Our garden foxes...

Welcome to the Garden Fox Watch blog, detailing the life and times of the family of foxes that are growing up in our back garden.

Doors are tricky things…

Posted By on January 13, 2019

One of our local foxes decided to come and investigate the house the other evening. Sitting on the back doorstep, they looked as though they were considering whether it would be warmer inside and possibly also have food — but the door was of course closed. One of our cats came over to investigate and proved that she isn’t quite as daft as we sometimes think she is; she can tell the difference between another cat and a fox, even if they are on the other side of the door. (She’d have been hissing and yowling had the interloper been feline.)

Please excuse the somewhat shonky photo quality; low light, and I couldn’t easily move to get a better view as the fox would almost certainly have left if I had…

2018’s cubs, at last

Posted By on June 23, 2018

It feels like these little guys are a bit later than usual making an appearance. We weren’t sure whether there were cubs at all this year; we’d seen the local adults around quite a bit, but it wasn’t until a couple of days ago that we saw a cub with them — at a point where the light was not going to work for taking pictures, naturally! — and then not until this evening that it became clear that there were actually at least two cubs jumping around and playing with their parents.

Yes, the garden is exceptionally grassy at the moment. The weather earlier on this year was excellent for growing things… grass, weeds, and the like… and you’ve all already figured out that we are not keen gardeners, right? But trying to persuade the camera to focus on the foxes and not the surrounding vegetation can be a challenge, especially with a long lens.

Anyway, hopefully we will be able to get some more photos in the next week or two. One of the cubs was brave enough to venture onto the patio already; now they just need to do that at the other end, nearer the camera…

(The first picture in the gallery is one of the cubs; the second is one of the adult foxes. We think it’s their mother but it might be one of the teenagers from last year; I have seen her (assumed “her”, anyhow) grooming one of the cubs.)

Accidental fox cubs…

Posted By on April 20, 2018

“Mark Bucknell says he found the animals about a month ago abandoned behind some straw bales in a shed at his farm near Newquay, Cornwall.

He took them inside thinking they were his spaniel Ruby’s puppies as she had already started producing milk and mothering them.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-43843863

Sunbathing

Posted By on February 7, 2018

Although it’s been quite chilly here the past few days, it has been sunny for much of the time. With the sun come the foxes — well, they come out from their dens, anyhow — and they seem to find the roof of our shed a good place to sunbathe. Possibly the tar-paper covering it retains the heat of the sun. We have had up to three taking the rays at the same time in the last week, but today there are two snuggled up together on the shed.

The shed has its uses

Posted By on December 18, 2017

It is, by this point, a fairly old and knackered shed. (I won’t be surprised to find the foxes living in, rather than under, it one of these years.) But its tar-papered roof still provides a handy sun-trap and vantage point for the foxes at this time of year.

Just snoozing in the sun

Posted By on November 17, 2017

Lazing on an autumn afternoon….!

After a bit of a trim…

Posted By on September 18, 2017

So we cut down some of the brambles and such in the garden — what do you mean, “I can’t tell the difference?” Hush, now. Anyway, that means we’ve been more easily able to see the local foxes taking in the sun, and so too have our cats. Neither side appears to mind much; as previously noted, the cats and foxes are not especially bothered by one another…

Foxheaven (Dublin)

Posted By on July 17, 2017

There’s a lovely live stream on YouTube that shows foxes coming to a Dublin garden for food and play in the evenings and overnight. The actual live stream’s URL changes, but the channel for the person who runs it is here and you will find the currently-live stream linked from there. Enjoy!

“Only hunt groups care about foxes”

Posted By on July 17, 2017

From BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40632948.

I believe the word we’re looking for here is, approximately, “bollocks”. Even the (Tory) MP into whose constituency Fox Towers falls admitted he’d had dozens of letters from constituents insisting that the hunting ban be kept the last time they floated the concept of repealing it.

“Curious cat finds fox cub under sofa”

Posted By on July 17, 2017

From BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-40013177