Posted By Foxy Lady on April 17, 2011
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.
Fingers crossed…
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Posted By Foxy Lady on March 18, 2011
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?
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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
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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.
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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.)
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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…
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Posted By Foxy Lady on February 2, 2011
Aha! My foxes are not the only ones who lick windows…
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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…
(more…)
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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…)
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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).
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