By many signs keepers read the story of the presence and work of foxes.
A fox makes a half-hearted attempt to bury game that he has partly
eaten, and wishes otherwise to dispose of--and the buried game is so
impregnated with his scent that no other creature will touch it. He
barks at night in mid-winter days--and spreads uneasiness among sheep,
as betrayed by the bleating of ewes. He digs in a way all his own,
throwing out the soil behind him in a slovenly heap; he noses about
mole-heaps and ant-hills, and his visit is easily detected. On soft
spots he leaves his footmarks--and he always leaves his scent behind
him. Pheasants without tails tell a story of a young fox's spring that
failed to bring him a supper. Heads of rabbits, and nothing else,
in snares, rejected maws lying near by--the disinterment of poaching
cats which the keeper has buried--these show where hungry foxes have
passed. By day their presence is revealed if a cock pheasant cries a
sudden, uneasy, short alarm-note, by the screaming of jays, and by a
particular blackbird note, which, if it does not mean stoat or cat,
certainly bespeaks a fox. A crow may be seen suddenly swooping angrily
as he passes over a field--a fox lurks there. The hidden cause for the
continuous uneasy springing of partridges is often a fox, or at least a
cub amusing himself by partridge hunting.
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