The Corsac fox hails from central and northeast asia — places such as Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Siberia and parts of China. It’s described as ‘medium-sized’, although it’s much smaller than our resident red fox, the largest of the true foxes.

The group at Hamerton breeds quite successfully, and I believe Hamerton supplies most of the Corsac foxes seen at other collections in the UK.

This was my first ever visit to Hamerton, which is an excellent collection not far from the A1/A14 intersection in Huntingdonshire. I’d spent the entire day there, and now it was late afternoon, most of the visitors had left and I was one of only a few remaining. It was a lovely sunny late August Sunday, and I’d taken several hundred shots around the various enclosures.

The foxes, which all share a large enclosure containing several ‘huts’, had only been seen in ones and twos throughout most of the day; however, now there were many more visible, including several which were obvious youngsters, probably born earlier that year.

While most of the foxes paid little attention to anyone other than the keepers, this particular individual emerged from the long summer grass, headed straight towards me, and sat down right next to the fence, staring intently at me.

The enclosure has a high fence, with a diagonal mesh, to contain the animals. Outside of this, there is a grass gap of around 1m (3 ft) and then a low fence to deter visitors from getting too close.

My usual camera setup involves a right angle finder attachment, clipped to the viewfinder, which allows me to get the camera down to a low level without having to lay on the ground to do so. It certainly saves my aching back! I’m then looking down into the camera, which is still shooting horizontally.

So, at a place like Hamerton, I can kneel or crouch on the path next to the low fence, and the camera is then just a few inches above the ground, pointing at the subject, through both fences. In this case, it was eye-level with the young fox, which was clearly very interested in what I was up (down) to.

As he was so close to the main mesh, I needed to get the lens as near as I could (within reason) to the main fence in order to stand any chance of throwing it far enough out of focus so as not to be troublesome in the final image. I aligned it with an appropriate gap in the mesh of the low fence — one which also allowed me to see both eyes unobstructed by the wire of the main fence. I set a wide aperture and hoped for the best.

I would estimate the fox was only around 1.5m away, but not at all perturbed by my shuffling around to get into position. He/she stayed there for half a minute or so — yawning halfway through that period — before losing interest and wandering back into the long grass.

image edit

The final image, with it’s warm contre-jour lighting, lovely background grasses, and intense expression on the face of the fox, needed very little post-processing.

Corsac fox I (prior to edit)

I left the framing pretty much as shot. Yes, the diagonal chequer pattern of the main fence is visible, but I don’t feel it detracts from the subject. I later tried a square format crop, which also works well.

Technical

f/4.5

aperture

1/640s

shutter

320

iso

189mm

focal length