Foxes, Wild Seeds, a Tower … and Gulls
A bit of this and a bit of that. Nothing weighty.
A Larder For Small Birds
Walking around the neighbourhood as fall does its thing with falling leaves and fading flowers, it is sadly evident that many gardeners have not taken on the message about letting things (more or less) lie and doing the cleanup in spring once temperatures start to warm up again. Partly, I suspect, it’s habit, partly because some people like everything to look neat and tidy in order to, as a Scots friend of ours puts it, “get a gold star in their jotter”. Here’s a picture from our garden to demonstrate that letting things be is not being scruffy or lazyin fact, it’s standing back and admiring how gorgeous plants can be even after the flowers have faded. This is a clump of golden rod, and those white, fluffy things are heads of tiny seeds just waiting for the birds to come along and eat them. I think it’s rather beautiful.
Fritz the Suburban Fox – and friends
A bit over 50 years ago we were living in Beckenham, a leafy suburb in south London (the real London, not the Johnnie-come-lately Canadian one). It was a regular thing when walking along the roads at night – we had no car – to encounter urban foxes casually going about their business. We would politely nod to each other as we passed. Along the back of the road of houses in which we rented rooms there was a steeply sided and quite deep cutting along which ran a rail line – perfect denning habitat if you are a fox. They dined off squirrels and rabbits and the contents of garbage bins and made a good living. In fact, even back then, it was estimated that there were more foxes living in British cities than out in the Beatrix Potter countryside. Much easier to make a living, fewer predators and certainly no foxhounds and mounted, red-jacketed and red-faced huntsmen to spoil their days.
Today, in a leafy western suburb of Montreal, we are still enjoying the passing sight of foxes living amongst us. Going by comments on local social media, many people tolerate, even enjoy, their presence. I would say most, but not quite all because there are some misguided people who have, at least in the past, put out poisoned bait. This fellow (and apologies for the poor photograph, I only had a phone at the time) crossed the road about 30 or 40 feet in front of us with a limp squirrel in its jaws and then sat down in the garden it had reached to enjoy its snack. This was on Canadian Thanksgiving – not quite a turkey, but sustaining.
“Fritz-the-Fox” is a very fine fellow living in a belt of trees adjacent to the Garden at Fritz – a volunteer garden that I help to manage in our town. We grow fresh produce, which we donate to local food banks. I must write about it before too long. Anyway, in previous years we have always lost some produce to rabbits and squirrels – but since Fritz moved in, we have had very little lapine theft at all. Some early mornings while we work, he will come out and watch us. A week ago, he settled down within fifty feet, quite unconcerned.
I imagine most people will have read Watership Down by Richard Adams, about a fictional colony of rabbits. The author created a language, which he called Lapine, for his characters in which the word silflay meant “” the act of rabbits eating above-ground”. There has been none of that this year under the beady eyes of Fritz and, we assume, his family.
Anyway … this is a digression. The Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) is today's creature from the 1001 Species catalogue to focus on. All around us, not hard to see, albeit usually briefly.
Foxes will eat almost anything they happen upon. Not quite as “experimentally” as Gulls, but not too picky either. Countryside foxes eat mostly meat (95% of their diet), including insects, worms, and they also like fruit. Urban foxes, on the other hand, eat rather less meat, perhaps only half of their diet, the other half being household garbage and scavenging. They have robust digestive systems. This is supplemented by catching birds and small mammals such as rats and mice and frogs and locally, at least, squirrels. All of which does help to keep rodent numbers under control. Foxes are ecologically important in urban green spaces. By simply disposing of our waste properly, we can discourage many of them from hanging too closely around our bins – but we really need to do that anyway – might I mention Raccoons?.
Fox populations are self-regulating, being limited by the amount of food and territory available. Territories are occupied by a family or social groups of two to six adults, and the size of the territory typically depends on the habitat. If you remove a fox from an area, their territory will likely be claimed by another within a matter of days. Removing foxes also usually results in a larger breeding population the next year. So be warned – a good reason to coexist.
Sometimes foxes do look pretty tatty. This is often entirely normal seasonal moulting, or it may be Sarcoptic mange, caused by the parasitic mite Sarcoptes scabei canis. It is highly contagious between foxes and dogs and can be passed to humans, but they can't complete their life cycle on a non-canine host such as us, and it is easily treated. The mite burrows into the fox's skin, inducing lesions that cause the fur to fall out, leaving bald patches. When the fox moults for summer, the new coat is already visible beneath, so the cause of the scruffiness is obvious.
Naturally, foxes feature in First Nations folk tales where they are considered to be the other “sly trickster” alongside the Raven, but also as wise elders. After the creation of light, the fox and the raven argued about which would dominate the new world. The fox hunts hidden in the dark, while the raven needs light to find food and so, being reasonable and pragmatic creatures, they divided the days and seasons into periods of daylight and darkness and ruled accordingly.
Beautiful creatures.
Really ought to have left by now …
Normally, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have almost all left for the south around mid-September. This year, presumably with the very atypical heat (at least up to the end of last week) that we have been seeing them regularly in the garden. This fellow is still here in Montreal on the 11 October. Note how fat and golf-ball-shaped he is. Plenty of fat reserves there to enable hime to go a long way once he decides to get started.
Towering Above Us
Much excitement a couple of days ago. We have agreed to have a MOTUS Tower installed in our garden for the winter and a couple of McGill-U’s charming young ornithologists spent yesterday afternoon installing it. To quote the relevant website “The Motus Wildlife Tracking System (Motus) is an international collaborative research network that uses coordinated automated radio telemetry to facilitate research and education on the ecology and conservation of migratory animals. Motus is a program of Birds Canada in partnership with collaborating researchers and organizations.” In this case it is being used to track local distribution of Northern Cardinals.
Our neighbours may suspect we are using a high-tech spying operation but they can rest easy in their beds on this one … we have subtler ways to do that if we wanted to.
A couple of good reads …
The first good read is this excellent article, “In Defence of Rats”, and it is most delightfully illustrated too. Rats, most definitely wild creatures, are always with us but are greatly misunderstood. I had to share it with you …
https://hakaimagazine.com/features/in-defense-of-the-rat/?ref=thebrowser.com
Rats are not nearly as bad as we are encouraged to believe. They are not aggressive or filthy and pose a low risk of disease, other than in situations when infection is rife anyway. They are resilient; we will never eradicate them. They are emotionally complex. They can laugh. And they can learn to play hide and seek with humans and "will do so for no other reward than tickles and fun"
Comment - I had not previously come across the online Hakai Magazine that this appeared in. Some excellent material there, and all linked to a science-based conservation trust working on the Pacific coast. Have a look and then check out the Tula Foundation. Interesting. https://tula.org
And then, to sign off with, here’s a very short piece especially for birders and aspiring birders and those who want to better understand birders and their preoccupations or even those who just shake their heads and mutter “Birders!” Surprisingly interesting, despite the title:
Oh, this was delightful! We have no foxes here in my corner of the Pacific Northwest, at least not that I’ve seen (and I think I’d see them). But coyotes abound, cackling like witches in the night and skirting off just at the edge as we walk around town.