Having got back to the car and seen the fox hanging around in the parking lot, I at least had now got a shot of a fox. Nancy and I decided to head to South Beach to see if there were more foxes over there. As we turned on to the road to the beach, there was a dark shape sitting in the middle of the road. As we got closer, it was clear it was another fox. It hopped across the fence and into the field. I jumped out and got some shots of it as it rummaged through the ground in the field. There were tons of rabbits in the field and they were watching the fox intently, but it seemed interested in whatever was below the surface – presumably some rodents.
As it headed further away, we went down to the beach to park up and have lunch. I strolled around down there and saw more foxes in the distance but nothing to get images of. We then retraced our route back up the hill and saw more fox activity on one side of the road. I was getting some shots when I noticed another person looking up the hill on the other side of the road. I decided to see if he had spotted something and sure enough, he had.
A fox was coming down the hill and ended up walking alongside the road just over the fence. I was able to skip ahead and get shots as it came towards me and then repeat the process. It really didn’t seem to car about us. Eventually, it decided it wanted to be on the other side of the road. It hopped over the fence a short distance from me and crossed the road. It was so close, I couldn’t do anything with a long lens on the camera so I just watched it go. It hopped the next fence and then went on its way.
We moved on up the hill in the direction that another of the foxes seemed to have taken and it looked like it might come to us but then it just vanished, so we had nothing. We instead went back to Cattle Point and, as we got close to the parking lot, saw another fox in the field beside the road. I jumped out and was able to watch it drift across the field so close to me. It seemed so uninterested in my presence which was really cool. It is probably a problem how habituated to humans that they now are.
As it moved away, we completed our trip to the parking lot at Cattle Point and found another fox there. It was hanging around watching everyone and then it too headed off to the beach. At this point, it was really time for us to head back to the ferry, so we called it a day. The good news was that Nancy got to see all of the cool fox activity without ever having to leave the car.
Much of the wildlife I end up photographing in Juanita Bay Park is the birds or the aquatic life. However, I do occasionally come across some other creatures as I stroll through and one afternoon it was some deer. I have seen deer in the park before. They tend to stay away from the more heavily trafficked areas, but they do cross the paths when getting from one spot to another. That was what happened in this instance. They jumped out of the bushes ahead of where I was heading and across to more foliage. I thought they would be gone but they stopped and munched on some of the leaves for a while. Not clearly in sight but not avoiding me either!
