a hide by the sea,
Waiting for a fox along the cliff top
Dear watcher,
This week I waited for a fox from the hide, and I got about ten seconds of one. I was in the bracken at the edge of a cliff top before it was light, sitting on a folding stool with my lens on my knees. A fox crosses the same ground at about the same time every morning, if nothing frightens it, and I had spent two mornings finding out where.
Most of the film is waiting, and I have left a good deal of it in, because that is what the work is. The light goes from grey to pale yellow, a bird starts up somewhere to the left, my tea goes cold. Then the fox comes out of the grass thirty metres away, trots along the edge and stops once to look at the sea. I filmed it without moving anything but my fingers.
The thing I learned is to wait a full minute after a fox crosses its line. Twice this week, the fox came back along the same line after I thought it had gone. If I had packed up when it passed the first time, I would have missed the second, which is the better shot.
The film is captioned, and the words are written out below it, so you can read the whole morning if you would rather not watch. Next Sunday I will tell you why I keep going back to the same stone.
From the hide,
Emyr
P.S. The Hide Craft Checklist is the page I wish I had on the first morning: it is what goes in the bag, and what stays in the car.
