smart as a fox

The latest Murder of Crows sent me down to the pond to find the Red Fox once again. In spite of the fact that the little Fox (I am pretty sure it's the same one) was surrounded by screaming Crows, he (she?) was sitting placidly and not moving -- not even running away at my approach. The Crows however scattered and, as soon as they were gone, the Fox stood up and, to my surprise, began to trot towards me! Just before we would have collided on the path, he/she turned suddenly into a rather dense bush and pulled out a carcass and proceeded to devour it! As long as the crows were there, the smart-as-a-fox Fox was unwilling to give away the location of crow-edible prey but after my arrival chased them all away he was content to retrieve his catch right in front of an onlooker who he somehow knew had no interest in stealing his dinner.

What constitutes dinner? I suspect that our Fox has discovered fox heaven in the form of a Muskrat den in the banks of the pond. I hope he is not going to wipe out our Muskrats! But these very beat-up rodent carcasses could also be squirrels -- hard to tell.

Common Yellowthroats are still feeding young at the head of the pond and my arrival still produces a lot of agitata. I spent a little time trying to find the youngsters but, except for the momentary flight of two warbler-sized birds just above bush level, I could not find them (the adults were, of course, as conspicuous as could be).

Not all young birds are so inconspicuous. A Downy Woodpecker with a red cap was a juvenile bird not long out of the nest; adult Downies don't have red caps (the male has a red patch on the back of his head). It does seem odd that a young bird would be more strikingly marked than his elders.

I forgot to mention it but I heard my first cicada of the season this past Saturday during our Grace Estate walk. And I heard what I believe was a different cicada call yesterday afternoon in the woods here just back of the house. But which cicadas were they? Identifying cicada species by their calls is, to say the least, a challenge!

Eric Salzman