I was walking through a thick Sweet Chestnut copse at the back of the cottage about a week ago. These thin trees used to be coppiced and grown tightly together so that they would grow long and tall, then they were cut as hop poles to be used on the Kentish Hop Farms. Now they struggle to grown as they are so dense and yield little in the way of fruit in the autumn. Ongoing work on the estate is creating clearings here and there in order to diversify the wildlife.
Anyway I was walking through one of these areas at the back of the cottage when I spotted something moving ahead. At first I thought it was a couple of rabbits, but realised they were walking not lopping along. My next thought was badgers, but I soon realised that they were fox cubs. By this stage I had pretty much scared them off so I vowed to come back and tog them if I could. By the way togging means photographing, it's just quicker to type.
To get close I had to walk the long way around the den to make sure I was down wind and then sit with my back against an oak tree to keep as low profile as possible as possible. When the fox cub appeared it seemed not to see me and was relatively unconcerned. It seems they have great hearing and smell, but the ye sight is not so good. Then, of course when you have a photo of one cub, you then want a picture of two together, and although vermin, they were very cute. One evening, as Franc and I sat waiting for the cubs, we were granted the sighting of two Fallow Deer. They spotted us immediately, but stood watching us warily as I tried to get some photo's of them through the foliage. It was our best sighting so far.
