FOX, DEER, OWL AND CROSSBILLS
February
There was about 30cm of old frozen snow in the woods above Arzier, air temperature was about -2 deg C with a clear blue sky and glorious sunshine. Spring was in the air, very invigorating weather and with a firm footing, good to be out.
I had been following a small flock of Crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) steadily uphill for about 20mins when I emerged into the small valley through which runs the path to Les Frasses. The valley is about 100 m wide and 1 km long, and at 1100m above sea level more or less at the limit of deciduous trees. The valley bottom is used for summer grazing and so devoid of woody vegetation but with the largely coniferous forest rising on either side quite steeply.
Standing quietly at the edge of the woods I could hear activity on the frozen snow further up the valley. Scanning carefully, about 200m away were two foxes playing around. One ran towards me with raised tail and arched back, being chased by the other - clearly some early spring randy behaviour going on here. I watched them in silence for a while and they disappeared into the woods on the eastern side of the valley. As I turned back to my Crossbills which were still calling further up and to my right, I heard one of the foxes begin to bark about 100m away and was able to get a short recording:
It was a busy morning at Geneva airport (about 35km away) with lots of aircraft rumble so unfortunately I had to suppress frequencies below 500Hz quite heavily in post-editing. But nonetheless I was very happy with my first recording of this animal which actually is reasonably common in my neighbourhood, and you can hear the original target the Crossbills, in the background.
But I wanted to get nearer to the Crossbills, and I climbed up through the woods on the north and eastern side of the valley towards where I could hear their "excitement" calls coming from the tree-tops. After about 10 mins hiking through the trees I stopped to listen and realised that the foxes, probably aware of my presence had done the opposite, and were working their way up the western side of the valley, and were now at about the same elevation as myself and maybe 300m away across the divide. With one of them yapping away at intervals, I tried to get a secure footing in the icey underbrush and began recording, as I did, I became aware of a "pooping" noise away to the north (my right) which I later learned came from a Pygmy Owl (Glaucidium passerinum). I had never heard one before and presumed it had been disturbed by the noise of the foxes (but I later learned they do call in the day time). So after getting a few fox calls I turned the parabola towards the owl realising it was some way off deeper in the forest. Meanwhile the Crossbills were still chattering above my head somewhere.
Turning back to the foxes I then discovered that a Roe Deer (Capreolus capreolus) had now wandered between us and began to bark an alarm at me in irritation, before running off south through the forest. This new interloper had the effect of silencing the Pygmy Owl, but the Foxes and Crossbills each continued with their business.
I was lucky in being able to capture this whole event, and four sequences from the longer recording follow, each related to the above story. As before I suppressed frequencies below 500Hz to reduce the aircraft rumble, with the exception of the third sequence when the Roe Deer was barking where I felt filtering took too much out of the sound of the deer:
There are small handling noises occasionally in this piece, caused by my discomfort on a steep, icey and rather unstable surface. But for a February morning I felt privileged to have had such encounters.
And the Crossbills ? They chattered away in the tree tops quite unconcerned by the activity below, more focussed on getting their own breeding activities underway:
So I felt this was quite a satisfactory time for a cold Sunday in February.
