The weekend has gone by with rain drumming against the window and the trees shaking their dead leaves in the moody wind, and fog being tinted orange by the streetlamps at night. The pavements are deep in beech leaves now, and puddles stretch across the roads. It's a time of great change in the woods, with finches and starlings coming down from the north, warblers leaving for the south, and mammals on the move as breeding cycles start or youngsters step out into the world away from their parents. But it's also a time when wildlife photographers are prisoners of the weather and the most unusual wild animal that I saw this weekend was actually indoors!



I'm still learning my spider ID, so, beyond that suspecting that this is an orb spider, and that it's very fat or perhaps just has a wide abdomen, I wouldn't like to speculate too much about it.

It has been a bumper autumn for spiders I took this picture when I was down on the south coast. I think it's a missing sector spider Zygiella x-notata, so-called because its webs have a thread-free section like a segment pulled out of an orange.


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The Tip Vixen has been visiting the back garden regularly; there has been no sign of her mate for a few days, but fox movement patterns are often erratic at this time of year.

So, back indoors Waiting there are several highly opinionated creatures, including Madam Inscrutable - that is, Foot, my tiny and very noisy 19-year-old cat, who has been driving me crazy with her demands for different food types this week



But at least she looks before she leaps.



Chiara just charges in whenever she sees anything that amuses her



And Leila is still very big



...and beautiful!



I am very impatient to catch up on the local foxes, though. Here's hoping for a break in the rain

I've paid repeated visits to the lane where March's squirrel debacle took place, determined to make amends for the unfortunate failure of my camera battery during my last encounter. All without reward...until now Fearing the bank holiday crowds, I set off very early this morning, enjoying the dawn sunshine. The birdsong was loud and the roads remarkably quiet, but this little guy stole the show!





During my research for my mini-series of history posts, I was given pause to think about albinism in squirrels. The first sighting of such a creature in my local area that I know about was of an individual glimpsed by my grandfather about 75 years ago. Albinism and melanism (the latter shown below by Foot! )...



...are caused by a recessive gene that must be carried by both parents. I had always assumed that the albino squirrel seen here in the early 20th century must have been one of the forerunners of today's specimens, but I'm no longer sure.

Although grey squirrels were introduced to Surrey relatively early, we did not lose our native red squirrels until the 1960s, and the inference has to be that my grandfather's sighting was likely of an albino red. If so, that means that my local area has had no less than six species of mammals showing rare colour morphs within the space of a few square miles The odds against that happening by chance must be astronomical, and since colour morphs are generally more likely to occur in populations of low genetic diversity, it may indicate that development and topography have reduced the rate at which my local wildlife can interact with neighbouring populations I don't know. It's really a very odd mystery

For the curious, the full list is:

- fox (part-melanistic)
- badger (erythristic)
- fallow deer (melanistic)
- rabbit (melanistic)
- and one, and probably both, species of squirrel (albinism)

Anyway, an albino squirrel day is a good day! It wasn't actually my only sighting of the morning, but I think it deserves a post of its own!

I'm glad that Andrea doesn't know

The rebel-fox has long since gone back to loiter on the mean streets of Battersea, but her attempts at providing the hutch in the rehab pen with, uh, "air conditioning" gave me an excellent opportunity to photograph her successor tonight!



This is Ashley, another town fox who is in need of some peace and quiet for a little while. She arrived this afternoon. She has a broken leg and is recovering from mange. She seems to have a much calmer personality than Andrea, though time will tell how deep that runs!



She'll go back into the wild once she has recovered from her wounds
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Northern Britain has been hit by moderately heavy snow today but here in Surrey it has been merely heavy rain The forecast is good for the weekend, but in the meantime at least I can practice with the camera upon Foot!