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 two cubs this year and, well, as you’ll see below, they’re really quite friendly!
Ms Vixen’s family includes a cat, who is entirely happy for the foxes to hang around in his garden; if nothing else, it apparently discourages some of the other local cats from coming in to beat her cat up!
(No… the fox has not yet tried to use the cat’s litter tray.)
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 really noticeably smaller than her siblings.
These photos are from May 11th — so, exactly a month ago today — and you can see that she was then not only smaller, but quite a bit darker than the others. (Don’t forget that the cubs start out dark and change colour as they get older.) Also, at this point she appeared to have a problem with her eye; we wondered about deformity, but looking closely at these and other photos, it appears that her inner eyelid was partly covering the eye — possibly a slight infection, possibly an over-enthusiastic sibling had caught her eye with a paw or claw. There wasn’t anything we could usefully do about it, but I’m pleased to report that it seems to have cleared up altogether; Runty’s around and thriving, catching up a bit in size, and joining in the rough and tumble of cub life fully.
Fantastic Mr Fox and I finally got back from holiday in early May, and did the foxes cooperate by coming out and showing themselves immediately? They did not… largely because it was still raining. But eventually they showed up — by the 10th May we managed to get a few shots of Mrs Fox and the cubs pottering about on the lawn.
May 8th had better weather than many of the preceding days (possibly working up to Foxy Lady’s return from holiday — who knows). Aunty Fox had drawn the short straw for cub-wrangling duty, and she was certainly kept busy as they took over the lawn…
Fox cubs, much like small animals of many other species, love to find new things to play with. Actually, what they found on May 7th was second-hand at the very least, and quite possibly had been stashed in the garden by last year’s cubs… but this empty Red Bull can was definitely providing them plenty of amusement, as well as something to test their teeth on.
I’m glad it was empty — these little guys are energetic enough as they tear round the garden without adding caffeine into the mix… (More seriously, I would expect that caffeine is as bad for foxes as it is for dogs.)
(Once again we are indebted to Foxy Lady Junior for the photos)
Fox cubs generally start out black or very dark grey — although in my experience of watching them so far, it’s very unusual to see them out in the open when they’re still properly black. (The only time I’ve seen one still that colour was in 2010 where I disturbed one near its den, a couple of weeks before they came out into the main part of the garden.) They mature through a darker brown and eventually to the paler brown/red that we more often associate with foxes. In these photos from 6th May (courtesy of Foxy Lady Jr again), you can see that some of the cubs are starting to change to their “adult” colour — and also that they are big fans of wrestling with one another!
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 the cubs attempting to suckle from Aunty. We really don’t know whether what we have here is two litters — one produced by Mrs and one produced by Aunty — who are being raised together, or whether all the cubs were produced by Mrs and Aunty is just a helper. Most often, the helper foxes are offspring from previous years’ litters, but Aunty can’t be from last year’s group as both of those cubs were male. She didn’t seem to be around helping with last year’s litter… we just aren’t sure, and short of getting DNA samples from all concerned, we never will be!
Aunty and Mrs Fox seem to take turns, to some degree, in keeping an eye on the cubs. Aunty is most often the one who’s seen watching out for the food of an evening, though…
You may remember that before we had this warmer weather (in the UK, at least), it rained for a while… say, a month or two. Today, I put it to you that there are few things more adorably pathetic than soggy fox cubs…
One or two people have asked about the slightly unusual fur pattern that Mrs Fox is sporting — shaggy on top, neatly trimmed across the back end. This is because both Mrs Fox and Aunty Fox (the other female who has been helping her out) had mange over the winter and in the earlier spring. (Oddly, Mr Fox did not seem to succumb.) We added the treatment available from Wildlife Aid to their food for a few weeks and it seems to have cleared it up.
(Foxy Lady was still away at this point, so once again it is Foxy Lady Junior we must thank for the photos.)
… it’s a tough life being a mother of six. Watching the cubs interact with their parents is always fun — at this stage (these photos were taken on 1st May) the vixen seems resigned to a life of providing milk forever and a day, but of course we all know she’ll start dissuading them from feeding sooner or later.
(Once again, these photos were taken by Foxy Lady Junior, FL’s sister.)
