On the Third day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.
The thoughts drift towards foxes and the story about the clever Fantastic Mr Fox. Mr Fox lives with his wife and four children,who are always hungry. To feed his family Mr Fox makes nightly visits to farms and snatches hens from the farmers.
Mr Fox and his family are hungry. The Arctic foxes who lives in Scandinavia are also hungry.The Arctic fox is an endangered species in Sweden, Finland and Norway, although world-wide the number of the Arctic fox is high. It is estimated that there is around 200 individuals living in Scandinavia. The Arctic fox has thick fur that offers excellent protection against the cold winter winds, they also have thick fur on their paws. The foxes can be either white during the winter and brown during the summer months or they can have a magnificent steely bluish-grey colour in the winter and a paler bluish-grey in summer.
Photo Per Harald Olsen
The stunning red fox is larger and more aggressive than the Arctic fox. The climate is changing where the red foxes are living and they are gradually moving further and further north taking over the territories that used to belong to the Arctic foxes. They are also eating their food and they might even kill the Arctic foxes.
The Arctic fox eats mainly lemmings and it uses its excellent hearing to find its food under a covering of snow. When the Arctic fox hears its prey it will jump to break through the snow to its prey below - Mousing.
The population sizes of the Arctic fox is linked to the population size of lemmings, which are their main source of food.
Are the lemmings disappearing? If they are disappering, why have all the lemmings gone?Yes, there lemmings are disappering and the reason might be linked to climate change. It might be the wrong kind of snow!
The snow it too wet. It used to be soft and dry.
Climate changes is a very tricky problem and there are several things you can do to make a real difference. Use your imagination to dream up some exciting new green jobs where the task is to help the Arctic fox. Like a cloud scientist who makes the snow drier.
Happy think diving!