{"id":847,"date":"2011-02-09T08:37:46","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T08:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=847"},"modified":"2012-04-16T11:32:02","modified_gmt":"2012-04-16T11:32:02","slug":"fantastic-foxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/fantastic-foxes","title":{"rendered":"Fantastic foxes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despised by many, loved by many, a source of great controversy, a tame garden visitor for some and a wild, wary, predator of the countryside for others.\u00a0 The <strong><em>Red Fox<\/em><\/strong> is all of these, and much more.\u00a0 One of my projects for this year is to photograph our local foxes, but recently an unexpected opportunity came along.<\/p>\n<p>I was walking along the edge of some heather moorland when I heard the barking of a fox from a conifer plantation a few hundred metres away.\u00a0 Although the light was poor, and fading fast as dusk approached, I set my camera on it&#8217;s tripod and started squeaking.\u00a0 Being a predator can&#8217;t be an easy life, so it&#8217;s no surprise that the possibility of an easy meal (a prey species that&#8217;s clearly already distressed) is an attractive one.\u00a0 Within a few seconds, a head popped up at the top edge of the moor.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_848\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-848\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/fantastic-foxes\/attachment\/_dsc6009\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-848\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-848\" title=\"Red Fox [Vulpes vulpes], Northumberland 18\/01\/2011 (c)Martin Kitching\/Northern Experience Images\" src=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6009.jpg\" alt=\"Red Fox, wildlife photography, nature photography, wildlife photography tuition, wildlife photography training, wildlife photography courses, Northumberland\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6009.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6009-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-848\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Where&#39;s that squeaking coming from?<\/figcaption><\/figure>My main concern now was whether the fox would quickly identify the source of the noise.\u00a0 Foxes are always exciting to see on our evening wildlife watching tours, but they can be a bit of a nuisance as they have very sharp eyesight and often raise the alarm, even\u00a0if you&#8217;re as well hidden as you can be and you avoid making any sudden movements.<\/p>\n<p>On this occasion though, the lure of a &#8216;distressed rodent&#8217; was so great that the fox made it&#8217;s way down the hillside, crossing the moor from side to side as it tried to home in on the sound.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_849\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-849\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/fantastic-foxes\/attachment\/_dsc6021\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-849\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-849\" title=\"Red Fox [Vulpes vulpes], Northumberland, 18\/01\/2011 (c)Martin Kitching\/Northern Experience Images\" src=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6021.jpg\" alt=\"Red Fox, wildlife photography, nature photography, wildlife photography tuition, wildlife photography training, wildlife photography courses, Northumberland\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6021.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6021-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-849\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Is it over this way?<\/figcaption><\/figure>Finally the fox found the source of the squeaking, and gave me a good hard stare for 30 seconds before trotting back up the hill and chasing another fox in and out of the plantation.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_850\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-850\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/fantastic-foxes\/attachment\/_dsc6028\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-850\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-850\" title=\"Red Fox [Vulpes vulpes], Northumberland, 18\/01\/2011 (c)Martin Kitching\/Northern Experience Images\" src=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6028.jpg\" alt=\"Red Fox, wildlife photography, nature photography, wildlife photography tuition, wildlife photography training, wildlife photography courses, Northumberland\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6028.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6028-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-850\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hmmm, that could keep me going for days<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despised by many, loved by many, a source of great controversy, a tame garden visitor for some and a wild, wary, predator of the countryside for others.\u00a0 The Red Fox is all of these, and much more.\u00a0 One of my projects for this year is to photograph our local foxes, but recently an unexpected opportunity [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16,114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-northumberland","category-photography","category-red-fox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1548,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions\/1548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}