Evening light on a red fox
We were in Kananaskis last weekend. The autumn colours were beautiful near Highwood Pass. The snow dusting the trees was also beautiful but felt more than a little early. We came down from the pass in warm afternoon sunlight and found this incredible fox trotting down a hill. She crossed by a pond and settled on this rock for 20 minutes before continuing along. Both Desirée and I were mesmerized watching her. I love foxes and this was a special one to spend a little bit of time with.
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A night fox in motion
I found this red fox hunting in a field recently. It was well into dusk but she had no trouble maneuvering through the grass. Photographing her in motion was much more of a challenge. In this image, I dragged the shutter to 1/6th of a second and tried to capture that energy. She reminded me of my daughter, her spirit and her intelligence – as every fox that I see does.
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Night fox in Whitehorse
We found this red fox near our B&B when we were there in August last summer. The foxes in Whitehorse are not too hard to find but at 10:30pm, we weren’t expecting to see one in the gloom. But this one stood out against the bright green lawn of a home that edged on to the forest.
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A red fox backlit in Bragg Creek
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Red fox in Mont-Tremblant
This fox was trotting down the road on a sunny morning in the Mont-Tremblant National Park in early July. She stayed ahead of me when I pulled over and then crossed into the forest. I watched it through the trees and was able to catch a nice look when she stood in a pool of sunlight. A little further along she came back onto the road again for a minute.
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A fox trotting through the Bow Valley
In April, I crossed paths with a red fox near the Johnston Canyon campground. She was running at a steady clip along the Bow Valley Parkway towards me. I photographed her on the road and as she turned down towards the overflow parking lot and along the not then melted snow piles.
The fox stayed focus on wherever she was heading and only broke her pace while she crossed the snow. There seemed to have been a few things that drew her attention momentarily. It was less than ten minutes from when I saw her until she disappeared down a trail towards the river and possibly a bridge to cross it.
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Afield with a fox on the hunt
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I found this Red fox last weekend in Langdon, Alberta. She was hunting mice in a farm field. alongside the highway. A couple of times she came relatively close to the fence. I really liked this image from one of these nearby encounters. I’m heading there this afternoon to see if I can find her, or one of the three Snowy owls I saw last Sunday, again.
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A Red fox in Yellowstone
At the western edge of the Lamar Canyon at a small trailhead just above the river of the same name this fox was curled up under a sage bush. A small crowd had gathered, and under the watchful eye of a park ranger, had their cameras trained on the small patch of red visible between the gray-green branches and leaves. Watching it from a slightly higher vantage point, I could see the ears pointed forward and hoped she was hunting. Within a few minutes, she belly crawled forward a little and it was plain to see she was readying for a leap.
The grass and sage hid any rodents from my sight but not so for the fox. Or, at least through those large ears, their sound was not hidden. When she did jump it was fast but she came up empty. She dug anxiously around this bush and circled it several times but somehow the little creature made good on its escape.
With the meal gone, the fox looked up and seemed only then to realize the crowd to one side of her. At that point, she lowered her head, ears and tail and sprinted past the people, crossed the road (where happily traffic had long been stopped) and sped up a hill through the underbrush, grabbing a rodent along the way.
I went further up the road in the hopes of the fox reappearing down that way. I guessed wrong but soon found that the fox had backtracked and went to a small hollow downhill from the original trailhead. When I set up 35 yards away, she was laying low against another bush with her eyes, and ears, trained on a spot near a rock and some fallen trees.
The weather in Yellowstone is always changing and while she waited sun gave way to rain pushed in by a strong wind, then snow, sun and clouds followed in quick succession.
A lightning run got her on the spot stared at for the previous fifteen minutes in a flash. This time she struck successfully and “wolfed” it down while her head was still hidden by the grass.
She stalked through the hillside again for a few more minutes.
She rubbed against a bush next. I don’t know if that was to rub off scent or to pick up the sage. Then she headed off through the scrub and grass.
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Fox kits playing tug-of-war
At one point when I photographed a family of foxes in May, there was a ragged piece of cloth which served for a long-running tug-of-war at one point in the evening.
These three kits were the main players and they alternated between 1 on 1 and 1 on 2 battles.
For a while, a fourth looked interested in joining but they didn’t join in for very long.
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Fox faces
The fox pups, properly called kits, were playful and energetic when I spent an evening watching them. In the moments between, and even during, the hectic activity, they flashed some beautiful looks. I was really happy to be able to freeze a few of these.
The sun fell under the clouds late in the evening and provided a warm, buttery light to end the day. That was special for a guy with a camera!
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Fox kits at play on the prairies
The family of foxes I had the opportunity to photograph last week were an energetic bunch. Well, the kits were – I didn’t see the adults at any point during the couple of hours I watched them. Neighbours of the human type indicated that the adult pair raise a brood here every year.
However, the siblings all seemed to smoothly shift between play, tricks, sleep and just watching throughout the time I watched them. Just as you would expect for young foxes in training.
I was struck by their similarity to my own canines at home – particularly our one year old labradoodle (frenetic, smart and above all else playful) but still decidedly foxy!
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Fox watching
I have wanted to photograph Red fox kits for a long time and with a friendly tip from a fellow photographer (thank you Mike!), was able to find this beautiful family last Wednesday evening. The photograph above is of two of the five, or possibly six, young foxes as they watched a couple of their siblings playing off to the right. The sun slid in and out of the clouds early on and fought through some haze along the way so it was a great evening for lighting. On this particularly bright moment, I liked the contrast of the dreamy, abstract look of the field with the alert stares and sharp backlit outline of the foxes.
Christopher Martin Photography 