TRISTAN SANDERSON-DUCKETT: Reynard the fox

Are you seeing a pattern developing here: long hair; boyish good looks? And we are not just talking about Jon. We have Max; Dave has grown his hair; and now Tristan, who writes: "Hello, I'm a fifteen-year-old animal and rock freak, that loves being outoors, observing nature! I'm home-educated so I have plenty of time to do stuff that most people wouldn't consider 'education,' even though I've learnt far more from being outdoors and thinking for myself (instead of being cooped up in a classroom, being taught instead of learning). I hope one day to be finding new beasties and conserving known ones so I thought it might be a good idea to blog for the CFZ!" With Jon's wild hair and beard the CFZ is rapidly beginning to resemble a fortean version of the Manson Family. Fleur as 'Squeaky' anyone? Welcome aboard Tristan....

Hello folks. I'm afraid this isnt going to be a cheerful start to the blog because I shall be talking of a murderer; a rutheless killer. Of course I'm not talking of some axe-murderer wandering around the woods; I'm talking about something much more intelligent: a fox.

This bushy-tailed blighter has recently killed at least half a dozen of our hens, plus our sweet little bantam cockerel. I won't deny I'm more than a little p****d with the ginger chap but thus is nature, and - even though he's destroyed any possibility of making a Victoria sponge (or any egg-based confectionary) out of our own eggs - I am still going to use the situation to my advantage and as long as the farmer doesn't ...well... shoot Mr Foxy in the meantime (yes folks, I'm afraid this will happen at some point), I shall try and get some close-up pics of him (if only my camera was on me the last three times he visited).

Moving on from the murderous vulpine, there are some more interesting (well I think so, anyway) beasties about. It took me many months and many wet wellies (please make sure you dont misread that; we dont need any more pervert jokes about fishermen thank you very much) to catch one but after little luck, I finally netted one of the small trout that live in our stream.

Then, after a while, I took notice of some interesting markings on the fish. Of course trout colouration varies greatly from water to water and is affected by many factors (such as altitude, food and water contaminants) but I thought it would be interesting to note that these fish had a black/ brown mark running down the lower side of the dorsal fin. I also noticed that the orange spots brown trout normally have seem to be scattered, whereas in these ones, the spots were almost on top of the lateral line.

So next week, if all goes well, there will be some photos of Mr Fox, and some piscean piccies of trout...no wet wellies this time.