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Precious time spent with a local Vixen.
There is a bit of woodland near where I live, and over the years i have paid it visits, after i spotted some fox cubs there around 10 years ago. It is a small wood, with a bank in it that over the years Badgers and Foxes have sporadically made their home for a while.
Den on far left middle.
Last year i spotted evidence of Badgers about, bedding material and fur on barbed wire, and sure enough I caught a bit of footage on my trail camera of a lone Badger coming out around 10 PM. This was in April, and over the next couple of months i went down there a lot with a flash set-up etc, sitting in the dark trying to get a nice shot of the Badger, but to no avail. I lost interest for a while, then in early April this year I visited again to see if any signs of activity. There were no Badger signs, but there had been digging activity and signs a Fox was around, so the trail cam was put into action again. This time i didn’t see any Badger signs, but there was definitely Fox activity and movement recorded on film, so I moved to stage 2 of my photography plan, little did I know what an emotional roller coaster I was about to embark on!
I spent the next week making a water proof housing for my EOS R Canon camera, and also a Sabre trigger which fitted nicely into a Chinese take away plastic carton! I then made a bracket that I could fit to a tree for a remote flash, and once ready I took it to the wood and set it up. The movement trigger was a laser, and you can set the frequency of the signal up as well as the length etc, so a bit of trial and error to start with. The camera battery was just the normal LP6-EN, and i made sure everything was fully charged, focussed on a point near the den and went home. The next morning I dashed off to the wood to see if i had ‘caught’ anything, and the camera battery and flash batteries were flat, so a positive sign maybe. When I got home i put in a spare battery and was shocked to see i had over 1000 shots, all of the same scene with no animal present!! I had to trawl through all the images just in case one in there had something on it, but no joy. On a positive note, no matter what time the images were shot they were nicely exposed and it had all worked, so just needed to fine tune the set-up. Over the next couple of weeks I put the set-up out a few more times, tuning the trigger frequency so less chance of flash triggers, and I found some road kill on a bike ride so set that as a focal point, and after a few more blank nights with the shutter count getting less but still no Fox, I got there on the 14th April and all batteries were still alive, and I had 6 images. When I looked on the back of the camera I had a Fox in each one, success at last! A couple of the shots weren’t bad, and allowed me to play with exposure and flash power etc to hopefully get some better ones.
Over the next few nights i played with the set-up etc, and every now and then I got her in frame, but not always perfect focus. I changed the set-up from looking up the ridge to the den to looking over a fallen tree nearby, where i had seen her go over on occasion, and put a bit of cat food or road kill out to keep her interest up, but nothing great for the next few days.
And then something amazing happened. On the 20th of April it was a lovely evening with some late sunshine filtering through the trees, and I went about setting up the camera set-up ready for the night which usually took about 15 minutes. As I was focusing the camera on the tree, i glanced to my left at one of the den outlets, and a Fox head appeared and looked all around like a tank commander from a turret! I froze to the spot only about 5 metres from her, and she hopped out, had a sniff around, looked me in the eye and slowly walked through the trees and then came out towards me on a game trail through some nettles. She then stopped and had a good look at me, eat a bit of the food and disappeared. I felt unbelievably privileged that a wild Fox had accepted me into her world at arms distance, totally unexpectedly. I know you can have close encounters with city Foxes as I have done in London when visiting my daughter, but in the wilds of Norfolk not so common.
I didn’t get any photos that evening, and the ones from the camera set-up were not up to scratch, so for the next night i thought well, if she is happy with me being there, ill sit quietly under the tree, put some food out and just wait to see if she turns up and take pictures myself with a 70-200 F 2.8 lens on my Canon R3. Sure enough the next evening the weather was good and i put food out then sat and waited with baited breath, and after around an hour she came out again, mooched around the den, eat some food and walked right past me this time as i clicked away on silent shutter, I was definitely accepted as an honorary Fox now, what a great feeling! Over the next few days she came out to see me most nights, and I even caught a glimpse of a cub briefly by the den exit hole, so things could get exciting. Then things changed unfortunately.
On the 25th April while I was sitting on my stool waiting, suddenly she ran out of the den and snuffled her nose in the ground in distress, and then lay down and was spinning around on the floor panting rubbing her nose. I went over to her and talked to her trying to help calm her, and eventually she got up and walked away a bit and looked back at me, where I could see she had a big chunk missing out of her nose that looked like a bite, possibly from a rat as there was a nest around there as well.
I didn’t see her for a couple of days, and then on the 27th as I sat there waiting, a cub appeared around the tree and walked up the slope. I had put a road kill pigeon out and it walked straight past which was strange as normally they are quite playful, it then disappeared into the den. Later on the vixen came out and all her face was swollen up probably from the damage to her nose. She still found the food and took the pigeon away, but I was very worried about her.
The next day was worse, as I arrived in the wood there was the body of the cub, dead on the ground, with no obvious external injuries. It was very sad, and when i saw the vixen later she was very lethargic, but at least eat some cat food.
I called a local wildlife centre to ask if i could give her some treatment, but they said I would need to try to trap her and take her there as it would need a course of antibiotics. Unfortunately I was going on a weeks holiday the next day, so bought a big bag of dried dog food and left it near the den to help her through the week. When i returned the food had gone, I didn’t see her for a couple of days but the food kept disappearing, then on the third night i was back she came out when she heard me arrive, and eat some food straight away.
She looked a lot more bright and breezy than before, but had a nasty gash on her face. I had set up a flash again for a bit of fill light, and got some lovely natural shots of her in the woodland, but photography had taken a back seat to hoping she would get better, i was taking shots more to check on her injury progress.
On one evening in late May I was aware of a big bird flying over the wood, and as I looked out through the trees a Barn Owl was hunting over the field, wildlife heaven for a while! I called the wildlife centre again to borrow a trap to take her in, but unfortunately they were full up and had 2 Foxes in already so couldn’t take another one.
I got some Arnica tablets from Amazon and mixed them into her food and water over the next few days, and she was looking and acting like a Fox again, but the gash still was nasty. I then had another week away so left dried food out again, and when I got back the food was gone, but over the next few days I didn’t see her again. I can only hope that she was getting better and moved on to another location as Foxes do, rather than she succumbed to her injuries, but so far there has been no sight of her, dead or alive, so we can only hope.
It was a strange feeling that something that started as a promising photography project turned into a conservation project as photography took a back seat, and left me with a feeling of guilt that I didn’t do enough for her, I can only hope that my supplementary feeding helped her out and to get well again, just such a shame about the cub not surviving. Nature can be beautiful, but unfortunately I saw both sides of it on this project.
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