Dave Midi Photography

Wilfred

Wilfred has been visiting our garden since June 2008. He and his mate Joey were irregular at first, but since October he has been coming every night with the exception of a few days in January. We think this could've been around mating time and so his behaviour pattern changed. It all began at the end of June 2008 when we planted new shrubs, and laid topsoil.
The next morning we found holes dug in the soil, and were mystified as to who could've made them. Unbeknown to us, foxes are very fond of new topsoil & bone meal (which we'd used planting the shrubs).
What drew our attention to it was the light triggered by motion at the rear came on a couple of nights later around 11pm. Wondering what could have triggered it, we looked from the bedroom window and were most surprised to see not one, but 2 young foxes playing in our freshly made flower-bed.

Wilfred is casual, and has gotten used to seeing me (he knows the hand that feeds him). He comes and checks out his bowl and if there's nothing in it, or he's wants more, he'll come right up to the back door and peer in until we feed him; he really is quite a character.
Recently I've been going outside when he comes, and throwing him bits of meat which although cautious, he gladly takes and eats in front of me. He's keeping his distance when I do this, but as time goes on we'll see how friendly he becomes.

The beauty of our security light is that the foxes always trigger it, and so we know when they're there. It's impossible for them to get anywhere near the food without the light coming on. This provides enough light to enable me to get fairly decent pictures without using a flash.

Wilfred Menu
LIKES
	Chicken
	Lamb
	Cheese
	Yorkshire Puddings
	Blueberry Muffins
	Ham
	Bacon
	Scotch Eggs
	Sausages
	Pork Pie
	Cornbread
DISLIKES
	Goose Liver Pate
	Raspberries
	Glucose Tablets
	Dried Apricot
	Potatoes
	Apple skin
	Grapes

To discern what he likes & dislikes is very simple. We put food in his bowl & whatever is not eaten by morning he obviously doesn't like. We put a piece of broccoli in his dish the other night, and it was gone by 10pm which surprised us.

Dens / Earths

It is not uncommon for a group of foxes to have more than one earth in their territory. Often a fox family will have a natal (breeding) earth and one–or–more smaller earths where they spend time outside of the breeding season. The natal earth is the largest, with more than one entrance/exit and a chamber up to three metres below the ground. The 'standard' earths are usually smaller, with a single opening connecting the chamber to the outside world by a tunnel up to ten metres long.
Urban foxes will readily make dens under garden sheds, in banks of earth (e.g. on railway embankments), and even under the floorboards of occupied houses, or in trees! Unlike badgers, foxes do not use bedding material.
The above pictures show an entrance to one of Wilfred's dens. Whether or not this is the main earth is unknown.

When I was a lad...

When I was a young teenager, I found a fox cub on a building site amongst a pile of rubble. At a guess it was only 8 - 12 weeks old. I saw no signs of its parents and thought that the builders had probably disturbed its home. I took it home in my jacket ( a thing I often used to do with all kinds of animals). My Mom was like "whatever you've got there, you're not keeping it!" This was until I took it out and placed it on the table. The cub was about 7 inches long, had a small pointed tail, and as cute as a button. My Mom instantly fell in love with it, and I can remember her exact words at the time.."Lemme get it a piece of meat". I eagerly took the meat from her and offered it up to foxy. The little bastid snatched it from my fingers leaving a small tooth mark in its place. We took the fox to the vet who gave it an examination, and told us that there was no reason we couldn't keep it.

We called him 'Freddie', and so he became a pet. He used to run around the house just like a dog. We had a dog at the time and after a short suspicious period they became used to one another, and got on just fine. My Dad built a run & house for him outside where he liked to sleep at night. These pictures are the only ones I have of Freddie, and were taken a long time ago. He lived with us for about 6 years until we gave him to a relative down in Devon where he enjoyed his time until he eventually died of old age.

