Running with the Fox

by David W. Macdonald, Priscilla Barrett (Illustrator)

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Genres: Nonfiction, Natural History, Nature

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

David Whyte Macdonald CBE FRSE is a Scottish zoologist and conservationist. He has done much to popularize biology with the general public. He is known for his documentary films and his popular books, for which he has twice won the Natural World Author of the Year award.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author described his struggle with researching foxes both in the wild and ones that were hand-reared and held in captivity. His dedication and care was evident. I much more preferred when he wrote about birth and growth of the foxes rather than their deaths.

[Weltenstürme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book!!!

[astrid]

While this book revealed a lot of interesting facts about foxes and their ecology and ethology (even though today they are already well known). Either it is my disability to read and understand British English, or the author wasn't good at summarizing and sticking to the topic. It was rather hard following or even seeing a red line and interesting parts were always mixed up with rather uninteresting parts (mainly introducing and focusing on the people he worked with for whole paragraphs), which ruined my joy of reading quite often.

[Paula Cocozza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this. Elegantly written, and full of learning and warmth. I found the author's passion for foxes as interesting as the animals themselves. Great details - from foxes' worming techniques to how they locate caches and socialise.

[Kelly]

Absolutely excellent book. One of the very best I've read on foxes. Well observed and well written. An insight into both the the life of the fox, and the man who's mad enough to spend hours sitting up trees waiting for a glimpse of one.

[Carro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderful book. Vivid, informative, hilarious in places and sad in others - highly readable.
It is written by a professional researcher on red fox social behaviour and covers some years of radio tracking experiments - in the early days of radio tracking in the 1970s - plus night observations with infra-red binoculars and also close observation of two groups of captive raised foxes kept in large outdoor enclosures.
The author is based in Oxford and his initial studies are in the Oxfordshire countryside, both in farmland and woodland. He also visited Scandanavia and Israel to observe the same species of fox in very different environments. He later carried out a study of English red foxes on the Cumbrian fells - having to run after the fox he was tracking, in the dark, up steep hills with very rough footing - and he survived. The final study in the book is foxes in urban Oxford.
The main text is a very readable account of the behaviour and characters of the foxes studied, the life of a field researcher, how the equipment did (and didn't) work, the impact of people on both foxes and the study. All the personalities are really brought to life.
There are boxes of more detailed scientific results sprinkled through the book - which you could skip over if you just wanted a light read.
There are many lovely drawings illustrating the text, plus colour photos of foxes - I would have liked the latter to be labelled with exactly which fox was which - but it is a small matter.
I am going to look and see if David Macdonald has written other books on his studies.
I've only just read this book - the once - but Goodreads software keeps putting a 2 in that editing doesn't remove. I don't doubt I will re-read, but I haven't yet.