The day of the fox.
We landed at a small shelf of eroded debris this morning, debris nicely folded at the foot of the bird cliff Gnaaludden, in Hornsund fjord, the southernmost one on the west coast of Svalbard.
This spit of land, surrounded by extraordinary geology, is richly fertilized by the birds and offers a wonderful variety of flowers, splashing the moss-and-grass-cover with bright pink, white and yellow. Of course the birds attract the fox. More surprisingly we did so as well. Totally unafraid she zigzagged between our legs, sniffing the ground relentlessly, unconcerned about everything but the odd bird carcass, which she in good fox manner buried in the moss: a store for lean days to come. Suddenly she uncovered some of the richness she had already hidden away, and in an instant she gulped down the contents of a murre egg, - certainly not all that fresh, since the chicks were hatched more than a week ago. Then she took up her halted pace, swirling back and forth between happy us, who snapped photos and awed, at her quicksilvery activity. (She? – the give away was the way she sat down when at intervals she marked her territory.) Foxes not that long ago also attracted hunters, and we paid a visit to the tarpapered plank hut of Ruud, one of the last polar bear hunters. In the spring Hornsund is a major route for bears moving away from the ice breaking up in the west, when they migrate to the more ice infested east coast. Today it was probably a bit late in the season to see them here, but over the next few days we will follow in their wake into their realm on the east side.
We landed at a small shelf of eroded debris this morning, debris nicely folded at the foot of the bird cliff Gnaaludden, in Hornsund fjord, the southernmost one on the west coast of Svalbard.
This spit of land, surrounded by extraordinary geology, is richly fertilized by the birds and offers a wonderful variety of flowers, splashing the moss-and-grass-cover with bright pink, white and yellow. Of course the birds attract the fox. More surprisingly we did so as well. Totally unafraid she zigzagged between our legs, sniffing the ground relentlessly, unconcerned about everything but the odd bird carcass, which she in good fox manner buried in the moss: a store for lean days to come. Suddenly she uncovered some of the richness she had already hidden away, and in an instant she gulped down the contents of a murre egg, - certainly not all that fresh, since the chicks were hatched more than a week ago. Then she took up her halted pace, swirling back and forth between happy us, who snapped photos and awed, at her quicksilvery activity. (She? – the give away was the way she sat down when at intervals she marked her territory.) Foxes not that long ago also attracted hunters, and we paid a visit to the tarpapered plank hut of Ruud, one of the last polar bear hunters. In the spring Hornsund is a major route for bears moving away from the ice breaking up in the west, when they migrate to the more ice infested east coast. Today it was probably a bit late in the season to see them here, but over the next few days we will follow in their wake into their realm on the east side.
