Fox on the run

NB :Just to say at the moment these posts are still "catch up posts" as I was writing them on a word document while I waited for technology to catch me up....so they will be added in groups of three or four days at a time. Very soon,hopefully I will therefore be up to date.

This morning whilst I tried to escape the first blast of post 8.30am heat (I allowed myself a stiff black coffee before I ventured forth which made me somewhat later than planned) I saw the biggest ,darkest auburn fox I have ever seen,stood right in the middle of a huge field,the same field which a couple of visits ago allowed Kif to get more than a comfortable distance away from a deer he pursued. This fox saw me and decided to make a break at speed for the woods(a fair distance away) and then changed direction towards a nearer crop of Maize into which it disappeared. It was at this point that I realised that in all my 52 years, including a couple of equestrian Xmas hunts(for my sins) in my youth and I had never yet seen a “Fox on the run”. Have I seen foxes ? ,many….have I seen them “slip away” ?  more than a few but I have never just seen one take start and bolt !. It was a wonderful sight. Then it begin to make me think about all the things I have seen here which I had never seen in real live before. Things that perhaps a few of you who are lucky enough to live the “wild” like I used to when I was younger take forgranted. Hares “boxing in spring” ,Kingfishers hunting fish on the riverbank and Otters building holts directly opposite us on a riverbank while we fished.  Owls ,bats, red squirrels, butterflies, moths, swifts, snakes, woodpeckers, the list goes on and on. I know this makes me sound like a bit of a nature geek but it’s watching things like this on a daily basis that sets my pulse racing right now and to be able to trace their lives through the seasons thrills me to the bone. All I need for Xmas Mr Claus is a MASSIVE camera lens. Thanks guy.