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 March 14, 2011
England’s rugby team acquired a new mascot for their match against Scotland at Twickenham yesterday; a cheeky fox who paraded up and down the pitch before the match.
The BBC have footage of the fox’s moment of fame (probably only available to those of you in the UK, sorry): http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/9423677.stm
Posted By Foxy Lady on February 24, 2011
Fox found living at the top of the Shard skyscraper (from BBC News)
We’re in a bit of a holding pattern here at Fox Towers, waiting to see if we’ll be hosting a family of cubs this year; there are plenty of foxes still visiting the garden for food, and one of them was sunbathing in the garden today and generally treating it as though it was his/her own, but are they reproducing? We just don’t know yet. We didn’t see the first cub above ground until April 14th last year which means that this year’s, if they’re out there, will only just be born, or possibly not yet born. Patience.
Posted By Foxy Lady on February 12, 2011
Our correspondent Elizabeth Lovegrove reports from Oxford that they had an overnight visitor, the night before last. They came down in the morning and found a young fox comfortably curled up on their sofa (and their two cats having run away from it, looking decidedly underwhelmed). It backed off to hide under a table when it noticed them:
Apparently this is a well-trained fox, though; no mess!
Elizabeth hypothesises that the fox came in through their cat flap — their cats won’t keep collars on so they can’t use a magnetic flap. (I have suggested that they look into cat flaps which will read the ID chips from the back of the cats’ necks; our Sureflap has kept foxes out before now.)
Posted By Foxy Lady on February 11, 2011
Should you want to discourage foxes from entering your garden, there are many ways of doing so. The Fox Project has a list of many of them (under their “Deterrence” heading).
But there are more unusual ways of keeping foxes away from your livestock; it may not be within everyone’s budget, but have you considered hiring some llamas? Nescot, not far from Fox Towers, have borrowed the exotic animals to keep foxes away from their rare-breed sheep during lambing season.
If we happen to spot rogue llamas on Foxcam, we’ll be sure to let you know…
Posted By Foxy Lady on February 2, 2011
Aha! My foxes are not the only ones who lick windows…
Posted By Foxy Lady on January 26, 2011
The Bad Witch has been fox-spotting in her garden — at this rate I’ll be subcontracting the writing of this blog to her 😉 (Although I think she is being a little optimistic about one of the foxes being noticeably pregnant; it’s a bit early for that, yet. We’ll probably find that said fox has been eating all the pies.)
I don’t have pairs of foxes hanging out on our lawn just yet, but occasionally we’ll see two of them coming out for food at the same time. I can’t decide quite what the two in the video are to one another; mated pair, or just a brief encounter around the food? Who knows…
Posted By Foxy Lady on January 19, 2011
Ears is back! She hadn’t been hanging around by the patio doors in at least a couple of weeks (although she’d been coming by the food area overnight)… possibly because it hadn’t been as cold recently around Fox Towers, possibly because she’d been off getting acquainted with the local males, who knows.
Anyway.
Yesterday evening she was sitting outside the door looking hopeful, and being the soft touch that we have already established that I am, I looked around for something to put out for her to eat.
What came to hand was a couple of rather elderly eggs and some cheap cat treats. (Never let it be said that the foxes round here don’t dine well.)
So I put these gourmet viands out on the patio and retreated to watch.
She came up to one of the eggs and nudged it with her nose.
OH MY GOD IT WOBBLED WHAT IS THIS IT’S SO SCARY
… and she backed off and fled into the bushes.
Admittedly she — or one of the other local foxes — came back for each of the eggs, but still! You can tell these are urban foxes who aren’t used to raiding chicken pens or birds’ nests….
(I would have repeated the experiment by putting one or more eggs in front of Foxcam, but they wouldn’t have wobbled so well on grass…)
Posted By Foxy Lady on January 14, 2011
I know, I know, a bit quiet here at Fox Towers lately. The humans are getting back into work, and the foxes… well, they’re definitely still visiting the lawn for their dinner, although I’m not sure we have any in residence just now; they’ve not been leaping out of the bushes as soon as the food hits the ground. That might, of course, have something to do with there not being six inches of snow on the ground at the moment. (I don’t think it’s just that they dislike the dry dog food that they’re now getting instead of peanuts; something’s eating it…)
Ears and Paletail are still showing up on camera, along with at least one more visitor. We’ll see if any of them decide to settle down and raise a family here this year…
In other news:
And speaking of idiots with guns: a protest is being organised on 25th January against the Scottish vet who recently shot and killed a “monster fox”. For more details, please contact paul_mc_donald at msn dot com (turning that into a more conventional email address first).
Posted By Foxy Lady on December 25, 2010
Good morning, folks! Merry Christmas from all at Fox Towers. Since you’ve not had much video from me just lately (short days, bad light), a little Christmas present; I spotted Ears hunting in the snow on Monday. Problem was, when she found her food, she couldn’t decide whether to eat it or play with it…
Posted By Foxy Lady on December 24, 2010
Picture the scene. Foxy Lady and Mr Fox are sitting at the table, eating their dinner, when Ears potters along the patio and sits down outside the patio doors, looking hopeful. (She does this quite often, and occasionally it’ll work and she’ll get some food thrown out onto the patio for her.)
Our lardier cat is sitting by the doors in the dining room, watching Ears…
… the music swells…
…they are just two lonely souls separated by, um, some double glazing.
Ears licks the window. No, I have no idea why she does this either; it’s not as though it would have any nutritional value.
Lardy Cat reaches a paw out towards the fox tongue on the other side of the glass.
It was like a scene from some bizarre prison movie, with the prisoner and his visitor on opposite sides of the bullet-proof glass, except that I don’t think either of these two could have held a phone handset.
Um, anyway. My apologies for the photo quality; my camera wasn’t within reach so these were off my phone 😉
