Several weeks ago, I was lucky to spot a red fox trotting along the opposite riverbank at The Salmon Hole. Today, I believe I found fox tracks. These foxes stick around in the winter, and sleep in the open during the day. Hunting at night, foxes primarily target small mammals such as rabbits, squirrels, and mice, but they can also eat other animals and some plants and fungi (Khalid). As relatively small predators, foxes can become the prey of bobcats, lynx’s, and wolves; though this shouldn’t be much of a problem for this fox because of the urban environment it lives in (Fox Predators). Unfortunately, it has been quite warm in the past few days, and the snow melt made prevented me from following this fox’s tracks very far, or seeing the tracks of any animals it may have been hunting. The tracks I could see crossed a frozen part of the river, and came onto the main peninsula of The Salmon Hole. Since this peninsula is a mass of stone with almost no soil or small flora on top, I don’t think that the fox was looking for flora, worms, or mice. Since I have seen many rabbit tracks here in the past, it would be reasonable to conclude that this is what the fox was hunting. Since this is such a public place, in a sense, this fox would also be interacting with the humans and dogs that visit in that it has to make sure to avoid us. Since my last visit, I can tell that the ice on the river has grown considerably, forcing the flowing water to take much wider turns. At the same time, the ice and snow have melted quite a bit in the last few days, causing the ice to be thin and the snow to be slushy. I noticed only a few birds today, though there were hundreds here last month.
Fox Predators. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.foxesworlds.com/fox-predators/
Khalid, W. (2019, October 5). What Do Foxes Eat: What Do Red Foxes Eat. Retrieved from http://animalstime.com/what-foxes-eat-what-red-foxes-eat/