The cunning and opportunistic gray fox
One night last week I got home from the Pittsburgh airport a little after 10 p.m. It was warm, muggy, overcast and very dark. As I pulled into the driveway, my headlights illuminated a gray fox on the edge of the yard.
We studied each other for about 15 seconds, then it just seemed to vanish. Literally in the blink of an eye, it was gone. That's why I call gray foxes "ghosts." Whenever I see them, they appear and disappear right before my eyes.
Once I saw a gray fox encounter a cottontail in my backyard. They seemed to notice each other simultaneously. A forewarned prey usually escapes a predator, but still the fox gave chase. The cottontail bounded away in a series of zigzag hops.
Like all canids, gray foxes are opportunistic carnivores, but they'll eat just about anything when food is scarce. The bulk of a fox's diet consists of rabbits and other small mammals. In spring and summer they supplement this basic diet with birds, eggs, insects, frogs and snakes. In the fall they eat fruits such as grapes, cherries and persimmons. And in winter they'll even eat carrion and garbage if they get hungry enough. That gray foxes are excellent climbers explains why they eat a surprising number of small birds. The long, sharp, curved claws on their front feet enable them to shimmy straight up a tree trunk and jump from branch to branch.
Gray foxes mate for life, but males and females go their separate ways each fall and reunite each winter. Mating occurs between late January and mid-March. A gray fox pregnancy lasts 50 to 60 days. Average litter size is four to six pups.
The female weans the pups at about eight weeks. In late autumn the family breaks up, and each member goes its own way until pairs reunite in January. Young foxes can breed their first winter.
Though coyotes, bobcats and great horned owls can kill adult foxes, speeding cars and trucks are their greatest enemies.
We studied each other for about 15 seconds, then it just seemed to vanish. Literally in the blink of an eye, it was gone. That's why I call gray foxes "ghosts." Whenever I see them, they appear and disappear right before my eyes.
Once I saw a gray fox encounter a cottontail in my backyard. They seemed to notice each other simultaneously. A forewarned prey usually escapes a predator, but still the fox gave chase. The cottontail bounded away in a series of zigzag hops.
Like all canids, gray foxes are opportunistic carnivores, but they'll eat just about anything when food is scarce. The bulk of a fox's diet consists of rabbits and other small mammals. In spring and summer they supplement this basic diet with birds, eggs, insects, frogs and snakes. In the fall they eat fruits such as grapes, cherries and persimmons. And in winter they'll even eat carrion and garbage if they get hungry enough. That gray foxes are excellent climbers explains why they eat a surprising number of small birds. The long, sharp, curved claws on their front feet enable them to shimmy straight up a tree trunk and jump from branch to branch.
Gray foxes mate for life, but males and females go their separate ways each fall and reunite each winter. Mating occurs between late January and mid-March. A gray fox pregnancy lasts 50 to 60 days. Average litter size is four to six pups.
The female weans the pups at about eight weeks. In late autumn the family breaks up, and each member goes its own way until pairs reunite in January. Young foxes can breed their first winter.
Though coyotes, bobcats and great horned owls can kill adult foxes, speeding cars and trucks are their greatest enemies.
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