Spring has sprung, the grass is riz,

Red foxes are pouncing where meadow voles is.

Poor poetry, but true. During the past week, I’ve watched a red fox, Vulpes vulpes, hunting in the parkland surrounding my home. The first time I saw the fox (above), I noticed it was carrying something. Initially, I thought the fox was moving a small pup from one den to another. However, on close inspection of a photo I took, I realized that the fox was carrying not pup, but prey – likely a plump meadow vole, Microtus pennsylvanicus. Meadow voles inhabit our meadows and leave characteristic tunnels chewed through the dense grass. They’re a favourite prey item of foxes.

Later the same morning, I watched the same fox or another carry prey as it trotted through a meadow beside the brook down the hill from my house. Suddenly, the fox stopped and dropped the prey. Then it stalked forward, leapt into the air, and pounced on something in the grass. When the fox raised its head, it was carrying another prey item in its mouth. It dropped this one on top of the other laying in the grass and picked up both in its jaws. Then it trotted up the hill from the meadow and past my yard, allowing me to photograph it. I’m pretty sure the fox (below) was carrying meadow voles.

Several times that day and again the next day, I and my husband Vilis and our sons saw a red fox hunting in our meadows or carrying prey up the hill and right past our yard. This can mean only one thing – there’s a fox den nearby, which is exciting news. Red foxes are beautiful, graceful creatures, and we have no poultry or cats or other small domestic animals a quick-pouncing fox might steal from us.

Such was not the case a decade ago, when frantic quacking from our five white ducks caused me to look up from picking Saskatoon berries in my yard just in time to see a fox clamp its jaws onto one of the ducks. Thinking, No fox is going to eat my duck! I dropped my berry bucket to the ground and ran straight for the fox, shouting and waving my arms. The duck robber, who was attempting to drag the wildly-flapping duck into the woods, saw me bearing down on it and must have decided it had crossed the thin line between bravery and foolishness. It dropped the duck and sprinted into the woods in a flash of red-gold fur. The duck was understandably shook up, but otherwise just fine. Other times, the ducks weren’t fortunate enough to have a wildly waving and yelling saviour on hand when the hungry fox came calling, and eventually repeated hunts made an end to them. Such is the price of living surrounded by nature.