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Posts tagged with "wildlife"

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Welcome to The Sitting Fox!

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Welcome to my blog, which is a mainly a diary of my experiences with wildlife in the United Kingdom and Canada :smile: The SittingFox Homepage

Questions, comments and feedback always welcome...
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Don't miss the Blue Star Favourites and the Autumn Photo Network! My APN 2008 album is here :smile:

Costs of the Prowl

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The Old Dogfox came right up to the house this evening, behaviour he hasn't indulged in for a while. Once again he was alone in the garden.

Typical dogfox behaviour in the breeding season is jealous guarding of a vixen on heat, yet his altercations with the vixens - so far as I've seen - have been aggressive, rather than related to courtship.

Some possible theories: there is another male fox, unknown to us, who is defending the vixens and leaving him in the cold; the local fox density is so high that producing kits with little chance of becoming reproducing adults is simply not worth the risks of fighting; or, and perhaps most likely, the vixens themselves are actively selecting another territory or mate, and repelling him in the process. Choice is a two-way thing in the animal world...

I did notice a small scratch on his shoulder, however:



I fear to over-interpret this. It's easy to say that wild carnivores have difficult lives - well some do, particularly wolves, most of whom break bones while hunting dangerous and aggressive prey, but if Fox and Human were reversed, and they photographed me every time I stubbed my toe in the ordinary perils of life, would they say I have a tough time :eyes: :confused:

Looks like a scratch from a hedge, or perhaps a barbed wire fence :worried: to me. It doesn't seem to be bothering him in the slightest, though.

Photography wise, I'm still learning how to use flash without wrecking the shot, but it's nice when the fox looks away and you have a portrait. I cropped this one close for a change.



The full size photo is here.

International Wallpaper

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I've put together a "wallpaper" album. All the photos are 1024 x 768 - well, approximately. All are 1024 pixels wide but a few are slightly shorter than 768 pixels tall, and would need to be centered.

Many of these are having their first outing on here, although a few are larger versions of pictures in my other albums and some have previously seen life in my now abandoned Webshots page.

Click on the picture to enter!



As well as Canada and the UK, this album contains pictures from Ireland, Switzerland, and the US. Sometimes I get asked why I travel so much. I do like seeing new wildlife, of course, but my trips have sometimes been rather unusual which has allowed me to explore a country more than a typical visitor. I started my 2004 Alberta trip in Montreal; my 2005 Smokies visit in Toronto. Travel by Greyhound isn't for the faint-hearted but I've seen some incredible things courtesy of the buses :D some of which, admittedly, I could have lived without seeing :eyes:

I'm always amazed at how most people spend such journeys buried in a book. During my cross Canada 2004 bus journey, I saw mule deer, coyotes, moose, a grey wolf :eyes: an eastern coyote, hawks, pronghorns, a red fox, woodchucks, a snowshoe hare... Sadly, most of my fellow travellers missed all of this!

Not all my trips are holidays. My Jasper 2004 visit was to complete my university dissertation, while my university class was taken to Ireland in 2003 for an ecology field trip. I also went to Toronto in 2001 to attend a lecture by Prof. John Theberge on the Algonquin wolf situation.

A Walk on the Wild Side

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What's the largest wild mammal which visits a garden?

As far as my UK garden goes, the Old Dogfox, with or without his above average plumpness, takes the prize. Obviously, I cannot put him on some scales to assess his actual weight but, as a large male fox, he likely weighs around 13lb (5.8kg).

A pint-sized predator. In Canada, on the other hand... :wink:

I'll get to the shock visitor in a moment. Firstly, a blacktail, the local subspecies of mule deer.

A bald eagle, perched on a telegraph pole. A really long distance photo. Wish I'd been able to shoot through the spotting scope for this one! :smile:

I waited around, thankful for a rare break in the rain, and hoped the eagle would take flight. It did, eventually.

And (heh - I recommend those with a refined taste in photography look away now :rolleyes:) some Roosevelt elk, and the worst photo I've ever uploaded on here. Very poor light, little stability (a shuddering car), lots of elk-coloured vegetation. I plead innocent. There was no way on earth to get a good picture!

Ahem. Back to niceties. A glaucous-winged gull and its reflection.

A black bear...yes. A bear. Wait, in December??? :confused: Bears hibernate!

Not this one, it seems. A very large male bear, ambling across a village road and across the front lawn of the property where I was staying! Listen to his paws on the wet road.

Direct link

Weird is an understatement. The locals were as shocked as I was. One theory is that he was simply very late in settling down, and was off on one last stroll. (The lines on the video are due to a fault with the movie camera while recording after dark.)

Air, Fire, Earth, Water

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Perhaps it's untraditional but let's start with the Fire - the Old Dogfox, his pale flame-orange winter coat now fully developed, sleeping blissfully under the conifer tree.



Late last night, through my aeroplane-induced daze, I heard a fox balefully barking somewhere in the distance. It was a distinctly different sound to the crisp warning bark that the Fringe Vixen usually utters. A call for the breeding season?

If I hear it again, I'll try to get a recording.

Air - I've been experimenting with photographing from plane windows. During my trip to Alberta last summer I snapped a couple of pictures of Greenland but this time tried to be more adventurous. Photographing from the plane was very hard because of the thick windows and odd angles. I had to bump up the contrast to compensate. But, I have a new album :D



The above scene puzzled me greatly. It was like ripples on a beach of gigantic proportions. Glacier erosion or evidence of ancient post-glacial flooding in Quebec?

As for water - well, I'm spoilt for choice! It was wet beyond description during the first few days of last week, only turning into snow from Thursday onwards.



Still, if a tsumani had struck I'm not sure I would have chosen an escape route straight up the mountain face. Should I pack crampons and an ice pick in my emergency pack :confused:



Earth - well, rock, anyhow. I'm curious at the tremondous vertical crack in this mountain peak. It must have been badly sheered by a glacier in times past.



Wildlife pictures will have to wait until tomorrow :wink: