Foxes are not known for their swimming ability
Posted By Foxy Lady on July 13, 2010
BBC News has a story of a young fox rescued from the sea off Eastbourne (which has now made a full recovery)
Garden Fox Watch
Watching a family of foxes growing up in my back garden.
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.
From a month or so back…
Posted By Foxy Lady on July 12, 2010
Okay, a little over a month; these photos are from 2nd June, so at the point where the cubs’ fur had stopped being quite so fluffy and had smoothed out a bit, but before they really got to being the lanky teenage foxes that we see at the moment.
More photo posts to come over the next few days, and also I really must show you some more Foxcam footage! As usual, click on any photo to see a larger version, click on the result to close it back down again.
![Garden Fox Watch: \"You stole my ears!\"](https://www.gardenfoxwatch.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/2010-06-02/img_1790a.jpg "Garden Fox Watch: \\"You stole my ears!\\"")
![Garden Fox Watch: \"Open up and say aaah!\"](https://www.gardenfoxwatch.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/2010-06-02/img_1684a.jpg "Garden Fox Watch: \\"Open up and say aaah!\\"")
“Urban Fox Attack”
Posted By Foxy Lady on July 8, 2010
I’ve held off commenting on this documentary for a few days to give it a little time to settle in my mind.
This was shown on More4 this past Sunday night (4th July). I’m told it’s a re-editing of an older programme, though I have not seen the original — it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if this were the case since the footage relating to the recent case of a fox allegedly attacking children was minimal, to say the least.
It seemed to me to be a fairly balanced depiction of people’s views about the urban fox (people feeding them, people keeping chickens who were having issues, and so on). If you appreciate foxes or are generally opposed to the wanton killing of animals, I suggest skipping the last ten minutes or so (spoiler: Chicken Guy finds that hiring people to get rid of the foxes he thinks are killing his chickens completely fails to help)
On the positive(-ish) side, it did spur me on to send some money to the National Fox Welfare Society. The foxes here are healthy (as far as I’m aware) but not all are so lucky.
“Clever girl…”
Posted By Foxy Lady on July 8, 2010
My cats have figured out the gentle art of teamwork when dealing with the foxes. As the cubs are roaming around a bit more, it’s not unusual to see one cub on its own coming out to look for some food. Yesterday evening, one of them was pottering around on the lawn, initially keeping a respectful distance from Lardy Cat. As sometimes happens, the cub decided to push its luck a little, and attempted to sneak round behind Lardy Cat. Unfortunately, Cub hadn’t noticed Small Cat lurking in the longer grass, and got a smack on the nose for its trouble, followed by both cats chasing Cub across the garden into the bushes. (Don’t worry, Cub came back out as soon as the cats had returned to their watch stations.)
If cats could high-five…
Behaviour and domestication
Posted By Foxy Lady on June 29, 2010
I’ve recently been reading The Dog Zombie‘s blog — she’s studying to be a vet with a specialism in dog behaviour (and doing a MSc on the side). She’s made a couple of posts recently which might be of interest.
One is about how to greet a dog, and how dogs are likely to react if treated inappropriately, e.g. by children. The other discusses why getting a domesticated fox for a pet would be a really bad plan (even if they were available in the UK, which as far as I’m aware they are not — thankfully)
Contemplation
Posted By Foxy Lady on June 27, 2010
Points to take away from these photos (from June 8th):
- I do wonder how noisy some of these cub wrestling matches/play fights are… I’m always behind the window so I don’t really hear them;
- Mrs Fox is still happy to let the cubs use her as a pillow occasionally;
- Foxes seem to flop down flat with their back legs sticking out — do dogs do the same? (I have never had a dog so haven’t noticed. Cats tend to stretch their legs out sideways…)
Mum is finally losing her patience…
Posted By Foxy Lady on June 26, 2010
Today I have another couple of high-definition videos for you (I haven’t forgotten Foxcam, I promise — but I have a huge backlog to look through).
The first is the cubs wrestling with one another again — well, two of them are wrestling and the third one just wants his or her dinner!
In the second video, Mrs Fox, who has been patient with the cubs using her as a climbing frame, assault course, food supply and the like for so long, finally starts to lose her patience with the little darlings. This isn’t a regular thing by any means, but I think it serves to remind the cubs that sooner or later they are going to have to move out (or accept Mrs Fox’s dominance).
Fierce cub!
Posted By Foxy Lady on June 24, 2010
I have, today, a FIERCE fox cub for you — at least in the first of these pictures. I’m not sure what he was being fierce at, but it’s a fair bet it was one of his siblings… or possibly the grass… or something that existed only in his imagination! Also in this set: more fox tongue, and the cub sneaking off to his den with something, we know not what…
A tale of a tail
Posted By Foxy Lady on June 23, 2010
As the fox cubs have grown up, I’ve started to notice black marks on their tails, about a quarter to a third of the way down from the root of the tail. At first I wondered if they’d rubbed against something dirty, but then when I saw that all the cubs had it, I wondered if it might be something genetic. (You can’t really tell whether Mrs Fox has the same mark; her tail is a lot more variegated in colour, with white, black and red all featuring.)
As it happens it is something genetic, but only in the sense that most foxes have this; the increasingly-useful Urban Foxes book tells me that it shows the location of a scent gland on the tail, with which the foxes mark their territory. Now you know!