Little foxes

Lots of foxy activity these light summer evenings. Walking through the particularly beautiful valley below Clipperdown and Duncombe terrace last week a dapper young dog fox unconcernedly crossed our path and proceeded down to drink at the cattle trough in our full view but rather too distant for a good photo. A little further on a couple of horses were kicking off in the meadow and lo and behold it was another fox that had spooked them. A few summers past I watched the rendezvous of a menage a trois reynards over the field for several weeks before the vixen retired, reappearing several weeks later with three small cubs. This morning they were back in the same spot, though possibly not the same foxes. I have had the great pleasure of watching one laid back vixen sitting in the bracken watching her cubs play in the afternoon sunshine and, late one night, of stopping the car as three cubs rolled off the verge into the lane where they continued to play in the full glare of the headlights until their mother sharply called them home. In my garden are buried both a fox and a badger cub, I was too tender hearted to leave them dead on the roadside: how anyone can kill these beautiful creatures is beyond me.