Today we have a guest photographer! My coworker, Jen Clower-Brown, has been lucky enough to spend the summer watching a family of foxes grow up in her neighborhood north of Austin.
As you can imagine, there has been much cuteness and beauty as she captured images of them playing in her back yard and climbing her fence. Jen reports that these images are the result of much time sitting quietly on her back porch, waiting for them to show up!
The kits are now weaned and on their own. Mom Fox has taken off for parts unknown, but the kits (male and female, Jen thinks) are still hanging around, but seem to appear less frequently than before.
Jen had quite a scare earlier in the week, when she saw something a car had hit on the side of the road. She knew the foxes have been disturbed by some new construction nearby, but she hoped they hadn’t gotten disoriented and run the wrong way. Thankfully, when Jen got back home and checked the scene on her bicycle, she found that it was a young deer.
We all felt bad for being glad it was a deer and not the young fox, but really, we have LOT of deer and not that many foxes!
Want to Learn More?
Even though it uses improper title capitalization (don’t get me started…that’s another post), this is my favorite article on the gray fox, which is native to this area. Urocyon cinereoargenteus is this fox’s Latin name, and they weigh only 8-10 pounds, which is less than a large domestic cat.
People always say they confuse foxes with coyotes, but if the size difference (coyotes are usually a lot larger) doesn’t give it away, just look at the tail. A fox will have a very long, bushy tail. A coyote tail looks more like a German Shepherd Dog’s tail.
If you are interested in more of Jen’s photography, including more fox photos, please visit her Flickr page. It has many lovely nature images (and babies) you will enjoy. Thanks so much to her for sharing the fox family with the Hermits’ Rest blog readers!
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