More Historical Image Evidence of an Old W. European Fox

 The full story behind these images -What Does the Fox Sing? on The Newberry Blog here:

https://www.newberry.org/blog/what-does-the-fox-sing?fbclid=IwY2xjawIApWBleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWWgAZ_Nhy8v0pgJbspLYdRBMX_Z4z3bPi5awQROuSMPubhkf6duxF21mw_aem_SZ6_OZ76wolkzNuNHk648w

The prints were made in 1490 and the colour work was done in 1517 so the artist doing that colouring would have been familiar with the colour of a fox. This is no modern or late 20th century colouring where the artist decides every fox in history in the UK was red so that's how it will be coloured.

The Vincenzo Capirola, Lutebook, 1517, Newberry Library. VAULT Case MS minus VM 140 .C25 has added one more piece to the puzzle of whether Western Europe, before human migration and red fox symbiotic following of human settlements, had an Old fox type similar to the UK.

It would make logical sense that it did since the foxes trapped in the UK after Doggerland flooded would have been part of a Western European species.  When Ireland was then separated itself from mainland Britain the Old foxes there would have developed to live in the new habitat.

What struck me immediately about the drawings was how close they were to sketches of Old British foxes down to the rough hair as well as the famous Colquhoun mountain fox (one of the last of its type).

19th century sketch of a mountain fox and below the Colquhoun mountain fox killed in the mid 1830 (full details and better photos in The Red Paper)

Access to European museum or private house collections (as we had hoped for in the UK)  would likely turn up even more anecdotal evidence and, perhaps, a taxidermy of an Old W. European fox.