“Gallery of Foxes” by John Moses

The pandemic brought about many changes for photographers. Most of us postponed travel plans.  Many focused on inanimate objects from around the house or flora in the yard for their principal subject matter.  I had a different opportunity from the city slowing down around me. Not only did the urban wildlife already in the city become more prevalent, but the view from my home office into our backyard garden afforded me unexpected photographic subjects: a family of gray foxes living in the Fresno High neighborhood.

My first “capture” was in October of 2020, several months after the COVID stay-at-home period had begun.  My wife had seen the fox first, in the driveway of the house next to ours. It was the first time either of us had sighted one in the city. As the weeks passed, I would catch sight of a fox either next door or in our own back yard. The sightings were infrequent enough that usually my camera wasn’t close at hand or without a telephoto lens, so most of these early captures were disappointing. 

That all changed the next summer when an entire family of foxes arrived—the tod, the vixen, and three kits!  Nearly every day for the next three months, one or more of the family was in the yard.  Usually, the tod would come in the late afternoon to find a spot to sleep, then hunt birds after waking. One day, two kits arrived together to play a game of keep-away. The object of the game was possession of the dead squirrel that one carried in its mouth.  The two chased each other about chattering, or gekkering.  The original possessor rushed away behind our garage, returning without the squirrel, then lounged for a minute or two on a bench in the garden. Soon he rushed off to bring the squirrel back in play, only to abandon it so the other kit could have his turn. 

Late in the summer, one of the kits limped into the yard, having had some kind of fall or other mishap. There seemed no obvious wound, so we hoped time would heal the foot.  Eventually, the lameness did heal, but the juvenile fox’s limp gave us the time to recognize him whenever he came and follow his maturation over the winter and spring of 2022, until he became the head of his own family with a litter of four.  

“Gallery of Foxes” showcases these three generations of foxes that have been living in the Fresno High neighborhood. Urban foxes are common, even in the most bustling of cities, but the frequency with which these adult foxes and their litters have appeared in our backyard—to hunt, to sleep or, in the case of the kits, to play—has given me a unique opportunity to capture the lives of these beautiful animals, whose presence in the city often goes unnoticed.

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