August 9, 2013
Arctic Fox Kits on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Iceland

Our stay in Iceland ended with a bang! On our last full day, as we were leaving the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, an Arctic fox crossed the road as we rounded a corner. We quickly came to a stop and watched the fox disappear into a hole by the road. We set up to photograph it, and waited for it to come back out, but thought it might have crossed the road through the culvert that it had entered and had left the area. We packed up and continued heading down the road. Less than 100 yds down the road, we spotted another Arctic fox by the road, and this one was a kit! We stopped again and went out to photograph it. It was cautious at first and frequently disappeared back into its den. After a while a second kit came out too and we had some fantastic opportunities to photograph them. This is the second kit, and I just love its markings which are very similar to the adult that we had seen and which came to join the kits shortly before we left. The kits became quite comfortable with us quietly kneeling behind our tripods, and the first kit, the all-dark one in this image, was so comfortable and curious that it came within 5 ft (1.5m) of us to see what we were doing. In this image, the kits had become so comfortable with us around that they moved further from the den and were engrossed in play. Our time with the foxes was a spectacular way to end our stay in Iceland!