{"id":1087,"date":"2015-06-19T15:32:54","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T20:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2015\/06\/19\/150619-foxvsmockingbird\/"},"modified":"2024-09-10T15:54:56","modified_gmt":"2024-09-10T20:54:56","slug":"150619-foxvsmockingbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2015\/06\/19\/150619-foxvsmockingbird\/","title":{"rendered":"When Species Collide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc; margin: 1em 0 1em 24px; float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/fox2015_06.jpg\" alt=\"Red Fox\"><br><i>Update (6\/21\/15) &#8211; A lot of people have asked if we&#8217;re feeding this fox, and that&#8217;s why he&#8217;s in our yard so often. The answer is an emphatic &#8220;no.&#8221; I have no doubt that there are some people who are providing food, perhaps inadvertently, in the form of cat or dog food, but I would never leave food for a wild animal. They shouldn&#8217;t get too comfortable around, or come to depend on humans. Having said that, I do leave a five gallon bucket of rain water uncovered on our back porch, and I&#8217;ve seen the fox get a drink from it from time to time.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;ve spent much time around mockingbirds, you probably know that they&#8217;re quite territorial, and will vigorously defend what they believe to be their personal space (which is generally arbitrary and expansive). I&#8217;ve shared this before but on at least one occasion I&#8217;ve worn a motorcycle helmet while mowing the lawn to protect my head from a spiteful mockingbird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve seen them repeatedly dive at cats, squirrels, and dogs; they&#8217;re seemingly fearless, and quite persistent. (At the risk of being overly anthropomorphic, I don&#8217;t believe they&#8217;re sadistic, like blue jays, which have been known to swoop down and grab baby birds of other species and then drop them to their deaths, seemingly for the fun of it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, it was no great surprise when I witnessed a mockingbird harassing our back yard fox earlier this week. We suspect there&#8217;s a nest hidden in the thick foliage of the Mexican elder that&#8217;s planted next to the back wall. I was fortunate enough to have my video camera running when it happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mockingbird vs Fox: When Species Collide!\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DGDnKNGBX5E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>By the way &#8211; let me put this as delicately as possible &#8211; if you watch closely toward the end of the video, I believe there&#8217;s evidence that dispels <a href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2015\/02\/03\/150203-twofoxes\/\">the question<\/a> of whether we&#8217;re dealing with a regnard or a vixen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update (6\/21\/15) &#8211; A lot of people have asked if we&#8217;re feeding this fox, and that&#8217;s why he&#8217;s in our yard so often. The answer is an emphatic &#8220;no.&#8221; I have no doubt that there are some people who are providing food, perhaps inadvertently, in the form of cat or dog food, but I would&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2015\/06\/19\/150619-foxvsmockingbird\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">When Species Collide<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wildlife-birds","category-wildlife-mammals","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14106,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions\/14106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}