Not
a fox.
Estonia · Summer 2020
An unexpected encounter.
My father and I had travelled to Estonia to photograph wildlife and explore the quiet landscapes around Matsalu. We visited Estonia four times in all, drawn back by the encounters we had there. In the summer of 2020, one of those encounters began while we were driving along a road near our accommodation. We were scanning the surrounding fields when I noticed an animal beside a hay bale. At first glance, it looked like a fox. We stopped, and I raised my camera to get a closer look. Through the viewfinder, I was sure I could see what it really was: a wolf. The thought was overwhelming. I had no doubt about it.
I believed I was photographing a wolf, and I could barely contain my excitement. At the time, I knew almost nothing about golden jackals. I did not even know that they lived in Estonia, so a jackal was not an explanation I could have reached on my own. My father and I photographed the animal with enormous enthusiasm as it sat beside the bale and looked towards us. It seemed interested in us, but far less impressed by the encounter than we were. I was absorbed in the thought of having a wolf in front of my camera; the animal, meanwhile, appeared quite content to stay where it was.
Eventually, it turned away from us and moved further back into the field. We watched it jump onto a large round hay bale and stay there for a while. Some photographs from this part of the encounter are distant and less detailed than the closer portraits. They still belong to the story for me: they show the animal in the landscape, and preserve the unexpected moment when it climbed onto the bale. A scientist later suggested that it had probably been using the bale as a vantage point for hunting. Perhaps it was simply enjoying the sun. A few minutes later, it moved further away and disappeared into the woods.
A golden
jackal.
The surprise came the following day, when a local woman told us that the animal had been a golden jackal. Until that conversation, I had been convinced it was a wolf. We had photographed a species I had not even known lived in Estonia. Our excitement and happiness were immense. The discovery had continued after we had put our cameras down.
Only later did I learn how small Estonia’s jackal population was. A study published in 2022 reports 27 reproductive groups nationwide in 2020, with the population expanding mainly along the western coast. The country’s first confirmed records of presence and reproduction dated from 2013. That history gives our encounter another dimension: this animal had only recently become part of Estonia’s wildlife.1