Running with the Foxes

It’s 5 AM and the first rays of light are slowly making their presence felt. Everything around me seems otherworldly and all I can hear are the bird songs complemented by the strong scent of fresh mint, with no signs of human activity. Arriving at the fox den one hour before sunrise, I mount my tripod and camera, trying to keep the noise as low as possible. I lay down the waterproof blanket, cover myself with the camouflage net, and finally take my place where I’ll wait motionlessly for the next couple of hours. It's all now a game of patience.

Twenty minutes later, meters away from me, I suddenly see a shadow jumping from the tall grass at the edge of the ditch, where the fox den is. I immediately become alert – it is the mother fox! She abruptly stops in her tracks as she senses someone or something is nearby, probably because of the mild morning breeze heading her way. The fox becomes unsettled, barks three times, and then waits frozen like a statue for a few seconds to see if anything happens. The light is faint, allowing me only a 1/25 sec exposure time at about ISO 2000. I succeed to take three pictures before the mother fox darts away into the field nearby.

Not even ten minutes pass, and Socks, the fox cub we gave the goofy name due to its black paws, emerges from the same spot where the fox showed up earlier. Socks cautiously looks in my direction and notices too something is amiss, so she decides to slowly retreat to the den, not to be back for the rest of the day, but not before taking a picture of her.

This was the third morning waiting near the fox den that I discovered by chance a few days before. One evening when my wife and I were driving home on a country road, in a stroke of luck, as the light was getting very dim, we noticed a fox jumping frenziedly in the wheat fields, heading someplace only she knew. Stopping to see if I can spot her once more, five cubs emerge minutes later from the ditch parallel to the dirt road I was on and begin playing, this way marking the start of a one-month photographic and learning journey.

You might by now wonder why my tone is so enthusiastic and why this particular encounter with the fox and its cubs is unusual.

When we moved into the countryside back in 2019, away from the buzzing city life, nothing hinted at the changes the global pandemic would soon bring. A short twenty-minute drive from the capital, the area where our new home is, was pretty uneventful at that time. During my numerous journeys into the nearby forest, I meet only the forest keeper now and then, most of the time by accident. Every time I went out to explore the surroundings and photograph the wildlife, seeing roe deer, catching fleeting views of foxes, and noticing plenty of badger activity was something on the edge of the ordinary, but after the first year of the pandemic, all this started to change.

As people got tired of the Covid-19 restrictions and started dreaming of even a glimpse of freedom, the interest in rural houses increased significantly. Construction sites appeared in large volumes, many times without analyzing the impact on the environment and local fauna. A lot of ditches and agricultural fields became flooded with construction residues, and the nearby forest, once serene and clean, was suddenly full of waste and noise from off-road vehicles. Deforestation got more intense and coupled with increased poaching, it dramatically impacted the local wildlife. While once seeing plenty of roe deer on the fields around the forest at any time of the day, nowadays you can spot only a few, with great effort. Dens that were once occupied by badgers and foxes got deserted, the animals moving further away in the forest or simply migrating to other areas.

After two years of actively searching and monitoring numerous abandoned dens, many times finding myself on the brink of losing hope, you can imagine the sheer excitement I experienced that evening when I saw the fox and its cubs.

Wanting to make the most of this opportunity, I started planning and preparing the best I could. The first thing on the list was to install a trail camera near the den entry while making sure I don't place it too close so I don’t scare the foxes off. It is a well-known fact that if the parents sense danger, they can take the over-the-night decision to move the cubs to another den, so I didn’t want to take the chance. Hours of video footage from the camera together with materials I've read on the fox behavior, "Running with the fox by David McDonald, for example, proved very useful in my preparations and how I approached the foxes. Often discarded, social media was a good source of information as I learned that there is almost always a more courageous cub compared with the rest of the youngsters in the family and who will likely provide plenty of photographic opportunities - Socks, the little hero of the story, in my case.

The first two weeks were all about waking up in the middle of the night and then waiting for hours and days that ended with not even one photograph of the foxes. My only companions were the magpies which, like clockwork, were showing up at the same time each morning to greet the rising sun like some mystic prophets of light and then feast on the remains of the prey brought by the fox to its cubs during the night that just ended.

Despair slowly crept in as the cubs were usually coming out of the ditch around 9 PM and went back inside around 5 AM, as my trail camera rigorously recorded, which was exactly when there was very bad or no available light. The reason for such behavior was simple: there were a lot of machines making their way to the fields during the mornings, while many people were walking or exercising in the afternoon. So more often than not, I started to think that my first meeting with the foxes during that morning was an accident and that the entire adventure was ending there.

A great landscape photographer, Joe Cornish, once stated: perseverance works. After all those countless hours of waiting and enduring many curious looks from people passing me by, one afternoon, shortly after checking the trail camera, I truly understood the meaning of that expression. Without any notice, Socks suddenly decided it was time to come outside and check me out. Completely unprepared but at least having the camera with me, I slowly dropped to the ground, in the largest dirt pool I could find and started to photograph her, while she casually took her place in the middle of the road and continued to follow me with her curious gaze.

Days went by and, to my delight, Socks started to feel more comfortable with my presence and stay longer in the open. Her brothers and sisters joined her from time to time, but never for more than a few moments, preferring to hide in the nearby wheat field. All the commotion abruptly stopped as vehicles or other people entered the area, everyone, including Socks, darted for the closest cover, only to show up 10-15 minutes later and resume their exploration and play.

As Socks continued the journey to adulthood, the trail camera started to record less footage of her and the other cubs. The encounters were becoming few and far between as she abandoned the den in favor of other nearby places. One of the last pictures of Socks I took was of her watching the big road, gazing into the great unknown, and waiting for the big adventure in the wilderness. Looking back with fondness at the photographs, I can only hope we'll meet again next year to write another chapter of her life.