In Yellowstone National Park, the Junction pack’s Slough Creek Den failed. They had had four surviving five-week-old wolf pups last seen on the day of my arrival in Gardiner.  The pack has since abandoned the den site. Winter was rough even by Yellowstone standards; long and cold with deep snow. The Junction pack has fifteen – fifteen! – yearlings that they are caring for and had to care for through the winter. Speculation is that poor nutrition during pregnancy and infancy resulted in the death of the pups.  The pack has since been hanging around Lamar Valley, where they are successfully hunting among the throngs of bison.Every few days, the wolves meet with success. The wolf watchers are camped out behind spotting scopes, hoping to catch the action which has been taking place in the evening after everyone is gone.  Even when benign spectators are a mile away, wolves are wary.

Yesterday, I heard about a fox den just outside the Park.  Rumor has it that someone (or many) had been feeding a vixen through the winter.  It was not a great surprise then when she had a HUGE litter of pups under a dilapidated cabin this spring.  So I went to look for these smaller canine puppies.

Driving the northeast entrance road, I encountered a red fox trotting along the road with a rodent in her mouth. She moved purposefully, using the road as an easy path through the thick forest. She veered off, presumably toward her den. At the Park entrance, another red fox on the road with a full mouth trotted past me too fast and close to get a good look. I grabbed a quick picture as she passed me. I take these sightings as good omens.

A Cabin of Foxes

I arrived at the old cabin (“tuxedo shop opening soon”), where two fox kits were out back.

They were pretty quiet, mostly watching the onlookers watching them. They are skittish. Loud engines and people walking across the street send them scurrying back into the den. It’s great that they don’t seem habituated to people. I stayed until they disappeared for good. The vixen and the six other kits were no-shows.

The following day after looking for wildlife without success at other spots, I meandered back to the den site. All was quiet. No foxes, no paparazzi, just two photographers idly chatting. I wandered a bit, photographing mountain chickadees, ravens, and Steller’s jays.

And then an adult fox comes trotting across the yard! She appears to be hunting for the kits! A man emerged from the home next door, put kibble and birdseed on a stump, and disappeared behind the house. This immediately gets the fox’s attention. She checks out the stump, isn’t excited about what she finds, and also disappears behind the house where the man went.

When she reemerged moments later, her mouth was full of hotdogs! So much for not being habituated to people. This doesn’t bode well for the long-term survival of the family. Her offspring will learn to look to people for food. When wildlife learns to approach people, it usually ends badly. Mama fox pokes her head into the hole under the back wall of the cabin. The food is gone in an instant. Eight kits scramble out. Mom immediately leaves again. The energetic, curious kits wrestle and play with sticks, grass, an old hose, and pieces of plywood.

Toys

They run, pounce on each other, chase songbirds, and watch the people watching them. They are captivating. So much is happening at once that I don’t know where to look! This goes on for an hour.

Wrestling

Bird watching

Watching Me Watching You

All the while, they were keeping watch for the next mouthful from mom, never venturing too far from the safety of home.The vixen comes back with another mouthful. She had crossed the street and reappeared from behind the cabin. This time, it’s a mouthful of French bread or rolls. It’s gone before it hits the ground. How is she sustaining so many??

Despite the kits wanting her to stay and play, she’s off again.

A semi-truck stops in the road right in front of the old cabin, then starts backing up with that loud warning beep. The kits who didn’t run for cover at the presence of the noisy engine darted away now. The truck does a u-turn on this two-lane road, bumping onto the far-side shoulder. The crowd is visibly disappointed by this odd, disruptive occurrence.

The kits would not reappear today. I returned to the field where I first saw the hunting fox an hour ago. She is hunting back there. Hunting rodents again.

No one else is interested in her; the crowd quickly disperses.  They were here just for the babies. This fox is so beautiful. I watched her roam and hunt until she disappeared into the woods.

What a fantastic experience! Watching this wild fox family living their lives and seeing how they interact and exist in a busy small town roadside was enriching and soul-satisfying. The wild canids are my favorites in (and around) Yellowstone National Park this year.

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any images you see here, please email me: SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.

