My Urban Foxes

I started watching my urban fox family in 2011, at this point I'd never properly photographed wild foxes before, or had much to do with foxes. However three years on from then and my life now seems very fox orientated! Foxes are very misunderstood creatures, and I hope that some of my stories and photos shows what foxes are really like. Below I will tell the story of my urban fox families...

2017         

We finished last year with our family of four (Thea, Schofe and their two cubs), but things change very quickly for foxes! Luckily Schofe managed to hold his territory and he can often be heard howling after Thea when he can't find her. Our family size has already changed though, as Schofe has chased his male cub off to find his own territory, but we still have the female cub ('Willow') visiting a few times a week. It looks like she will be staying around, as Thea has a very obvious baby bump now! We think Willow will stay and help Thea, which will make her less nervy, so maybe she'll keep the cubs in one spot.
 

After a few weeks Theas belly got bigger and bigger, until the day came. She had dug in the garden, so we had hoped that she would den here, but unfortunately she decided not to, and gave birth on the 22nd of February in an unknown location. All 3 family members continued to visit most days, and we hoped that Thea might move the cubs into the garden, as foxes will often move den sites after a couple of months. We were really disappointed that this didn't happen though, and we went through the summer with the odd fleeting glimpse of a cub or two running through the garden once they were quite big. The cubs didn't want to hang around though, so I wasn't able to get any photos of them or learn how many cubs Thea had had. Although the summer was quiet with cubs, our 3 adults (Schofe, Thea & Willow) kept visiting. Willow began to get more used to my presence and would often be in the garden with me and let me photograph her.

Our family of three had a fairly quiet rest of the year, towards the end of the year we saw what we think were 3 different cubs of theas, but all seemed to leave, so what will next year hold?

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'Thea' greeting 'Schofe' our new male fox Thea having a nice sleep!