Here’s the collection of the best video clips from last night — the cubs were out a little bit during the day, but not far enough onto the lawn to trigger FoxCam’s motion detector, it would seem. Also, it looked as though it was a bit warm for them; not usually a phrase you’d expect to use in April!
I do have some nice photos but they need a little more work before I let them out — they were towards the end of the day and the light was waning. They’ll be out eventually.
Foxcam records video for a maximum of 30 seconds at a time, and uploading lots of little bits to YouTube has the potential to be a pain for me, and irritating to navigate for you guys — so I’ve decided to try compiling the best bits from each day into one longer video. Think of them as fox cub training montages; you may hum “Eye Of The Tiger” over them if it’ll help 🙂 (I did consider trying to put appropriate foxy music over them but there are probably only so many times I could use either Rilo Kiley’s Portions For Foxes or anything by the Fleet Foxes before people started to complain.)
Under the fold are the first three montages from 19th, 20th and 21st April. The last of them has the first video footage of one of the cubs coming out in daylight.
I think today’s gallery could be summed up as “It’s Tough Being A Mum”. You have to ride herd on your rambunctious offspring and then, THEN they demand to be fed. In public! Well, I can confirm that Fox Towers has no laws against public cub-feeding… in fact we think it’s rather cute.
Videos later on, it took a while to edit and tag this lot!
I have a LOAD of new cub photos and video to put up this evening, but just as a stop-gap: this is Mrs Fox admiring the pigeons on our roof from a few days ago… Enjoy.
And on looking through last night’s Foxcam footage I find that at least two cubs ventured out into the world last night! Videos are below… — click on “more” to see them.
Taming wild animals — the National Geographic cover story from their March 2011 issue (I’m sure many of you will have seen this already, including the lovely cover photo). The article discusses the domestication of several types of wild animals, including foxes.
It has been a little quiet around here of late, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. That would be because we’re still waiting to see if we have cubs in residence this year… although a lot of people are reporting they’re already seeing cubs in and around their gardens and parks, but ours are not yet out and about.
Looking at the posts from last year, the first sighting I had (somewhat by accident) was on April 14th, and the first photos we got were on the 20th/21st, so if we do have cubs here, they should be coming out shortly.
What we do have at the moment is a pair of foxes (male and female) who are being very keen on keeping our back garden as their territory rather than as the free-for-all that it was over the winter and earlier on in the year. (Mr Half-a-tail is still making the occasional foray but being chased off; the other locals have decided that discretion is the better part of valour.) Mrs Fox has visible nipples, so I’m guessing that she’s suckling at least some cubs, but where? Given that Mr and Mrs Fox both seem to be keen on hanging out on top of our shed during the sunnier bits of the day, I’m sure it’s close by, and maybe it is under the shed where last year’s fox family lived.
Conservative MP Greg Hands is at it again, in his ongoing attempt to have foxes reclassified as vermin so that councils would be able to organise culls. Hands originally asked much the same question in 2006 (and indeed he received much the same answer).
At present, there is nothing stopping individual landowners dealing with “problem foxes”, but there are no wider powers allowing councils to attempt to cull foxes on a wider scale. Leaving aside the desirability or otherwise of attempting this, if foxes are culled then other foxes will move in and take over that territory; the University of Bristol have done significant research into this aspect of animal population (for instance this recent paper).
While there have been incidences of foxes attacking humans, they are certainly isolated incidents. The number of reports of people being bitten (and even killed) by dogs is considerably higher, yet I do not see Mr Hands agitating for their removal.
Labour MP Paul Flynn said “Having some wildlife in urban areas gives great delight to many people.” I agree (not surprisingly!)
I was contacted by Radio London yesterday with a view to my taking part in a debate with Mr Hands on their drive-time programme. Unfortunately I had to decline this time around, but I hope that they managed to find a suitable advocate for the foxes; did anyone hear the show?
