Early morning surprise

I don't have my wits about me first thing in the morning. Yesterday I rolled out of bed and made my way to the kitchen with nothing else on my mind but brewing a pot of lemon and ginger tea. The blinds were still down so I hoisted them up in time to see a movement in the garden. T'was the dear old fox. Actually there were two but one ran off. Only later did I find out where it went. I imagine that even professional photographers don't have their camera handy whilst still in their nightwear and with me in a still groggy state I couldn't even find mine. I wasted precious snapping time trying to locate it. Consequently the pictures you see below are somewhat inferior.

Well here he is wandering up the path.

He cleverly worked out that to get the best foraging route he needed to start at the top

and work down. Yes, he investigated every inch of the embankment but I chucked a lot of those photographs away. They were useless.

Now to the lawn, sorry piece of grass. It should be a lawn but dry weather has taken it's toll.

This is him before he followed his mate. When I was fully awake I went down the garden to top up the bird feeders and there I made the discovery. In the last pic you can see one of the feeders hanging from a branch (top right) ... well, on the ground beneath that feeder (quite a drop, actually) was the de-feathered carcass of a magpie, nicely stripped of all flesh. It must have been a young bird because the older ones have learned the art of self preservation and self defence. So that's what the second fox was doing while the first one was exploring the shrubbery!

Do I move the feeder? I don't think so. It's the first casualty in 20 years of feeding the wildlife and there have always been foxes in the garden. They live in a copse that lies between the houses, out of sight of human beings and thus far they haven't been a problem. Oh well, I guess that's life ... and death.