looduskalender.ee

 

Tail caress

 

The moderate cold after a few days of thaw had put a sufficiently strong crust on the snow and it was pure pleasure to ski straight across the fields! Conditions were made particularly ideal for me by the fact that the snowfall that had stopped last morning made it possible to count the animal tracks of the day. The skis glided well too – so I took on as long a trip as possible.

 

In the riverside marshy birch stand it was still laborious to move and since data had to be noted from time to time anyway I swept the snow cap off from a tree stump at the edge of the field and sat down to fill in the field diary. The distant fluting of bullfinches and chirping of great tits did not disturb the silence that reigned in the forest, rather these voices belonged to the silence ...

 

Suddenly i heard some kind of rustle. I raised my head and what did I see – two foxes coming straight towards me!  The foxes, moving on perfectly parallel courses, were about 10 meters separate from each other. The slowly walking predators didn’t notice me yet and just continued approaching. Foxes generally cannot distinguish stationary objects from the other background, and so I hoped that perhaps I would stay invisible. Even my hand froze in place, fingers gripping the pencil. The lack of wind was in my favour too.

 

And so it happened! The mouse hunters just as if glided past me gracefully as ballerinas, fluffy tails proudly straight and the ears, pricked to catch sounds, pointing forward. The whole attention of the beauties was so intently focused on the hunt that one of the foxes came closer to me than ever before – I sensed how its tail touched my hand holding the pencil … The creatures went on at a steady pace and soon disappeared behind the spruces.

 

The crackling of the claws faded off too but I still remained in the spell of what I had seen: such luck I wouldn’t have known to wish for!

 

 

 

Ornithologist Eet Tuule’s collection of tales takes a look at the adventures on his nature trips. As a great nature expert and excellent story teller he knows how to make his reader live along with the doings of animals and birds. Many of the stories are so engaging and alive that what is written can actually be felt: the mist patches billowing above the bog, the crackling of branches, bubbling of water and strange calls from afar but also the magic of the vanishing water meadows or moments of total silence in nature …

 

 

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