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not to drag its tail in the snow, and so there was no brush mark.
From that time on, I was able to follow fox marks in snow, mud and even soft ground. There were established fox paths everywhere —along. the fences, up the driveway and even by the footpath at the kitchen door. Certain places were picked out as special markers, like a large stone by the bridge, or a clump of broomsedge, and at these spots the foxes would stop to leave a dropping or two.
The fox dens were in different places and probably not occupied year-round, but only for a few months at a time. Old groundhog holes were a favorite choice, no doubt saving the foxes the trouble of digging. The soil where we are is quite hard most time throughout the year, and it is only after a heavy rain or in the Spring thaw when an animal would be able to get into it.
Whether or not the fox killed off the groundhog before moving in, or whether the groundhog moved out on its own, I couldn’t tell. Nothing would share a hole with a groundhog, that’s for sure.
Julia also has a keen eye for animal clues. One day she reported hundreds of small marks in the winter turf, scattered over the property here and there, acre by acre. Mostly on the softer ground, they were not the heart-shaped deer marks, nor were they molehills, nor the work of meadow voles. The fresh ones showed a scratched-out conical crater, something like a volcano, but only an inch or so across, with a very small hole at the bottom. What could they be?
An Englishman, David MacDonald, who studied and lived with foxes for manyyears, gave us the clue. He found that only the occasional deranged fox would go for sheep or large poultry. Foxes’ diet was
94.9%