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.
Posted By Foxy Lady on April 23, 2025
While the weather was a bit batter last week, we had more chances to see the cubs in light good enough to take pictures! They were, and are this week, still very bouncy.
(We have seen the first cub make it as far as the patio, though he or she dashed back into the undergrowth almost immediately…)
Posted By Foxy Lady on April 15, 2025
For a variety of reasons — bad weather, too much vegetation, etc. — I’ve struggled to get decent pictures of the local fox cubs for the last couple of years.
But no more! This year, not only have they been visible a little earlier than in some years, but we are reasonably confident they’re actually resident at the bottom of our garden (probably under, or in, the increasingly dilapidated shed), as we’ve seen the vixen taking food back to the den and returning quickly enough that she would not have had time to cross into a different garden.
Our first sighting of a cub was on Saturday evening (12/4) — twilight, so no good pics — but from yesterday onwards we’ve seen three cubs out and about. Their only means of locomotion at the moment seems to be by bouncing everywhere!
These are yesterday’s pics, there will be some from today once I’ve had a chance to process them.
Posted By Foxy Lady on February 21, 2024
Okay, this one is not technically a “garden” fox, rather in woodland, but if he wanted a mobile phone then he definitely counts as “urban”!
Posted By Foxy Lady on 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 bothered, I saw half a kebab back down the road, or we might get some dog food and cheese if we swing by that back garden…”
Posted By Foxy Lady on February 18, 2022
Seen on Petapixel, some great photos of foxes together as taken by Roeselien Raimond…
Posted By Foxy Lady on 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! 😉
Posted By Foxy Lady on June 4, 2021
We were having lunch a couple of days ago when we spotted an unusual visitor to our bird table…! We are reasonably sure that no birds were harmed — they would have flown away long before this vixen had made it up there — but surely bird food isn’t that appetising for foxes? (It’s not like they don’t get anything else.)
Posted By Foxy Lady on June 3, 2020
According to an article on the BBC here, new research shows that urban foxes are tending to have smaller brains and a differently-shaped snout to their country cousins — smaller brains because they do not need to pursue so many different types of prey, different snout as an adaptation for urban foraging. We haven’t been out to measure the skulls of our local foxes just yet but, judging by the state of our lawn this morning, they’re still quite capable of taking down pigeons…
The published paper is here. Interestingly, the specimens on which the researchers were basing their analysis had been collected between 1971 and 1973; back then there were considerably fewer urban foxes than there are now (at least in the part of London where Foxy Lady grew up — and yes, sadly she is old enough to remember that era…) so it would be interesting to see a comparative study done with more recently-collected skulls.
Posted By Foxy Lady on May 27, 2020
For those of you with access to BBC Iplayer, you should take a look at yesterday’s edition. There is a lovely article starting at about 48:30 into the program talking to Mark Mason Gardner, who enjoys watching the foxes in his London garden from a purpose-built hide accessible to his wheelchair. His resident vixen is apparently raising seven cubs this year; makes our vixen’s four look positively restful…
(Yes, more photos/videos soon! There are plenty ;))
Posted By Foxy Lady on May 11, 2020
Good thing the camera can cope acceptably with low light if you ask it nicely….! Mum and two of the cubs decided to come out and check out the food, but first the cubs decided they weren’t weaned just yet!