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The post Fox Family appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

We’re sitting on a dilapidated old viewing platform above the O’Malley river in Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge.  The views are expansive.  Up the river, I can see the O’Malley Lake to my right, mountains across the valley in front of me, and Karluk Lake downriver to my left.  We tied the boat on the beach a bit away from the river mouth and hiked in. The sun is hot on this unseasonable, cloudless afternoon.  It’s not ideal for bear viewing. They’re probably sacked out in the shade, wiling away the day.

Fishing Fox

It turns out this leaves the river open to the fox.

There’s some motion to the right. A red fox slowly stalks out of the grass on a gravel bar, intently focused on the splashing of salmon struggling up the river.  He takes a few rigid steps and pauses. Not a quiver. He lowers his head and then strikes! In an instant, he’s standing in the river with a colossal sockeye salmon clenched in his mouth.  With all of his strength focused on this fish, he stands still, waiting for the thrashing to stop. The salmon probably outweighs the fox. To drop him in the water is to lose him. 

The fish settles, so the fox starts for the gravel bar causing the salmon to begin contorting and flopping again—the fox waits.  A few more steps to the gravel bar and the fox pressed this feast firmly down into the earth to set the fatal bite.  And then he’s moving quickly off into the brush, no longer concerned about losing this enormous catch.  I knew that wolves caught salmon, but I had no idea a small fox could do it, too!

It’s just a matter of minutes, and the fox is back.  There must be a den nearby, we speculate.  He dropped of the salmon for the family and is back for more trotting over the same gravel bar and through the knee-deep water to the opposite shore.

He pauses to check a few fishing spots along the way, passing over a small island and crossing some riffles back to the opposite shore.  He’s aware of us high up on the bank watching him.

Instead of staying on the shoreline path, he veers off into the meadow directly across from us and only rejoins the river once he’s well past us.  He sits for a bit on the river shore, watching and waiting.  He doesn’t have the patience of a bobcat who will sit for hours waiting for a gopher to appear.  It’s not long before he gives up and moseys out of sight.

The Den

In the absence of drama in front of us, Rob notices a fox upriver to our right. A cross fox kit! Sitting outside a den!  A second kit climbs out from the dark entrance to the den. They loll about and tussle for a moment. 

Once they notice us watching, one of them scurries up the hill into the brush. The other plopped down above the den, groomed a bit, and then napped. This bold pup couldn’t care less about us.

This must be the family that the dog fox fed.  Cross foxes are a recessive color variant of the more common red fox.  They get their name from the dark gray to black band of fur down their back that runs down their shoulders, forming the shape of a cross.  About 25-30% of foxes in Alaska and Canada have this color variation. It does not exist anywhere else that red foxes live.

More Fishing

Papa fox reappeared downstream, walking into a wide, shallow section of the river.  He stalks, freezes, pounces and misses.

The fish is half out of the water, splashing so close, but they are faster than he is.

He tried several times without success. When he leaves the river, it is time for us to head back to the boat and let him continue his hunt in peace.

This is one of the most memorable days I’ve ever had.

We saw several bears today, too. Two saw us and ran. We were in the part of the refuge that allows hunting when we encountered each other, so it’s good that they startled and disappeared.  The other two were walking the shoreline while we were some distance away in the boat.

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any of the images you see here, please email me: SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com and I’ll make it happen.

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The post Fishing Fox appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

Fox!

I’m standing near the edge watching a large flock of chattering magpies when I notice a fox trotting along the edge of the slope.  She’s near the top in the vegetation, and I suspect, has ducked down here off the well-trodden path to go around us. “Fox!” I excitedly whisper. There are just three of us here; me, my husband, and our guide.  They both slowly move to get closer to see over the edge when she rejoins the path on the other side of us and turns back toward me. “She’s coming back this way!” Everyone freezes. We don’t want to deter her approach.

She nears the edge of the clearing where we’re standing and pauses.  Her neck is stretched forward with intense curiosity while all of her weight is shifting backward, ready to flee in an instant.  She creeps forward, investigating, shying away, and returning.  We stand still and watch, making no movement. Until she moves past me to the bench where my open backpack is propped, her intent is written all over her face. 

She is so polite and so inquisitive.  With a word or a subtle gesture, she demurely retreats from my pack and slowly moves around the backside of the clearing.

Rob’s raincoat is bunched on the ground next to his pack. This is now the object of her desire.  Again, she’s respectful in her attempt to take something. Anything.

