Posted By Foxy Lady on October 1, 2010
I was really hoping to get some more HD video footage of the foxes to show you, for reasons which will become apparent in a couple of days’ time, but the weather — and indeed the foxes — really haven’t been cooperating. Yesterday was sunny but the foxes didn’t want to show their faces in daylight — except for the five minutes as I was setting the camera up, naturally — and today we’ve had heavy rain all day; the light’s been lousy and I wouldn’t want to be out in it.
So here are some Foxcam short pieces from the last few days. The first two are just our resident cub and one of her siblings having a snack, and the third one proves that tails can be tasty.
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Posted By Foxy Lady on September 30, 2010
Fox In Your Garden, Doreen King, pub. Kingdom Books 2000
This is an accessible guide to what you can expect if you have foxes in your garden, with plenty of personal anecdotes throughout alongside the information, plus photographs and illustrations. Doreen King runs a wildlife rescue centre in Essex and obviously has plenty of experience with foxes in an urban and suburban setting.
The book walks you through what the foxes will eat, both in terms of what they will eat from your garden — slugs, worms etc. — and what they will scrounge from rubbish or food left out for them — carrion, berries, domestic scraps. (She mentions that they will eat vegetables but I can confirm from personal experience that either my group are fussy, or foxes don’t like aubergine…). It moves on to the life cycle of the fox, what you can do for a sick fox, and how to persuade foxes not to use your garden if you would prefer that they did not.
I’d say that this could be read and enjoyed by a slightly younger age-group than Stephen Harris’s Urban Foxes book (of which I really must do a proper review sometime); it’s a bit less technical and explains some of the less familiar terminology. It’s quite short (48 pages) but would probably sit well in a school library.
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Posted By Foxy Lady on September 23, 2010
No photos for this one, and perhaps you should be thankful…
Those of you with cats and dogs will doubtless have had the joy of clearing up after your pets when they’ve decided to eat some grass and then vomited. I hadn’t realised that foxes would do the same thing, but I suppose it makes sense; I’ve just watched Ears, our resident fox, potter around the garden looking for the tastiest bits of grass and then heave them up again onto the lawn. Lovely. 😉 She seemed to be all right afterwards! Either a hairball or something which disagreed with her, I guess.
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Tags: Behaviour
Posted By Foxy Lady on September 21, 2010
Our foxes have built themselves a nest!
… okay, not quite. What they have taken to doing is hanging out on top of our shed, soaking up the autumn sunshine. (What is this “nocturnal” of which you speak?) As I type, two of them are up there, curled up peacefully. They do add an autumnal touch of colour to the place…
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Posted By Foxy Lady on September 18, 2010
Today is the Save-Me Campaign‘s Day of Action for British wild animals. Please take a look at their site and, if you support keeping the ban on fox hunting firmly in its place, contact your MP to make them aware of that. I will be, since the MP for Fox Towers apparently supports repealing the ban…
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Posted By Foxy Lady on September 17, 2010
I am convinced that there is a sign somewhere on our property which says “Fox Gourmet Restaurant – This Way”. Or, possibly, “Owner Of This House Is A Soft Touch” – like the signs that the Roma or hobos are reputed to leave. Either would be true, in any case!
On Monday morning, I had gone out to swap the datacard in FoxCam, and as I did so, I caught a glimpse of a fox sitting on the back fence. I’d assumed it was one of the youngsters who are still around, but another glimpse suggested that this fox was missing half of his tail — slightly worrying since I was reasonably sure none of the youngsters had had tail damage when last seen.
I decided to put some food out to see if I could coax this fox out to let me get a better look (and some photos) — once seen out of his cover, this was definitely not one of our usual group. Not only did he look considerably older, but he was indeed missing a large part of his tail – about two-thirds of it. It didn’t seem to bother him, but he was definitely very interested in the food. I did wonder if he might stay around once he had figured out that there was food available, but I’ve not seen him on Foxcam during the rest of the week, so I assume he’s moved on to pastures new…
(I do note that, unusually, I can be a bit more certain of this visitor’s gender. Let’s just say that it’s easier to tell without much tail in the way ;))
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Posted By Foxy Lady on September 4, 2010
After several weeks of mostly seeing only one fox in the garden, we seem to have numbers 2 and 3 back as regular visitors, at least when there’s food around. I’m wondering whether someone else locally might also have been feeding them (or other wildlife) and has recently stopped.
Yesterday evening all three were chasing one another around the garden and wrestling. I did check to see if any of them were still limping — hard to tell, and one of them might have been carrying a back leg a little oddly at times, but it definitely wasn’t impeding his movement if so. Hopefully it was nothing too serious. I do now have the mange treatment I ordered so I’ll probably give them a couple of weeks’ worth of that, just in case.
Enjoy the video; it’s hard to believe that they’ve grown so quickly!
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Posted By Foxy Lady on September 2, 2010
One of the fox cubs — not Ears, who is still resident in the garden as far as I know, but one of the other two cubs who still occasionally visit the garden for food — has been limping over the last few days. He or she (let’s fix on “he”, otherwise this entry will be even longer and more stilted than usual) is getting around quite happily, but just not putting his right rear leg to the ground.
(Not the greatest photos, sorry; they’re screencaps off Foxcam and thus fairly low resolution, but I think you can see what I mean.)
I had a chat with Wildlife Aid to see if they had any suggestions. Since he is still quite mobile, we decided it wasn’t going to be a great idea to try to trap him; as he’s not coming to the garden that often, just for food, we’d be much more likely to get one of the other foxes (or one of the cats). Limping can be a sign of mange so I’ll put some mange treatment in the foxes’ food for the next while and see if that helps (he doesn’t appear to be scratching, though), and also keep an eye out to see if he shows up on Foxcam looking any less well.
I should also note that if he’s getting into the garden at all, he’s having to jump a reasonably high fence or gate to get in there, or else wriggle under a fence; there’s some level of agility required. Don’t worry, folks, we’ll keep you posted…
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Posted By Foxy Lady on August 25, 2010
First of all, with a hat-tip to @Lofty_Jen on Twitter: A clever fox turned the tables on a photographer. That photographer was significantly more relaxed than I would have been if an animal started clambering over my tripod!
Secondly, not news as such, but one of the participants on PostCrossing, a postcard swap site, has a really impressive collection of fox postcards…
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Posted By Foxy Lady on August 25, 2010
No, it is not the foxes who are soggy — well, they probably are, but they’ve not been out much in the recent wet weather, and really, do you blame them? The garden is decidedly damp, though, and thus it’s much easier to dig holes in the lawn to bury your food in. If you’re a fox.
A quick peek at the overnight Foxcam footage from a couple of nights back revealed that one of the cubs we thought had moved on had returned for a visit — there were three small foxes enjoying the food instead of two. I assume it was another of the original four who had returned, otherwise there would have been ructions… Whether he or she is around again regularly remains to be seen.
I’m still working through the backlog of photos. Here are just a little set from mid-June (as in, over two months ago!). Yes, numbers two and three are different — just not very different…
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