Frolicking Fox Day - UPDATE December 7, 2021
Fox Pouncing
Fox Pouncing
Fox finding food
Fox finding food
Red Fox
Red Fox
Today, the fox had fun. I’ve never seen such frolicking. On a whim, it would race off in one direction or another and then sit or stand looking around. It leaped in the air as if pouncing on a mouse and land burying its head in the snow. Sometimes it would come up with something, but I couldn’t tell what—maybe a live mouse, maybe a cached mouse, or something else.
Red fox and deer
Red fox and deer
It showed me why it wasn’t always interested in bologna. In taste tests, it picked mini blueberry muffins over bologna. It picked rice crispy bars over bologna. And it picked the muffins over the bars. It buried each treat nicely, quickly pawing a hole in the fresh snow placing the treat into it, and then using its nose to push the snow back into the hole. The picture shows the fox’s face covered with snow afterward.
Deer buck
Deer buck
It interacted with the deer. Sometimes they stood and looked at each other. Sometimes a doe would aggressively approach the fox and it would run off only to return. Sometimes the fox rushed the deer and the deer would run. The picture is of a standoff with the fox calmly watching as the agitated mother deer stood with her tail raised and all her tail hairs bristling.
Sometimes the fox rested curled in the snow.
After dark, a new set of eyes in the night came. It was a young 6-point buck I haven’t seen before.
A nice day with excitement punctuating my desk work.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center