Just had a few days at my family home in South Wales which gave me the chance to set my camera trap up for Red Foxes who live in the woods at the back of mum's house.
There are 2 or 3 foxes currently resident, a vixen who's clearly nursing cubs and one, possibly two, males. The first couple of night's efforts were plagued by issues associated with my rustiness at attempting to photograph foxes. Their behaviour around camera traps is very different from badgers and requires slightly different settings for the sensor. I did managed to get this nice but straight forward image, however, I had mostly black images as the flashes failed to wake quick enough and the fox had moved before triggering the sensor a second time (sensitivity of the sensor wasn't set high enough). The following night the weather was a bit windy and wet and the camouflage netting I used to cover the camera setup got displaced and appeared in the pictures. Grrrr
I was left with one night left, lessons learned and a desire to try a more challenging composition. I set the camera up on a fence post at the end of a fallen tree to create a feature that leads the eye into the image and to provide some depth. I was a bit nervous that the proximity and greater visibility of the camera may scare the foxes but they'd proved to be fairly bold on the previous nights. I needn't have worried as I ended up with 98 images including one which was everything I'd hoped for (it's the one on my homepage). The image below is a pleasing portrait of the bold male who is in beautiful condition. How I wish I had these beautiful animals living in my back garden.
