A fox meets a tiny feathered fur thief

Female titmouses are known to sometimes pluck fur from live animals to line their nests.

It’s easy to read that sentence and think “OK, seems a little risky, but no doubt they know what they’re doing”. However, stop and picture it for a minute: A tiny titmouse will bounce around on a live mammal, often a predator with sharp teeth and a limited supply of patience, and tug out tufts of fur in the fond expectation that she’ll get back to her nest in one piece with a beak-full of nice, warm nest lining.

And now think about how absolutely mind-bendingly strange this behavior is.

We’ve seen it here three times now. The first time was in February 2021 and the fox was dozing outside one of the dens (take a look at the link at the end of this video). The second time was two days ago and the fox (our old friend Pale Fox) was sitting on a stump watching the world go by – this video shows Pale Fox. And the third time was about 10 minutes ago. Dan and I could see this happen every day and still have trouble believing it’s a well-known (survivable) titmouse behavior.

Anyway, take a look at the video. Pale Fox is sitting with slightly narrowed eyes letting the little titmouse pull out tuft after tuft of precious fur. Perhaps he was enjoying it? He certainly didn’t object.

The fox this evening wasn’t tolerating this kind of nonsense and the titmouse eventually gave up. Perhaps a big, fluffy-butted raccoon would be more tolerant? Worth a try. If we see it, you can guarantee we’ll let you know.