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| Arctic fox at her den with Sphynx Island and Alexandra Fiord in the background. |
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| A foolish or brave Arctic hare at the fox den. |
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| Arctic fox checking out our stuff in the field. |
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| Arctic fox in camp at Alexandra Fiord. |
Tuesday, 21 August 2018
Fox in camp!
There is a fox den up on the hillside of Dome mountain at Alex. It
hasn’t been used for a few years but we noticed new excavations this year. A
motion sensitive camera was set up at the den and sure enough there was footage
of a young female Arctic fox … and a brave or foolish Arctic hare!
It was not long before we saw the fox making furtive visits to camp. Late
one afternoon, when we were out in the field conducting a survivorship survey
of seedlings that had been planted in warmed (OTC) and control plots seven
years ago, the fox came to check us and our stuff out. She seemed to nuzzle at
a big puffy jacket that we used to keep us warm when we were the recorder for
the survey and sniffing out some Tupperware lunch containers. We thought she
was so cute and it was amazing to see her so close but … when we went back to
our stuff we found that she had peed and marked our stuff as her territory! Apparently
the marking scent is really strong smelling, like a skunk’s, but my olfactory
system seems not to detect the smell at all. The seedlings in the survivorship
study are not faring that well in most of the plots, still only producing a
couple of leaves each year and almost none have produced flowers. The reason
appears to be the willow (Salix arctica)
that is growing all over them and the copious leaf and seed litter the willow
produces covering the seedlings.
One evening we came back from the field and there was our friendly fox
moving around the camp, eating at our compost pile and drinking from the grey
water pit. She seemed to have little fear of us and we could get super close to
her. At one point there were four of us, cameras out, taking photos of this
photogenic fox. Her coat is in such good condition and she has the bushiest of
tails. And … while all this excitement was going on there were also walruses in
close to shore blowing, swimming and majestically diving like whales … a magical
end to a busy day in the field.
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Were you there long enough to see if the Fox had cubs?
ReplyDeleteOh and did the hare live to tell the tale?
ReplyDeleteThere were no cubs at the den this year. We were rooting for the young lady to find a mate for next year.
ReplyDeleteThe brave hare was not caught by the fox at the den or at least not that we saw on the motion sensitive camera at the den. There were not many hares around. We saw one in camp a couple of times, one or two on the nearby peak called Dome and three up near Sverdrup Pass.