What kind of fox is this?

[Irving]

I'm not interested in hunting one, I just saw one today and was wondering if someone knew what it was. Looked like this:


Image says it is a gray fox. I saw him up in the Pawnee Grasslands. I've seen him hiding in a 6-8" plastic pipe more than once over the last 2-ish years. Today when I looked, he bolted out of the pipe without me even doing anything. In the past I've picked the pipe up and shook it around and he just stayed in there.

[Irving]

Also, a bird got trapped in the bunkhouse. It took us a good 20 minutes to flush him out. I actually caught it twice. The first time with a box, but it flew out when I reached in. At some point, while flying back and forth, it landed on my back and sat there for ten seconds. The second time I grabbed it in mid-air, but when I loosened my hand to take a picture, it jumped out of my hand and flew away. Except it flew back to the top of the roof, still inside, and we had to start chasing it all over again. From looking it up, the closest I can come up with is a White-breasted Nuthatch.
http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/362..._Nuthatch.aspx




Anyone have any idea if these are up in Pawnee?

[Hummer]

Not impossible there but a Gray Fox would be out of it's expected habitat on the Northeastern prairie. Check out the Swift Fox as it is the common fox of the Pawnee. Very cool critters, not many people get to see them.


Here's the most common fox in Colorado, a Red Fox I watched foraging along the road side along the Peak-to-Peak above Raymond during the flood last month.

[Hummer]

Also, a bird got trapped in the bunkhouse. It took us a good 20 minutes to flush him out. I actually caught it twice. The first time with a box, but it flew out when I reached in. At some point, while flying back and forth, it landed on my back and sat there for ten seconds. The second time I grabbed it in mid-air, but when I loosened my hand to take a picture, it jumped out of my hand and flew away. Except it flew back to the top of the roof, still inside, and we had to start chasing it all over again. From looking it up, the closest I can come up with is a White-breasted Nuthatch.

Anyone have any idea if these are up in Pawnee?

White-breasted Nuthatches would be in areas of the Pawnee where there are trees. Like other cavity nesting birds they often investigate openings, holes or broken windows in buildings, and sometimes become trapped, unable to find their way out. I've seen many instances where nuthatches, chickadees, bluebirds and woodpeckers find a way into a shed or garage and die because they can't find the way back out.

[Irving]

Looked it up. It was 100% a Swift Fox. Thanks for the tip. He was pretty cool to see outside that pipe for once.

As far as the bird, there really aren't any trees for a few miles. Some structures though.

[spqrzilla]

Foxes are pretty neat, used to regularly see a vixen red fox with her litter in a culvert near my house.

[buffalobo]

We see the local Red fox family about once a month as there is a den in an embankment in the far corner of our place they use for a week or so as they pass thru and a Swift fox pair lives to the west of us a couple miles in a Plum thicket. When we keep the coyote population down we see more foxes. The foxes do a better job of controlling the rabbit population.

[Irving]

So I plan on trying to call some coyotes in this winter on the same piece of land. Will the fox's presence be an issue? I can't imagine that tiny fox is keeping coyotes away.

[buffalobo]

So I plan on trying to call some coyotes in this winter on the same piece of land. Will the fox's presence be an issue? I can't imagine that tiny fox is keeping coyotes away.

No issue. Foxes are prey for coyotes.

[sniper7]

Fox are cool. never had much of an interest in hunting or killing them. now if I get a big game room some day and a bunch of mounts, it would be cool to mount one in the air in punce mode on a mouse or something.