Quiet Animals has nine photographs. It took four winters to make them. People ask why, and the short answer is that the animals decide when the picture happens, not me.

The fox in the garden

In January 2021 a red fox started crossing the bottom of our garden every morning at about half past nine. I set up the camera at the kitchen window and waited. For two weeks she walked past too fast, or in the wrong light, or behind the woodpile.

On the fourteenth morning she stopped, looked at the forest for a few seconds, and walked on. That is the frame. Then she did not come back for a year.

Patience is not waiting. Patience is being ready every day for something that may not come.

From my notebook, January 2021

The sleeping fox came the winter after, in the same corner of the garden. I like to think it was her.