Secrets of Watching Wildlife

Image Gallery Gray fox BILL LEA

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As was often my habit, I slipped out of bed at dawn and sloshed uphill through tall, dew-soaked grass to the old barbed-wire fence that separated the forested top half of our North Carolina mountainside from the sloping, pastured bottom. From that high vantage point I could see the entire valley spread out like a rumpled organic quilt — each irregular patch colored with rusty soil and green grass, and each patch with its own miniature house, barn and wandering livestock.

I was sitting amid the broom sedge, watching the light of day seep into the valley, when I sensed movement to my left. Just at the edge of my eyes’ capacity to strain in that direction, no more than 10 yards away and slightly behind, came a fox. I spotted it in time to see it take two or three steps before it spotted me.

For a moment, the fox froze. Then — to my astonishment — it turned toward the valley, glanced my way one more time and calmly sat down on its haunches.

Never mind that the fox is among the most persecuted and furtive of rural mammals. This one seemed not the least concerned over my presence. That it had chosen not to flee was a puzzle — but more than that, a privilege. This was no unhealthy creature too sick or addled to acknowledge danger. This fox had decided — for whatever reason — that I was no danger at all.

Afraid that motion might ruin the moment, I remained stock-still, facing straight ahead. But by straining my eye muscles almost to snapping, I could tell my companion was a gray fox— its reddish fur silver-tipped and its tail capped with black, not white like the red fox. Undoubtedly my visitor was checking me out, too, though with much less effort. While a person’s field of view is about 180 degrees, a fox can see nearly 250 degrees around.

So there we sat, the two of us on that hillside, gazing out across the misty fields.

Minutes later, just as my aching bones were telling me I would have to move something soon, the fox stood and walked out of my peripheral range. When I turned my head, it trotted into the woods and that was that. I was alone again, with only a distant rooster’s crow for company. But the memory stays with me still.

Encounters with wildlife are invariably magical and sometimes happen entirely by chance. But the more I thought about my meeting with the fox, the more I realized that mystic good fortune had played only a partial role. The truth was, without really knowing it, I had met the conditions that anyone can practice for successful wildlife watching.

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