Red Fox Journal and Photos   by David J. White
Introduction This journal describes my observations and interactions with red foxes, mainly in 2008 when a litter of three fox pups was raised near our house. In 1975, my wife and I bought 40 ha (100 acres) of land in rural Lanark County, Ontario to build a home and raise a family in a quiet country setting. We visited the property often in the years before building---skiing and snowshoeing in winter, and swatting blackflies, mosquitoes, and deer flies in summer. We often saw fox tracks or scats there and knew that they also visited the property regularly. We moved out to the land in 1980. None of the original buildings were left, however, the foundations of the settler's house and barn occurred about 150 m (500 ft) from where we built our house. The settler's house foundation was little more than a rounded depression on a gentle slope overgrown with mature staghorn sumac shrubs and young elm trees. There were several groundhog burrows next to the foundation. During the 1980's and 1990's we would sometimes catch a glimpse of a fox trotting across a field and we commonly saw fox tracks in the snow. Some winters, there would be tracks of a pair regularly travelling on the property. On occasion, we might see fox tracks around the old foundation indicating that foxes were visiting the burrows and perhaps using the den. When we thought foxes might be at the den, we generally avoided the area since we didn't want to scare them off. Several times during the 1990's and early 2000's we spotted a young fox in the garden or on the lawn in early summer and wondered if it had been raised at the old foundation. Although I had used a film camera in my work as a biologist, I generally took few non work-related photos and rarely thought of the camera when a fox would show up nearby. So I only have a few fox photos from those early years. In preparation for a trip in 2007, I got a digital SLR camera. This re-kindled my interest in photography. In mid-March, a few days after the purchase, a pair of foxes trotted up the field next to the house, but my ineptness with the new camera resulted only in several very poor photos. But sighting the fox pair sparked my interest in wildlife photography. Continued in 1: 2007. Most of the photos can be clicked to show a larger version. Comments or criticisms are welcome: e-mail: dwhite(at)superaje.com Site last revised 30 May 2009 © David J. White 2009		Lanark Flora Home Red Fox Journal Introduction 1: 2007 2: The Den 3: Night Visits 4: Lady 5: Prince 6: Princess 7: Kits at Play 8: Rivalry 9: Tracking 10: 2009 11: Fox Life 101 12: References and Links