressive of all the wild cats, this seems like a good opportunity to post this footage from Kenya and Tanzania in 1996 
) is in poor shape, but their interactions with other species can have wide-reaching consequences. When wolves were virtually eradicated in the central Rockies, young aspen were so heavily grazed by booming elk populations that the long-term survival of the species was put at risk. And beavers eat aspen, and many creatures, great and small, use the ponds that beavers create through damming rivers, so the consequences were ecosystem-wide.
WIDGETIZE