Gray Foxes, Galore!

I've not had a really good gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) sighting before, except the sighting mentioned in this entry: A *NEW* Camera Trapped Species back in the spring of 2012, while I was visiting the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

These little canines intrigue me, because they are so cat-like and small!

This past weekend, I was back in Western, NY visiting my parents for the weekend. My mom and I were driving to a nearby apple orchard to get cider and apples and something caught my eye on the side of the road. In mid-sentence, I asked my mom to stop and pull over, so I could go look. She rolled her eyes, but stopped the car and let me run back and look....

 

This beautiful (young, female) gray fox had recently been struck by a vehicle.

 

I looked her over really quickly, and determined that I wanted to take it to study it a bit closer later, and not on the side of the road in the pouring rain. So, my mother let me put it in a shopping bag, and allowed me to take it back to their house to properly bag and freeze it. It's now in a freezer in the taxidermy lab at SUNY Cobleskill, where I'm a student, until I can properly do something with it. That will probably be another entry though...

 

For now, I want to address the gray fox's feet:

 

As a mentioned above, they are so cat-like. I distinctly remember learning in the Intro to Fish and Wildlife class I took at FLCC, that the gray fox have semi-retractable nails. Other canids (red fox, coyotes, wolves, domestic dogs) can not retract their claws, but all cats can fully retract them. Sometimes tracks left behind by the gray fox don't have nails that show, since they can retract them! The gray foxes have also been known to CLIMB trees, which totally astounds me! Elbroch (Mammal Tracks & Sign) says they may even BED above ground in a shrub or tree!

Check out Blazin' Trailblazer's Climbing Canine entry for some great pictures of a gray fox climbing...

 

...and Nature of a Man's Lazy Willow entry for some MORE great pictures...super cool!

Maybe I can catch a GF scaling a tree too someday...


Gray fox feet are very small, comparitively to other dogs. I think of a red fox, and I think of a small dog. Grays, for some reason, seem to be less ...observable. I was going to say less common, but I don't know if that is the case. They seem a bit more skittish than the reds, except for that one I saw in North Carolina. Many people have a harder time envisioning how big a gray fox is.

Here are some sizes for comparison:

     -A solid, adult labrador retriever (like the 2 year old my parents own) weighs about 80 lbs.
     -A gray wolf: 60-154 lbs*
     -A coyote: 20-50 lbs*
     -A red fox: 8-15 lbs*
     -A gray fox: 7-15 lbs*
     -A domestic cat: On average, I think they're about 9-11 lbs.

*Taken from Mammals of North America, Fiona Reid 2006.

A pet cat could easily be the same size or larger than a gray fox. Here are some paw pictures I took for comparison.

My pet cat, Sassy's paw on the left.

Gray fox paw on the right.

 

You can see that the toe pads on the fox are relatively larger than that of Sassy's, but the overall outline/size of the paws is similar, especially if seen by a rookie like myself. Tracking is difficult, and animals with tracks so similar to each other as domestic cat and gray fox. Dogs typically have an "oval" shape to them, and cats "round", but in smudgy imperfect snow or mud...it can be hard to decipher.

 

There are some differences though, and I found this neat website with the breakdown of the minutia between dog and cat tracks: Canine vs. Feline.

Also, notice that nub of a toe that each critter has further up the leg. That's the heel pad, and it often doesn't register...but it can, especially in a deep substrate. This can only further confuse things between the two species...

According to Elbroch, measurements are as follows for domestic cat and gray fox tracks:

     -Domestic cat:   Front 1-1 5/8" L x 7/8-1 3/4" W
                                Rear 1 1/8-1 1/2" L x7/8-1 5/8" W

     -Gray fox:          Front 1 3/8-1 7/8" L x1 3/16"- 1 3/4" W
                                Rear 1 1/4-1 3/4" L x15/16- 1 1/2" W


Finally, I have to share a final few pictures. After being away from where I live in East/Central NY, where I've moved for school, for the weekend...I anxiously checked my camera trap that I have rigged up when I got back. I could not believe the results:

All 3 pictures have a gray fox in the picture. Now, the question is: are they all the same individual? Or are they different animals? Perhaps that's another blog entry as well. I just can't believe that this malfunctioning camera actually pulled through for me this weekend, thank goodness. Talk about coincidence!

Field Guides and Reference Books

This is probably my favorite part of my house, besides maybe my bed. If there was ever a fire, THIS would be the "stuff" I'd try to rescue. I've been collecting these books mostly for the past several years, but some of them are childhood books. I'm lucky to have grown up with parents who love the outdoors just as much as I've turned out to. I have tons of field guides (Audobon, Peterson, Golden), various reference guides (Soil Science Simplified, Rock Hunters Guide, Take a Hike!), and I also store my old field journals in this bookshelf as well. For Christmas I received some AWESOME books that I am very excited to add to my collection. A couple of these I've seen professors carrying around, and the authors continuously pop up in literature and works cited. That means something to me.

If and when I move far away from New York, I'll really have to make some hard decisions about what to pack. Clothes and shoes?...or my books? Especially if I'm flying, that will be tough.

Anyway, now onto my *new* books...

Stokes Guide to Nature in Winter by Donald Stokes. I have used another Stokes book (Guide to Mammal Tracking and Behaviors) in a class I took. This January I'm taking Winter Ecology and the required reading is Winter World by Bernd Heinrich (this book deserves a post all of its own). Anyway, when I was on Amazon.com, this Stokes book was suggested to purchase. Since I like the Mammal Tracking book, I figured why not? So I bought it, but haven't had much opportunity to read it yet. The only thing I've noticed is that some of the scientific names are old, as it was published in 1976.

Next, A Field Guide to Mammal Tracking in North America by James C. Halfpenny. This is another one that was "suggested" to me by Amazon (thanks!). I have a guide to Rocky Mountain mammals by Halfpenny, and have heard good things about him, so I decided to ask for the book. It's small, flimsy, and contains all line drawings. But it's a reference guide and can be used to cross reference...I'm thinking mainly track patterns and sizes.

Now THIS book is the Bible of field guides/references. Mammal Tracks & Sign by Mark Elbroch is a big, thick, complete book of all North American mammals. The pictures are great, the information is great, and I just like Elbroch's writing. It's been helpful to me during my black bear study while trying to define stride, straddle, gait, and direct registering. If you're into wildlife and tracking, you should own this book.

This is the Bible for bird lovers. The Sibley Guide to Birds by David Allen Sibley is like the above: big, thick, and complete. Lot's of great hand drawn pictures in here of birds in different variations of plumage (m/f, seasonal, eclipse, etc), and the birds in flight or perched. I don't know very much about birds. I know common songbirds that visit the bird feeder, common raptors, and common waterfowl. Other than that...I don't know much. Unfortunately at my college, ornithology is not offered, so I will have to wait until I transfer to take it. But for now, I will go birding on my own and try to learn how to use the guide!

And the last one, Behavior of North American Mammals also by Mark Elbroch. I purchased this for reference. I am intrigued by specialized animal behaviors, and this book was just published this year, so I asked Santa for it :) It. Looks. Awesome! I hope I have some time to sit and read through this before my Winter Ecology class.

And that's all I have for this entry. Hopefully my next post is more exciting...I going to check my neglected camera traps on Saturday and it's been several weeks. Hopefully there are some interesting, photogenic critters on there! In the mean time...

Happy New Year!