Today I witnessed something I have never seen before. A wild gray fox climbed the fence into the expansive coyote exhibit. The two coyotes briefly attacked the intruder in a brief flurry of flying dust and horrendous snarls from all parties before retreating. This activity repeated itself several times. Each encounter was very brief (a few seconds) after which the coyotes retreated and the fox stood its ground. At one point it tried to escape over the fence on the far end, but that end is angled in and the coyotes were too close to allow an escape. A keeper arrived and kept the coyotes at the opposite end, at which point the fox bid a hasty retreat over the straight center section of fence. The fox is a regular on the grounds because night vision cameras have been installed in the ocelot exhibit, since apparently it goes to visit the ocelot on a nightly basis.
@Arizona Docent Coincidental timing consider just a couple of days ago we talked about wild gray foxes and you hadn't gotten a photo of one yet! A bummer the face ended up obscured, but still a nice shot!
It seems gray fox are regular visitors to facilities that have appropriate habitat nearby, night vision trail cams have shown a wild male fox regularly visits the female on exhibit at my local facility.
Yes I did think of that coincidence too. I did get a face shot of it walking towards me, but it is not tack sharp. I would have really liked to get a shot of the coyotes and fox with fur flying (it was quite a scene), but they were behind bushes and it was very brief and I couldn't get a shot.
