January'S Darkest Hours

Darkest January and how black the mornings are. I like to take Ted, our young Labrador, for a good walk as soon as I am out of bed and at the moment its still dark until after 7 o clock. I do not mind the dark evenings so much, we sit round the fire and toast crumpets ,all nice and cosy, but I do like to get going first thing. The only good thing about it is that I am eating my breakfast and looking out of the window whilst the light is still dusky; an excellent time for wildlife watching.

The grey heron has been doing some early fishing down at the wildlife pond, but best of all have been the foxes. A young-looking vixen in fine condition has been a regular visitor to the bottom of the bird table where I often leave crumbs and bits from the bread board. Although we have the curtains open and the lights on she did not seem to notice me sitting at the dining table until one morning when she looked right in at me. She was just as interested in me as I was in her. She had a lovely white chest and a thick chestnut red coat, with a very large white tip to her tail.

The next morning she was sniffing about on the far side of the sheep run, so I got the telescope out for a better look and had just decided it was the same one when a rangy looking dog fox appeared next to her. She would not let him get too close and the two of them played a game of chase, just like our Ted does when he meets another dog. They made their way down to the pond, which was frozen over, and continued their games around it. Then one ran right across the middle, without breaking the ice. Although they seemed to be about the same size as Ted they must be quite a bit lighter as the ice cracked half an hour later under his weight.

Foxes usually mate in early January and I guess the vixen was just coming into season. The dog fox will then stay with her until she is ready to mate. The cubs are then born approximately 53 days later. Thank goodness these two both look healthy, with no sign of mange. I have a love/hate relationship with foxes but I am loathed to shoot them as they need quite a bit of killing and I have seen too many injured ones in the past. They tend to be the ones that raid chickens and domestic rabbits and make a mess of dustbins. In my opinion they are best hunted with hounds or not at all!

I wish the foxes would hunt the woodmice a bit more effectively, as we seem to have a plague of them at the moment. I lost all of my early peas to them last year, in the greenhouse and in the vegetable garden. Now they are after the apples stored in the shed. They even had the nerve to eat the holly berries on the Christmas arrangements in our front porch! Unfortunately it was me who got caught in the trap set for them. I do not normally have posh finger nails, but now I have an even worse collection on my right hand. OUCH! I have caught more than ten woodmice to date, which seems a shame as they are rather handsome little chestnut creatures with white tummies, big ears, big eyes, and long tails. Taking a bite out of every apple in a box is not on though. This is war! I think we must find a new cat soon.

Wendy Bathurst