Eating a...Something

This evening the Old Dogfox arrived at the back of the garden chomping hard. In his mouth was the carcass of a fairly large rodent (or possibly a squirrel?) which he consumed at great speed.

It could have been a rat, or perhaps a very large yellow-necked mouse. I've no idea whether he killed it or simply scavenged it.

Foxes are unable to chew as they cannot move their jaws sideways. Instead, they use their molars to bite food into sizeable chunks which they then swallow one by one. Considering the size of the prey, the Old Dogfox certainly took his time in consuming it. At the end of this short video clip, he noses about at the roots of the birch tree - a likely spot for caching surplus food for future use, but I inspected it just now and found no trace. I assume he was hungry enough to eat the whole carcass in one sitting.

(Apologies for the slight wobbling - I had to take this handheld at 12x zoom).



I'm going to Alberta on Monday for a few days. I hope to see some coyotes and maybe even a Canadian red fox. Wolves, of course, are much harder, particularly at this time of year. But any interesting footage will be posted on here after I get back!