Well-behaved foxes

Just recently, on my blogoversary posting, I showed you some photos of a family of foxes which we saw on the railway bank, beyond the garden fence. The photos were really just record shots, and I was really hoping to see them again and get some better footage/photos. Well, we were in luck as we saw the following unfold in the garden yesterday morning...




Yep, at about 7:45, we saw an adult fox visit the garden in full view from us in the house. It had jumped over the fence at the end of the garden and trotted down the garden path. Thankfully, my camera was already on my tripod next to me, and I took one photo and one video. It was so well-behaved that it even took a drink from our new pond. I was expecting to see the odd frog visit the pond, not a fox drinking from it in broad daylight.

After taking a drink, it had a wander around the swing and looked inside the new fenced-off wildlife area. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of memory card space just at the wrong moment, and cut out halfway through the clip. The fox stayed for another 30 seconds or so, before running back down the garden and jumping the fence again. So, no cubs this time, but I was still thrilled to see the adult fox as I got up in the morning.

Whilst the video is slightly blurry after being uploaded, I was still really chuffed to get such close-up images of it. If you remember, the last photos I got of the foxes weren't great because of the poor light conditions, but I certainly didn't have that problem yesterday morning. I hope you like the still photo too. Its still not the greatest, but probably the best I'm ever going to get.


After watching the video a couple of times and looking at the photo, I noticed that the fox isn't very big and has blackish fur in some places. I wondered if this was actually an adult at all, or whether it is an older cub (from last year maybe). Either that, or its just an adult who isn't eating enough to stay healthy. This could be why it visited our garden- to look for any food scraps available.

I wonder if these foxes visit at night too. The fox did seem to go straight for the pond, as if had visited it a few times before. Obviously, its hard to tell if they have visited, but occaisionally, we get muddy footprints appearing around the garden in the winter. I suppose our two pet rabbits are probably a bit of a target for the foxes, especially in the winter when less food is around.

It is great to see that foxes appear to be doing well in sub-urban environments like ours, and there are certainly plenty of them around. Maybe an infra-red night camera would help to show us what happens in the garden at night.

Sorry about the slight lack of postings just recently. In the summer holidays (only a couple of weeks away now) I hope to post more often. I look forward to reading all your blogs too as the warm summer continues.