Rose asked if the Fox is welcome at Denbury. I like Fox. There were as many as six feeding with the Badgers earlier this year. I believe that they are down to two at the moment. I had hoped to have shown some Fox Cubs on the webcams, but this is the first year that I have not seen any. There den is in the woods in the left hand corner of the main Horse field. In other years, I have often seen the Cubs in between the Tree House and the old Oak Tree, in the late afternoon, sunning themselves or playing. They were in the woods this year as we regularly heard them. They could well have been out as usual, but I haven’t seen them. Through the winter when I had the Sheep in the fields, we very often saw them on the webcams walking in between the Ewes, some of the Ewes had lambs. I know one time when the Fox was walking in between the Ewes one was lambing. Very rarely were the Sheep disturbed by the Fox, they just ignored it.
I wonder if any Sheep farmers saw the Fox and Sheep so close to each other. I must admit I was surprised, but it is easy give any animal a bad name. Maybe through the ages it was a good excuse for the Hunts. Don’t get me wrong I do not believe the Fox to be a saint, At Denbury we have had some not very nice experiences with the Fox. My Lads when they were younger had six or so pet Bantams, they were really friendly and would sit on the boys shoulders. One night a fox got into the Bantams hutch and killed the lot, and didn’t take any away. It also happened with some fancy Chicken that the Lads had, although it did not touch the Cockerel. But the worse one was when a Fox had one of our white Geese. We have a pond in the farm yard just in front of the farm house. I was out at the time, when a Fox in daylight, within yards of the farm house and with my Lads watching, jumped over a fence to get to the Geese, it jumped back over the fence with the Goose in mouth and started to eat it with the boys watching. I drove down the drive as it was happening. I had shotgun at the time and I shot the Fox. Believe me I didn’t like doing it, I really did not have an alternative, for sure it would have been back for the remainder of our Geese.
The hay is in the barn now, that is one less thing to worry about. It rained on it a little last night. the hot sun soon dried the little wet there was.
Don’t forget the Meteor Showers tonight from about 10.30pm. It is a bit cloudy here, but I must admit I am so tired I could well be asleep and miss it all.
Sorry about the loss of cam 1 and 2 just after 9.pm, one of our broadband connections went down for a few minutes.