EARLY MORNING MYSTERY
July 26th
It is now midsummer in the northern hemisphere and things quieten down a lot. Breeding is just about done and a lot of attention is given to making sure that this years surviving young are still intact or, for many bird species, fattening up prior to migration - either way bird sounds diminish dramatically and the countryside becomes quieter. Nonetheless on a nice sunny morning at the end of July I decided to take a thermos flask and hike up into the Jura behind my village, devoid of any great expectations. I had not gone too far, and was crossing a pasture where cows were grazing when I heard a Raven calling over the far side. A cow with a particularly irritating bell was in front of me, plus the aircraft had started to enter Geneva airport, and I was trying to work out how best to position myself for a half-decent recording when I became aware of a new and very different sound off to my right:
This blood curdling screaming noise, coming from the edge of the forest about 150m or so to my right, this clearly grabbed my attention and I turned the parabola:
I had no clue what the noise was (but it had also attracted the Raven) and its sudden ending made me assume that a small creature had met its doom in the jaws of a bigger one. This was only about 2Km from where I had once recorded a Lynx and so my anticipation was high ! The sound had also brought in a Hare which ran across the pasture and stopped about 20m from me, it was very alert, ears pointing directly at the sound and it stared intently at the forest. I could only suppose that one of its relatives had become somebodies breakfast - maybe a fox or maybe my lynx had got it.
Things soon settled down, the Hare had not seen me and started to graze and clean its muzzle, you can just hear it munching quietly between 6s and 24s in the following piece, it later caught sight of me, realised its dreadful error and took off at high speed (44s):
In that piece you can also hear the "whee-choo" of Coal Tits and the call of a Green Woodpecker at about 30s.
Not wanting to disturb anyones breakfast I did not go over to investigate but hiked on upwards in order to look down at the place where I thought the incident had happened. What I saw through my binoculars was a pair of foxes sniffing around a tree and looking generally relaxed, so I assumed they were the killers.
On my back down some hours later I took a walk around that tree expecting to find blood and gore scattered about, but I found nothing at all, only the Raven was still hanging around with the cows hoping a meal was to be had somewhere:
Back home I downloaded the files from my Fostex and listened carefully. I am no longer sure that it was an animal being slaughtered, it sounds more canine to my ears, especially the yapping towards the end - could the foxes have been fighting ? I think I have seen a reference in the past that female foxes are known to scream loudly during copulation.
I posted the recording on the Yahoo Naturecordists group and thanks to Martyn Stewart and Juliet Walters I am now pretty sure these were two young foxes "play fighting" and making that screaming noise - thanks to both !
And the cow with that damned bell ? Never even raised its head the whole morning as far as I could tell.
