The San Joaquin Kit Fox, among the first critters to be listed as endangered back in the Nixon years. I’ve not been working with it that long, I’m only going in the my 24th year of photographing this very charismatic species. This photo is a couple of years old and is a collared animal that lived just west of Bakersfield, CA where I just arrived. I got the call that pups were out so I raced down tonight to be in place in the AM. When I first started working with the SJKF, a senator said their being listed as endangered would keep Bakersfield from growing. The lodge where I am right now typing was a field where we watched the SJKF 24yrs ago and if you look at Bakersfield, it’s doing anything but not growing. In fact, all of my original locations for kit fox are now paved or cemented over. So the kit fox has “adapted” to become an urban critter (photographed them inside a new Wal Mart two years back). I’m again working with a favorite biologists, Brian who I’ve known almost since the beginning of my career and is the world authority on foxes, wolves and the like. So, blogging might be on the light side the rest of the week since kit fox do their thing anytime of the day and with pups, are quite active day and night. I’ll blog if I can and if I can’t, you’ll know I’m somewhere in Bakersfield watching and photographing one of my favorite critters. Oh, yeah, they are most definitely part of my next book :-)
Photo captured by D3, 200-400VR on Lexar UDMA digital film