Oct 19

Oct 19 Backseat

Bristol, wildlife photography, landscape photography

A Fox heavy issue of the blog this month due to a full on rescue mission which took place.

for a little context, the Fox who lives at the bottom of my garden had a litter with 2 pups this spring. I have been lucky enough to photograph them across the summer as they played in the garden with their mum (see last few blog posts).Towards the end of the summer it became apparent that one of the two cubs did not make it, and that the one that did was in a terrible state due to mange which I had noticed on the cubs when they were small.

At its worst, the mange had totally taken over the young foxes back end , tail, legs and even face (see image above). It was only a matter of time before it succumbed because I realised after reading up on it that the condition is very common in foxes in the UK and has caused big declines in their populations. The disease slowly shuts down their vital organs until they are unable to take on the nutrients from their food meaning a very slow and painful death.

realising this, the race was on to try and save this Fox cub before it met this inevitable end. Contact was made to the ‘local Fox lady’ (yes that is a thing here apparently), who gave some mange medicine to give to the fox in dog food.

I was sceptical but went along with the medication, and over the next few weeks bowls of dog food was put out for the fox cub with the medicine mixed in. The food needed to be placed in the garden during the day to make sure no other animals or the vixen were getting it instead so timing was key. Luckily this fox cub was happy to come out and up to the top of the garden and lapped up the food. Very quickly after the two doses of treatment, you could start to see the change, as she began to show signs that the mange was being replaced by a new layer of fur.

Amazingly within couple of weeks she was looking a lot plumper with hair almost back to how it should be as well so the Mission was a complete success!

The final result at the end of October was night and day as her coat was finally covering her whole body and she was putting on noticeable weight giving her a good chance at making it through the winter. The difference as you can see was night and day!

All the love for her cub seemed to be rubbing off on her dad too, who was now coming right up to the top of the garden to sleep in the middle of the lawn. I was lucky enough to catch him there on one occasion so spent some time hanging out of the kitchen window trying to get some closer shots of him as he relaxed right by the back door.

Hopefully the dog fox will stick around and be back next year for more pups.

After all that great Fox excitement nothing else really held a torch to the fox drama and with the seemingly relentless crap weather, my photography has otherwise stalled. My macro photography which has come on leaps and bounds over the summer, also started to slow down as the insects I had been really enjoying seemingly vanish at this time of the year. Hopefully the autumn will bring some mushroom/fungi opportunities, but with no forest style trips planned this might not happen either. Even when an opportunity did arise like an RSPB Newport trip, the wildlife decided to vanish for the day so a photo of some pylons was all I managed. There was one shining glimmer of hope that raised its head right at the end of the month with a trip to Westonbirt arboretum. The bad weather had finally lifted and for a few days the sky was blue and the leaves on the trees gave me another change to photograph the autumn around me.

I will leave you however with a very odd juxtaposition image involving a nude lady and a country manor to round off this blog. Taken on a work ‘retreat’ it was literally the only photo I took in the whole two days despite taking my camera and a couple of lenses with me. It just about sums up the last few months but I do have a bucket list trip on the horizon so watch this space.