Curiously enough two of these foxes were killed by the Coniston Hounds on the same day. The date was March 16th, 1913, and the first fox was killed at High Dale Park, near Coniston, after a good hunt of two and a half hours. Fox number two was run into on the shore of Coniston Lake, after a fast hunt, by way of High Bethicar, Brockbarrow, and the Nibthwaite and Park-a-Moor coverts.
This season, 1919, the same pack killed a big, lean dog fox on November 25th, at Birk Brow in the Winster valley. This fox weighed exactly eighteen pounds, and was in hard condition. In November, 1912, the Mellbrake Hounds accounted for a fox of nineteen pounds. They found him on Low Fell, and ran him, by way of Whinfell, to the river Cocker. The stream being in flood, the fox retraced his track to Low Fell, where he went to ground. The terriers bolted him, and he gave a further five-mile spin before he was run into at Buttermere. On Thursday, January 15th, 1920, the Coniston Foxhounds killed a nineteen-pound dog-fox in the open, near Blea Tarn, Langdale. This is an exceptionally heavy fox, even for the fell country.
In his habits, the fell fox differs little from his relations in the low countries. In the daytime he makes his couch at a high elevation, often on one of the many heather or bleaberry covered ledges which seam the face of the crags on the mountain top. Occasionally he may lie at a lower elevation, amongst the ling on the grouse ground, or in some straggling covert of larch or oak; but his kind generally prefer to make their kennel well up the fell-side, where, except for the visit of an occasional shepherd, they are free from disturbance. When the sun begins to sink, Reynard leaves his bed, stretches himself, and turns his mask in the direction of the dales. On the fell proper, there is little for him to feed on, with the exception of beetles and frogs, and an occasional carcass in the shape of a defunct sheep. Lower down he can find rabbits, grouse, and perhaps a pheasant, or, if he be impudent enough, can make a raid on the farmers’ poultry. Young lamb, too, is an item added to his, or, perhaps, I should say, her menu in spring, for it is then when the vixen has cubs, and the latter require constant feeding. In summer the fells swarm with beetles, and if the excrement of a fox be examined it will often be found to consist almost entirely of the wing cases and other hard portions of these insects. Frogs, too, are a favourite food. I have often found lumps of frog spawn lying on the narrow footpaths leading to the fell tops, and for a long time I used to wonder how these lumps got there. I finally arrived at the conclusion that foxes are responsible for the presence of the spawn. Reynard catches his frog in some pool or marshy spot, and carries his prey with him as he wends his way up one of the well-defined “trods.” There he makes a meal of the frog, but the spawn squeezed out of the creature he dislikes, so leaves it untouched.
Where he can get rabbits he will seldom go short of food, though little comes amiss to him if he thinks he can use it for a meal. Like a dog, he often buries food for future consumption. I was recently talking to a keeper who found three rabbits buried in the snow. The tale of Reynard’s doings was plainly told on the white surface. The rabbits had been feeding in rank grass and rushes, and the fox had easily stalked and captured them. I have found the following list of furred and feathered creatures scattered about in and around a fell fox’s earth: Portions of two leverets, remains of several rabbits, feathers and bones of grouse, a very young lamb, and the untouched body of a short-eared owl. The only mark on the owl was a bite in the neck, probably done by the vixen when she killed the bird. Owl had not apparently suited the cubs’ taste, otherwise they would soon have pulled it to pieces.
At other earths I have found remains of pheasants and woodcock, with occasionally bones and feathers of blackgame. Both the dog-fox and the vixen carry food to the cubs, but the vixen does most of this work.
If an earth is disturbed when the cubs are quite young, the vixen carries them off one by one to some safer retreat. A breeding earth often becomes very foul, what with the excrement of the cubs and the rotting portions of food left lying about. Unless the vixen occasionally shifted her offspring disease would be liable to attack them. As a rule the vixen lays down her cubs in some small and comparatively simple earth, often within reach of other and more extensive rocky retreats. The latter are used when the cubs are nearly full-grown. On the fells, a fox can get to ground almost anywhere amongst the rocks, but there are in every district well-known earths or, in local parlance, “Borrans,” which have been regularly used by generations of foxes. Some of these earths go a long way underground, and are composed of masses of rock and huge boulders, amongst which it is always difficult, and often dangerous, to work, in an attempt to unearth a fox which has gone to ground. Where a fox can go a small terrier can generally follow, but at times the dog is unable to return, and many a good terrier has lost his life in some underground retreat from which it was impossible to extricate him.
BROAD HOWE.
LOOKING INTO BROAD HOWE “BORRAN” FROM ABOVE.