One of my favourite animals, not birding, but just as elusive especially these days

Full screen gallery below

I think the cover photo already spoiled it. My first real wildlife encounter was with foxes in the dunes. This was before I got the birding virus. The curiosity, daring and cunning behaviour of foxes always attracted me to get them photographed within their habitat as naturally as possible. This was a challenge years ago, but doable in the dunes. However lately they are more scarce. Mainly due to the more people that are photographing them, even feeding them (which is now prohibited), but I think they are hiding further and further away in the dunes as it became more and more crowded after 2020 with people.

I hope that I will be able to observe and photograph them again as I could years ago. I really loved doing that, who knows. For now I did a nostalgic search through my catalog of photos and found a few beauties that I wanted to share.

These are several from the dunes and the young one from the Oostvaardersplassen in the mid north of the Netherlands. Again I kept my distance, moving slowly and let the young one take a well deserved rest as it fell asleep when I got myself out of its surroundings.

The others are from the dunes here, the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen. Some I already shared years ago, but can’t pass these at it was a sudden encounter with a fox that was exhausted from a fight I guess. It was bleeding from the snout and in desperate need of a rest in the sun. Again I kept my distance, but the fox wasn’t really minding me and could take some photos. I think, at that time, people in the dunes were visiting more frequently so the animals there sort of adjusted to people. It was a special encounter for sure.

The last one was just by accident. After a day in the dunes without any result I stumbled up a deer, but was surprised that a fox was just sitting there as its was saying “take the photo….”. It looks edited in, but it’s not. Still can’t believe that pose together with the deer in the background. Sometimes being there, even if its a whole day without succes, with a bit of luck you still succeed.