Andy Rouse Photography

Yesterday we features a lovely Arctic fox in full winter plumage, a lovely thick white coat to blend perfectly into the winter snowscape. In summer however this coat moults out and is replaced by a lighter, browner fur which is designed instead to help the foxes blend into the, now exposed, rocks. This lovely fox was taken a few years ago in Svalbard and was very happy with the whole group taking turns to get some lovely portraits.

But the key question - which outfit do you prefer for our Arctic fox, dazzling white, or understated brown?

I want to start of todays post with a thank you - to each and everyone of you out there that takes the time, to like, comment or share a post. I make a point of trying to respond to every single comment that is made on the day of the post, and to those I don't respond to - I promise I read every comment. Facebook for me has seen its ups and downs in terms of engagement, and now whilst everything seems to be Creator Content... it's good to see that the traditional image based stuff still has a place for you all. AI within facebook is certainly starting to take hold, with AI bot accounts springing up all over the place. This is really sad to see; the videos and images are often completely unrealistic, factually incorrect but crucially have thousands of likes. Now you may think that this doesn't matter, but the more attention these posts get, the more and more of them that you will see (and the more money that the account makes). So if you see someone posting genuine content, please give that content your attention - or some form of engagement, because to the average photographer it does make a difference. And if you enjoy my work I exist on other platforms too, and for each one I tend to do slightly different content. So once again, thank you to all my top followers and fans!

And now - I think it is time for a selection of my finest foxes! Starting with one of my most recent efforts... This was taken a few weeks ago - one of my 4 am starts! It was worth the wait in photography hide - I had positioned this just for capturing wildlife in the cowslips, so I was delighted when during my first hide session I managed to capture this dog fox wandering through.

Time for a mega bird - the Andean Condor. This bird is quite simply immense. You truly cannot comprehend the size of this thing until it whistles by you. Its wingspan is about 3 metres or 10 ft, so find your nearest (average) doorway, and yep, it is considerably bigger than that! The condor is a type of vulture (New-World to be precise) and like other vultures it feeds primarily on carrion. Condors are one of the heaviest flying birds on the planet and they nest on massive vertical cliff faces at huge elevations - this one was cruising by us at around 12,000 ft! A truly mega bird and another one of our most wanted for our Ecuador trips.

Time for another star of our Ecuadorian Shows - and another from our most wanted list. This is a seriously cool bird, the Plate Billed Mountain Toucan! Now if you read about this bird you will see that it is classed as near threatened and that the populations of it are reasonably healthy... But like the Cock-of the-Rock, that doesn't mean that it is easy to find! You see the hillsides where these birds like to live are often incredibly inaccessible, and the foliage is dark and dense, so finding sites to visit with regular visiting Mountain Toucans is a real challenge. I've tried to show that with this image here, shooting through a narrow gap in the foliage - check out those colours! Even though these birds are tough to find and photograph we have Luis - our incredible fixer, guide, and friend that we work with out in Ecuador which really maximises our chances with species like this.

🚨 and in other news - here at Rouse HQ we have decided to relaunch our popular YouTube Series Wild Angle - so if you would like to go and check out all the previous episodes ready for the relaunch then head on over to YouTube where all episodes are available to watch right now!