City foxes braver but not smarter than rural cousins, apparently

| August 10, 2023

The study, published in Animal Behaviour, left puzzles in foxes’ habitats for them to solve to get rewards of food. City foxes were more likely to touch the puzzles but both sets of foxes were equally likely — or unlikely — to solve them. I strongly suspect that the city foxes thought “nah… can’t be […]

The British Library’s top sound of 2021…

| December 14, 2021

… was, apparently, the sound of a fox screaming — listen to it here. (The rest of the BL’s top picks can be seen here.) I’m slightly surprised that there are urban-dwellers who don’t know what foxes sound like! 😉

Cubs in the sun

| May 10, 2020

It was a nice sunny day on Friday (which is more than can be said around Fox Towers today, at least). And the cubs decided to come out and show themselves in the sunshine. We have at least four — I wouldn’t be surprised if there was at least one more waiting to show itself, […]

Doors are tricky things…

| 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 […]

2018’s cubs, at last

| 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 […]

Accidental fox cubs…

| 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

| 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 […]

Moving in and taking over

| September 13, 2015

Hi folks! Been a while, hasn’t it — the local foxes have not chosen our garden as their territory just lately, so we’ve not had any pretty pictures to share. But we do have some from a friend of the blog, Ms Vixen, who lives a couple of towns away; their local foxes have raised […]

Runty

| June 11, 2012

In a litter of six, you’d expect there to be a runt. Last year, with only two cubs ever visible, they were fairly even in size; the year before, with four, there was definitely one who was a little bit smaller than the others. But Runty McRuntersdottir, the littlest female in this year’s litter, is […]

Aunty Fox

| May 29, 2012

Let me introduce you to Aunty Fox. Aunty is the slightly smaller and, one might assume, younger female who has been helping Mrs Fox with the cubs. Before we started seeing the cubs in the garden, Mrs Fox and Aunty Fox had often been seen curled up together in the sunshine. The gallery below shows […]