We wonder what her den looks like – akin to the notorious packrat’s nests?  After several thwarted attempts to grab and go, she moves on.

In the tall grasses behind us, she’s distracted by a half-hearted attempt to catch a vole and then stops to eat some bits of a carcass she found. 

She is only twelve feet from us and is comfortable enough to be engaging in her normal behaviors with her back to us.

As I described in my last blog, this is likely her first encounter with people.  She is not one of the three foxes that I encountered yesterday.  She has become reasonably comfortable with us very quickly.  After finishing her tidbit, she trotted off into the meadow.

A Second Fox

It isn’t long before she’s back. This time she’s come up the same trail that we took.  And she’s brought reinforcements. There’s another fox behind her. She walks into the clearing while he pauses several yards back on the trail. He quickly decides he wants no part of this, turns, and trots off. I wonder what she told him when she asked him to accompany her.

Rob is lying on the ground. (It’s good to get comfortable if you can when you’re spending days in the wilderness).  She is particularly intrigued by this.

This young fox is a vixen, a female. Male foxes are disappointingly just called dogs. She is distinctly canine but at a petite ten to twelve pounds with sharp vertical slit pupils and a fluid, graceful movement that is quite feline. She’s the perfect combination of dog and cat.

She is cautious and respectful as she investigates closer with each subsequent approach.

She eventually makes a quick, gentle tug on the zipper flap at the bottom of Rob’s rainpants.  Then she has the great idea to approach him from behind.  Being the wildlife-savvy guy that he is, Rob sat up. No good was going to come of letting this continue, and it may have resulted in a lost (stolen) ballcap.

After entertaining us for a blessed while with her adorable antics, she moved on, and we didn’t see her again this day.  Of course, there were bears to interspersed in the fox encounters. But that’s a story for another day.

The Next Afternoon

The next afternoon, we’re on the rocky shore at the mouth of the Thumb River. Today, there are four of us set up in a tight row, shoulder to shoulder on collapsable, canvas tripod seats (the smaller our group appears, the less intimidating we are to the bears, so we bunch together).  We’re facing the river with our backs to Karluk Lake, waiting for bears to coming fishing down the river.

With a subconscious feeling of being watched, I turn to my left to see a familiar face staring at us just ten feet from the end of our row.  It’s amazing that this fox snuck up so close on all of us. I wonder how long she had been sitting there. She is stealthy!

Again with her insatiable curiosity and compulsion to take something, she begins probing around the edges of our group. Our guide is seated closest to her with his backpack on the ground with a tempting strap strewn across the rocks. She comes closer and retreats, closer and retreats. The guide never moves. The rest of us relocated for a better vantage point. Like yesterday, each time, she comes a little closer and lingers a little longer until she’s mustered the courage to touch the strap. She paws at it.  Unable to pull it away, she deftly curls her toes using her sharp claws like a cat to scoop it off the ground. Next, she gently tugs with her mouth,  just the tips of her incisors holding it in a timid grasp. 

The strap stays with the pack.  She reconsiders her options, trying to make sense of this thing, cocking her head one way and then the next.  She gets cuter every moment.

And then she’s off to other things; a scent on the beach, motion in the grass. She stays nearby, exploring the grassy edge of the beach.

Again, behaving like a wild fox despite four alien people sitting several yards away. This kind of acceptance by a wild animal is a feeling like no other. It fills my heart.

The Second Fox Returns

Just as I was recounting our experience yesterday and saying she’d brought reinforcements, a second fox materialized in the grass. She ambled over to greet him in the grass.  They sniffed noses and then played like puppies! Pouncing, biting, rolling, kicking, chasing.

He came out of the grass a time or two but wasn’t as comfortable out in the open with us. He never approached and clearly didn’t have the interest in us (or our things) that she did.  It’s unclear whether these two are littermates or a mated pair. He crossed the shallow river and disappeared over a bluff.  She wandered off in the opposite direction along the beach, past our boat, where she paused for a moment to consider its accessibility and risk.  She continued along the beach for quite a while before disappearing in the heavy brush.

Lest you think it was all foxes today (which would’ve been okay given the spectacular encounters), there were fishing bears here who we watched feast on sockeye salmon in the shallow river. More about that soon.

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any of the images you see here, please email me: SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com and I’ll make it happen.

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The post Bold, Curious Kodiak Island Fox appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.