Be prepared for another onslaught of bad photos. This time I tried another telephoto camera lens, but again the distance from the loft window to the far corner of the field, is just a bit too much....so apologies in advance and I hope you get the 'gist' of what I am seeing each evening.
I was on 'fox watch' from the lockdown loftroom window from about 7pm on Thursday evening, and there was no sign of either the Vixen nor the cubs.
After the weekly 'clap for carers' I checked again. Still no sign but at 8.10pm the Vixen came out and sat down.
She appears to be more cautious than the last two evenings...
Eventually one of the cubs came out, but this time it appeared from the right hand side, compared to the left hand side where I thought the den was....
and after another ten minutes another cub appeared....
The Vixen joined in with 'playtime' more than she did the previous couple of evenings. And when she wasn't playing with the cubs, she was grooming them and all the while stopping now and then to check over the field...
Eventually she stretched and started to make her way off on her nightly rounds to find food. One cub obediently disappeared but one chose to stay in the open watching its mum make her way across the field.....
Within minutes Vixen had gone out of view, and when I checked where the cub was I saw it slip away into the scrub on the right.
The first night I watched them, there were four cubs. Wednesday evening I only counted three cubs. Thursday night I only saw two cubs.....
I cannot speculate what has happened to the other cubs, just like I cannot speculate why they seem to have moved from one side of the flattened corner to the other, but it might just be that I'm not seeing them when they are all out at the same time.
I haven't seen the dog fox for a couple of evenings either and no foxes visited the back gardens whilst I was watching.
Sadly I also didn't see the male Muntjac on Thursday evening, but again that doesn't mean he isn't around. Muntjac have large territorial areas so he could have roamed off to a quieter patch for a while.
Better news is that my two housemates, the Orange-tip butterfly caterpillars, are growing bigger each day. Extra sprigs of garlic mustard seed pods have been added and they are gaining about 2mm in size daily now.
Maybe tonight I will have better news about the cubs.
Keep well everyone and stay safe
No comments:
Post a Comment