Size of Foxes

Length: The Red fox is the largest fox in the Vulpes genus. Globally, 45 – 90cm (1.5ft – 3ft) head & body length; foxes can reach 1.5m (5ft) TL (including tail). In the UK, adult male foxes typically range between 67cm and 72cm (26 - 28in.), while females fall between 62cm to 68cm. The tail, or brush, makes up roughly one-third of the total body length.
Weight: In Britain, the average weight of an adult male fox is around 6.5kg (14 lbs), with a range of 4kg to 8 kg (9 - 17.6 lbs); adult females average 5.5kg (12 lbs), with a range of 4kg to 6kg. Globally, the range of weights for Red foxes is 3 – 14kg (31 lbs).

The Fox Calendar

January - The mating season starts: foxes travel around in search of a mate

February - Vixens start to look for a site (an 'earth') in which to breed

March - Cubs are born after a 53-day pregnancy

April - The cubs first emerge from the earth

May - Cubs learn through play and start to eat solid food

June / July - The breeding earth is abandoned and the cubs lie up in a sheltered position above ground

August / September - The cubs start to forage for themselves and to sleep apart from the adults; by now they are as big as their parents

October / November - Fox families start to break up and spread out. Young foxes take over territories of dead or weak parents

December - Foxes defend their territories as the mating season approaches

About Foxes

Foxes suffer from most of the same diseases as dogs. It is not known whether they communicate diseases to dogs or vice versa and there is no evidence that they pass any of these diseases on to people.
Fortunately rabies has not yet reached the British Isles (and it is important to take every possible step to prevent this), but if it were to then foxes would represent a potential threat to human health, directly because a bite from a rabid fox could pass the disease to a person, and indirectly because they might communicate rabies to domestic pets.
If rabies does cross the Channel, however, the Trust would not support wholesale eradication of the fox, which plays a vital role in keeping down populations of pests like rats. Rabies is long established in the fox population on the continent and the problem is now being managed effectively by inoculating foxes against the disease by putting out treated bait. We believe this is both a more humane approach than wholesale culling and less likely to have adverse side-effects.

Do they attack our household pets?

Foxes will normally steer well clear of cats, which are more often attacked by dogs than by foxes. But they will take pet rabbits or guinea pigs, given half a chance, so it is important to enclose small pets like these securely at night.

Why do they keep digging up the garden?

Foxes dig up lawns and beds for worms and insect larvae. This can be a nuisance, but remember that they also keep rat and rabbit populations down which can be an even greater nuisance. They may also dig holes to store small animals, coming back later to dig up and eat the food, quite unconcerned if it is rotten and worm-eaten.
It is also quite natural for foxes to dig up buried pets, which from their point of view is just a waste of good meat. This is very difficult to stop, however deep you bury the body.
If foxes raise their young in or near your garden, the young foxes may flatten areas in their play, but this will stop towards the end of the summer as they grow up.

Do they interfere with dustbins or bin bags?

If they are hungry enough foxes will take food from wherever they can find it, but it is probable that dustbins and bin bags are raided more often by cats or dogs than by foxes. The best way to prevent this from happening is to make sure that the dustbin lid is secure and not leave bin bags out overnight.

How to help urban foxes

If you find an injured or a sick fox, perhaps lying up in cover, you should only take it in for treatment as a last resort. This immediately places the animal under great stress and, when it has recovered and is ready to be released back into the wild, a fresh problem arises. If it has been away for more than a short time it is very likely to have lost its territory and its place in a family group, and as a result may find it very difficult to re-establish itself.
Foxes do have great powers of recovery though, and an inured animal may just need time to build up its strength. In that case, the best way to help is to put out food where the animal can easily reach it. If you think an animal is seriously injured, then the best course is to seek advice from a local vet.
It is also best not to interfere if you find one or more 'abandoned' cubs. The only exception is when they are under immediate threat, such as from local dogs, then you should move them to a place of safety until dusk then put them back where they were found. The vixen often leaves her cubs for long periods while she forages for food, and if the cubs are quiet this is almost certainly the situation. If you find a single cub it may be lost and its mother will eventually hear its calls and come to collect it. If genuinely orphaned, cubs may be taken over by other members of the family group; and they will face the same problems of finding a territory if you take them in and care for them.
For the same reason, it is not a kindness to trap urban foxes and release them in the countryside.

