Taexalia

wild.life

Red Fox Droppings

If you are not one of the many people who arrives on this blog looking for photos of fox droppings, feel free to look at my old photo of an urban foxie and then move on... You have been warned.

Red Fox (vulpes vulpes) Scratching

I could tell that there was a fox about this morning before we crossed the road and entered the less used path to the Crow Tree. I can't tell you how I knew, I just knew. When the Hound began to get animated about Sniffs, I knew my hunch was on the money. First we found very interesting, to the Hound, frosty remains of a rabbit, then we found a territory marking at the bottom of the steps:

Red Fox (vulpes vulpes) Droppings

This is a classic place to find fox droppings - foxes like to leave their mark in obvious places. Foxes especially like a raised platform, like a molehill, to deposit their message. This fox dropping is a day or two old, but further up the path we came upon another dropping that was so fresh it was steaming in the cold air.

Red Fox (vulpes vulpes) Droppings fresh

I never saw it, but I wondered if the fox had seen us and, as it was heading for cover, left us a message. The Hound was all over the path investigating and his behaviour suggested that he knew what I was guessing - that fox had been just ahead of us. The Hound would have zoomed off down an animal trail into the gorse, if I had let him, and I'd put money on it that we weren't too far from those piercing eyes, and that brushy tail...

The pictures, if you can stomach them, show that fox droppings are not as uniform as the droppings of some other beasties. The fox's diet is varied and can sometimes be very white with bones, or very dark with berries. Fox droppings will usually have the tapering associated with predator droppings.