February 21, 2008

Gray Foxes

Gray fox. Photo by Chas S. Clifton
Gray Fox. Photo by Chas S. CiftonI thought that we had a few gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) living near the house, but I was not absolutely sure. Now the scout camera has caught one (or two). These are the foxes that climb (leaning) trees.

Red foxes, like these two checking under the bird feeder, seem bolder and more likely to show up in the day time, compared to the gray fox.

I thought that I had had heard gray foxes (samples here), but just in the last 48 hours I got some photographs on the scout camera.

That black tail tip is diagnostic.

The Grey Fox is a fine movie too.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gray fox are incredibly common here- I've actually never seen a red one. They are most often seen in our headlights or scavenging the garbage dumpsters at night in town.

Cute little buggers.

Chas S. Clifton said...

Back in the late 1980s, I was camping in the Jemez country -- not all that far from you, really -- and found a gray fox skull in the woods. I was not sure what it was, so I had a BLM biologist friend look it up in his Big Book of Skulls. It was the first one that I had seen.