Last week, the Presidio Trust took to Facebook to tell of a rare wildlife sighting. "This morning our wildlife ecologist managed to snap a picture of a rare sighting of a grey fox! The last record of a grey fox sighting in the Presidio was in 2004. The fox scrambled onto some branches along with a raven as a coyote prowled around a bush below."
Jonathan Young of the Presidio Trust was working out of the Trust’s Fort Scott office last Wednesday in the morning when he got a tip about a few coyotes, whom he followed to the bluffs overlooking Baker Beach. There, he captured the above fox photo. Now, Young would like to add more cameras to find this and perhaps more gray foxes, who are omnivorous, solo hunters. The picture is also telling: the gray fox is a uniquely able tree climber.
“It’s hard to say whether it’s possible to have both of these species occurring in this little park,” Young told Bay Nature magazine of the coyote and gray fox pair. “Coyotes are pretty mobile animals, and pretty slender, and they can get into some thick brush. I don’t know how that compares to the gray fox, whether the coastal bluffs would provide habitat that would allow them to keep to themselves and keep a safe distance from coyotes."
Young would now like hikers who frequent the area to keep an eye out for more foxes. “I’m sure someone saw it before I saw it, it just wasn’t recorded anywhere,” said Young. “It’s just a matter of people being aware of this interface.”
Related: Rare Fox Sighted In Yosemite For First Time In Almost 100 Years