That was late summer, early autumn, call it what you will.
Today the road is filled with leaves and there is a bite in the skies that makes everything feel that little bit more alive. That is nature’s paradox: it is more vivid and yet far more soothing than the world built of bricks and glass.
I’ve been indoors for much of the day, however, dealing with the final technical hurdles before getting my book on the ‘why and how’ of foxes uploaded onto Amazon. It’s now living here.
Books are more than paper. You close them, but they do not leave you. In a small way, a fox sighting can also be like that; it passes, but it has lodged itself in your mind.
One encounter that I will not forget gave me this photograph back in the summer. This vixen is known locally as ‘Pretty Face’, but whatever she calls herself, she is one of my favourite foxes. She is a non-breeding adult in the Horse Meadows Group – the family that call a large part of my parish their territory.
She had been playing, playing – auntie as she was that day to four cubs explosively alive in the evening sunshine. She washed them, she checked on them, she guarded them. I merely photographed them. Eight (yes, eight) foxes were in front of my camera; I will leave the total number of photos to your imagination.
There came a moment when she sat up, light painting gold highlights into her fur. She was watching me from perhaps 50 metres away. She had been aware of me for the past hour, but now, without a care in the world, she began trotting towards me.
At 15 metres she stopped, still studying me with quiet curiosity, standing at the crossroads of confidence and caution, before continuing her journey out of the field with relaxed aplomb.
Turn the page. The journey goes on.
A Walk with Wildlife 
Congrats on book, I knew you will write it one day!!! I checked the link on Amazon UK and it is available only for Kindle for now. Do you plan to have it for another platform, Kobo for instance? Sandy and I would like to buy it but we don’t have Kindles and smart phones. I might find a converter online to make it as ebook (for Kobo) but that might be against copyright laws and I don’t want to do that.
Anyway, I am glad you put the old dogfox photo on the cover, what a magnificent animal he was!
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Thank you so much! 🙂 I really appreciated your encouragement when I was writing my posts in the Opera days and have never forgotten it. I have also now written a 400 page novel and two mini-guides to Canadian wildlife, but this fox tome is the first book that I’ve let loose properly. Feels pretty weird having it on Amazon but I guess I’ll get used to the idea…
I would like to put it on Kobo, but I signed up for an Amazon scheme which gives a few extra benefits but means that I have to give them exclusivity for at least 90 days. There is a print version available now though if that’s suitable?
The Old Dogfox is still the king of foxes to me 🙂
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Paperback actually works the best for us, we both like to have the book “in our hands” if you know what I mean. Old fashioned, that’s what we are 😀 Anyway, I just bought it.
I hope this will encourage you to publish more books, we both like the way you write.
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Thank you 🙂
Yes, there is something special about a real, physical book.
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Adele, lovely post! I think I’ve seen those two foxes before! Congrats on you book. I haven’t used Kindle much, but went to iTunes store and downloaded the free app., both on my Mac and iPad! I downloaded the book through Amazon.ca, and I’m just getting ready to sit down and have a read! Cheers, Robin!
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Thank you very much! 🙂 I hope you enjoy it. Several of the foxes who starred on my old Opera blog are in it!
Yes, the Old Dogfox is unmistakable even after all these years!
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A wonderful encounter, Adele … I fear I must wait for another format … I, unfortunately, am one of those old-fashioned folk with no mobile phone. I must rely on my PC with Win7 Pro.
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Thank you, it was a beautiful sighting 🙂
The fox book is available on Amazon as a paperback too. LOL, Windows 7 is good but I may be one of the three people still living who miss Vista. A fair number of programmes don’t work at all on Win10.
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Well, the book is available as a paperback too – though Amazon seems to have split up the listing. The paperback version is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fox-biography-Britains-natural-neighbour/dp/1549901710/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1
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