Peaceful Coexistence: The Deer and the Fox

Sunrise this morning found the fox resting in the brush. For the next hour or so, he rested and slept, and even got up once to clearly get more comfortable.

But, his rest period was disturbed as the mother white-tailed deer brought her two young along their favorite path, which runs directly in front of the fox’s location. Both the fox and the deer knew of each other’s presence prior – the deer continued to walk, the fox just looked.

Interestingly, the two young watched mom for any sight of alarm. In the second photo, mom is clearly watching the fox and the larger of the two young is clearly watching mom (well, at least her white, potentially-alarm-sending tail). The fox, by and large, seemed to understand that he also needed to watch mom.

In this third photo, the smaller of the two young just had to take a close look at the fox before leaving.

As the deer continued to walk through the habitat, mom was far more concerned about me taking pictures from the porch, than the fox in the brush.