Are You Chewing On My Boot?

Nest searching requires a certain comfort with solitude. In the field, I'll spend hours just sitting and watching my birds without a glimpse of another human. I love it. Sometimes, though, I feel like someone is watching me. I feel that prickle up my spine and the eerie sensation that eyes are boring holes in the back of my head. I whip my head around to find out who is stalking me, and I see this:

Just sitting there, staring at me. No wonder I felt funny. The Santa Cruz Island Fox is an inquisitive little creature with a keen sense of smell and a penchant for marking their territory on just about everything, everywhere. Once you leave your stuff out at night or just too far away from your body in the field, you may be a walking fox-magnet. Once you have the scent of another fox on your daypack or your boots, foxes in other territories will gallop towards you, raise their pointy nose in the air and sniff with their little eyes squinted shut. They will pace back and forth a bit and, if they are bold, will approach you cautiously to get a better whiff.

The other day I had a fox jogging after me for over 200 meters as I walked up towards my territories in Coches. Knowing the dangers of this fox following me to a nest, I decided to sit down and wait until he decided that I wasn't quite as good smelling as he thought. I sat with my legs splayed out in front of me and he (or she) didn't hesitate for a second and ran right up to my feet. He paced a few times in front of my toes, sniffing. Then he proceeded to nibble on the bottom of my boot. Then the top. Then he took a taste of my gaiter stirrup. I let him work his way up my gaiter--he would bite the thick fabric or the velcro not to eat it but to pull at it as if he just wanted to run away with it. He made it all the way up to my knee strap until I decided to shoo him away when he pulled hard enough on the strap to undo the buckle that tightens the top of the gaiter below my knee. He scampered a few feet away, sat down, and stared at me. I'm not done chewing on your gaiters, he might have been thinking. I got up and walked away, hoping that he wouldn't follow me again. He did. It took me quite some time to shake him off and by the time I did, I was followed by two foxes. I sat down, and the whole experience repeated itself. I wish I had had my camera.

I would let this little guy chew on my boot any day.

Here is a video of a fox trying to steal my telemetry gear. I try not to talk to animals the way I do in this video because I respect them as fellow creatures, not cute stuffed animals, but it is really hard not to talk to foxes in a British accent. It just is.