The Fox and the Vole
I haven’t had much time to write lately, but I had a great experience last weekend while hiking/birding. I went to Palmyra Cove Nature Center, an oddly sanguine and tranquil tract of forest, swamps and grasslands along the much-polluted Delaware River just over the bridge from Philadelphia. My wife and I discovered it a few months ago after reading about some cool bird sightings – it turned out to be a lot better than we had expected, and we’ve made several trips back since.
In this case, I was traveling solo, and was looking for the 25 or so species of warblers said to be hanging out in the trees in Palmyra. I came to a fork, knowing that I should go to the left, but instead taking the right. It turned out to be a fortuitious decision because only a hundred yards up the trail I came across a young fox playing with some sort of prey.
It noticed me and paused, then seemed to immediately determine that I wasn’t a threat and went back to its cat-like pursuit of what seems to be a vole. It would chase it and capture it, tossing it in the air and then pouncing again. The vole tried to escape more than once, but eventually realized that escape was unlikely and took up a more defiant pose:
In the end, the fox seemed very sure of himself, and strangely serene in my presence. I was allowed to get fairly close to him for my pictures – it wasn’t until I finally decided that it was time to move on past him that he spooked, grabbed his breakfast and slid noiselessly into the brush along the side of the trail. In seconds, he was a ghost in the bushes, but for a time I got a vision of nature taking triumph only a short distance from an example of man’s grandeur. It gives me hope for all of our battered world that sometimes nature gives Man the finger and goes about its business with little regard to our presence.
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What a marvellous encounter!