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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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.
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Foxy runner
I found this Red fox sprinting away from a farm west of Springbank, Alberta. A dog was just giving up the chase when I caught sight of the fox running at full speed in the ditch. By the time it passed me it was out of pursuit and was cantering along.
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Run Fox Run
On the weekend I was out early combing the prairies west of Cochrane, Alberta for wildlife. The clouds were heavy from rain overnight and had only started to thin out at dawn. I was driving northward along a hillside gravel road when I saw a couple of ravens explode out of a tree on the edge of the ditch just ahead of me. Watching them fly in haphazard circles it seemed something had stirred them up. In a break between a few of the trees, I caught a flash of something racing through the field away from the birds. I was going 40 km/h when I looked at the speedometer and this creature was pulling away from me. I sped up and realized I was alongside a Red Fox. It was about a 100 metres from the fence dividing the field and was absolutely flying.
For the few hundred metres that we traveled in parallel, we were going at 50 km/h. Its stride was incredible – fast, powerful and efficient. The back and tail were straight as an arrow and the legs were a blur as it hurtled along. I have never witnessed an animal move so fast on the ground (I can’t imagine watching a Cheetah!) My camera was in the passenger seat and my window was already down so I had to try to photograph this sublime athlete in motion. There were three openings between the trees over the distance we covered together. The last one had a small rise that the fox disappeared behind and the first one yielded six out of focus shots. But, the middle gap was a little bigger and I was able to focus and capture three good frames.
Before a fourth break in the trees, the fox veered downhill directly west across the green field. This last image with it close came as I was slowing down and it was turning away.
I stopped to watch it bound away. That’s when I noticed that the ravens had been chasing the fox since they flushed out of their tree. Probably it had come too close to their nest and the birds wanted to make sure it did not come back. They banked with the fox when it turned and followed along across the field. About a kilometre down they stopped the chase, circled higher for a minute and then glided back towards their tree. When the chase ended the fox checked up beside a creek, grabbed a quick drink and then stared in my direction for a minute.
For its part, I don’t know if the fox grabbed an egg or a chick before being chased off but it seemed to have a contented look on its face to me. With the remnants of a winter coat still wet from the rain and the rich colour on the face and flanks, I think this fox was a magnificent animal. It was an amazing encounter that I could not have dared to imagine.
Christopher Martin Photography 