A watchful Canada goose. Just moments before a coyote had loped across the ice sheet- brave or too hungry for caution? Prepared for flight, the geese will not come ashore today. I do not know where they go, perhaps to the sea marsh where the water is late to freeze. I have taken only a few pictures because they are afraid of the camera, as if I were sighting them with a gun, which disturbs me as well. We all worry about our loved ones. To love wild creatures- who you have come to know on some personal level- in these winter months becomes a lesson in acceptance.
Later- I was wrong about it being a coyote. It was a fox. Actually there are two. The one on the ice must be a female due to its darker coloration and the fact that a second bright orange one crossed our path up on the road when I was out with the dog. His tell-tale bark from the hillside where he sought cover is all a fox’s own.
The geese have remained, skittering and foraging on the ice pack, joined by a flighty armada of mallards that will not tarry today.
Later still- Mistaken again. The woebegone fox seems to have been a solitary predator, as three of the largest, brilliantly red foxes we have ever seen (as large as mid-sized coyotes) galloped past our pond front door in a family pack. Too fast alas for the camera but not for our intrepid, fearless Jack Russell Audrey- not caught napping thankfully- who scared them off with her own distinctive bark…
All in all exciting developments with our geese and ducks at a safe distance out of harm’s way. I felt grateful for the disappearance of the seventh goose some six weeks ago. With her broken leg she could not have survived a day like this.
It seems little coincidence that I am so fascinated by the book I mentioned yesterday- Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America, by Jon Mooallem.
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