Hearing

Fox hearing is shifted towards low frequencies; those most readily indicative of rustling prey. In their diagnosis of the Red fox as part of the Canid Specialist Group's Canids: Foxes, Wolves, Jackals and Dogs, David Macdonald and John Reynolds write:
"Red foxes can locate sounds to within one degree at 700 - 3,000Hz, though less accurately at higher frequencies."

Food storing (caching)

Red foxes cache (store) excess food; there is a tendency towards Scatter Caching , rather than Larder Caching (i.e. they tend to spread their food around, rather than putting it all in a single hole). Caching is a behaviour often observed during periods of high food abundance and, in some species, it can be associated with a phenomenon called “Surplus Killing”. Surplus killing, as the name suggests, is the practice of killing more than you can consume at the time – a good example of this is the damage a fox can do in a chicken run. If a fox gets into a chicken pen, it will often kill all accessible fowl, and appear to leave them just lying around – part of the reason many livestock holders despise foxes. There have been several theories put forward to explain why foxes do this. One of the most oft cited ideas is that the fox stumbles across a bountiful food source -- in the wild predators rarely know where the next meal is coming from -- and it decides to best exploit this reserve. As such, the fox kills all the chickens and then begins the task of removing and burying them. The fox can only carry one chicken at a time, making the caching process slow. In many cases, the farmer comes out to investigate the commotion before the fox has had chance to clear the hen house. Another theory is that of "Pathological Killing", where a predator kills restrained prey because it's unsure how to deal with prey that doesn't run away.

Senses

Foxes are superb hunters with a finely-tuned battery of senses that allow them to interpret the outside world and respond accordingly to catch their prey. Foxes, unlike most canids, have vertically-slit pupils; these can be closed more tightly than rounded pupils and allows their owner to hunt across a wide variety of different light conditions. In his 1907 paper "Experiments On The Function Of Slit-Form Pupils" William Abbot suggested that a vertically-slit pupil may also help a predator to focus sharply on small, ground-based prey. The retina of foxes is dominated by rod (low-light) cells, although there are some cone cells present, which might allow for limited colour vision. Overall, the domination by the rods -- information from which is pooled prior to being sent to the brain, unlike cone cells that have a faster response and are arranged in smaller groups per nerve -- suggests that the image foxes see is probably rather poor; they can invariably detect movement better than humans can (and function in lower light conditions), but this essential increase in motion sensitivity is at the expense of the far less important features of colour and detail. Indeed, in Town Fox, Country Fox, John Vesey-Fitzgerald notes that fox eyes lack a macula -- the highly sensitive central part of the retina, containing the fovea, responsible for our perception of detail (without it, reading this website would be impossible) -- although I've been unable to find the anatomy studies to corroborate this. Nonetheless, observations in the field suggest that foxes are myopic (short-sighted); it can run through vegetation without incident, but will approach stationary objects to within a few metres unless another sense alerts it to danger or the object moves. During his studies on foxes, Finnish biologist H. Osterholm concluded that vision is a key factor in finding food during daylight but, as one might predict, plays 'second fiddle' to hearing at dusk and in the dark.

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Latest Video

During the day

These pictures were taken 29th March 2009. It was the first time I've seen him during daylight. He spent most of the day snoozing in this spot.

March 2009

Wilfred has now learned to come to the back door & ask for his dinner. He'll wait there until we see him, then back off a bit when we open the door to throw him some food. I love the way this little guy looks at you. The bottom pictures represent what we witness when he looks in through the door.

Wilfred in the snow - Feb 2009

Certainly the first time this little fella had seen snow. His winter coat is much needed in this weather.

Joey - Dec 2008

Joey is as daft as a brush! She'll run in and look in the bowl, grab a piece of meat and dart off back down the garden. Sometimes the bowl is empty as she comes in earlier than Wilfred. If we see her, we immediately put some food out, but she doesn't have the sense to come back and check. She might come back later on though. Joey is far more timid than Wilfred, and also much harder to photograph. Any sudden movement and she's off!

Joey - October 2008

Wilfred - January 2009

Wilfred - September 2008

You can see here that his tail hasn't fully developed & he's yet to acquire his winter coat. These were the first decent pictures I took from when he started coming most evenings.

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