The land, that is. As the fox breeding season peaks, it is donning splendid attire for a wedding guest: white robes and a necklace of mist.
The bride, meanwhile, is clad in red.
Foxes are highly preoccupied with each other at present. Vixens are only receptive for a few days within the breeding season’s window, and their potential mates wander in earnest.
At least, most do. Some are left to watch lonely from afar.
And that is a perilous game. Male foxes will fight, sometimes with real fury, if a vixen’s attention is at stake. The first dogfox broke off from being groomed by her to investigate the gatecrasher.
And he perhaps should have fled. But he chanced his luck by showing submission: belly to the frozen grass, flattened and low.
He was lucky; the quarrel went no further. But any designs that he might have had on the vixen failed, and his consolation prize: the dubious company of a magpie.
A Walk with Wildlife 
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