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Red Foxes

A couple of years ago a friend invited me to join him to photograph red foxes.  I of course thought they would all be red.  As it turns out red foxes come in a variety of colors, grey, black, tan, and the multicolored as seen in the following image.  Kit foxes, the babies, are very curious and very playful.  As you can see the back kit above is checking me out.  I'm standing still, making very little noise with my camera and he seems to be wondering what the heck I am going.

This is the dog fox, an adult male and the parent of the kits you see here.  He is gone most of the day while the kits stay close to home and play.  When he returns the kits mob him and he starts playing and running right with them, actually escalating the level of play.
This little grey red fox was a delight to watch.  He loved the flowers and would go from one bunch to another slowly working his way closer and closer to me.  I kept thinking, "lay down, lay down!" as I wanted a picture of him in the flowers.  He cooperated and gave a look straight at me.  Oh joy, what fun!
Another fox from a different family.  There is a den in the thicket behind this fox.  All of the adult in this group looked alike so it was hard to know which was the Dog fox and which the Vixen.  This was a very early morning capture with the fox keeping an eye on what was going on.
It may seem from some of these images that I was very close to the foxes.  All of the photographers try to maintain a 75 foot minimum distance.  When the kits would come too close we would clap our hands to shoo them away.  They look close due the due to the lens I was using, a 600mm with a 1.4 adapter for an effective 840mm capture.

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