While their tails are proportionally shorter than rats’ tails, they still have very long tails.
In the last it looks like they’ve got a plan and they’ve started to implement it.
chigau (違う)says
Now I want to see pictures of KG’s garden in Summer.
Onamission5says
Lookit that! I have never seen the foxes who reside in the woods behind our house, I have only heard them at night when it’s mate finding time. Oh, and once one of them bounded across the road in front of my car-- tail flat out, reddish blur, two leaps and gone. I don’t count that as having seen one, though, more I saw the streak of color it left in its wake before my brain fully registered what happened. Kids and I got about 20 yards down the road before I blurted “that was a fox!” Fast little buggers.
kestrelsays
I think it’s amazing how well foxes have adapted to human spaces. They have to get over/under/through all those fences and so on and yet manage to do so no problem.
We have grey foxes here and while I have seen them from time to time, for the most part I just know they were here due to tracks and scat. It would be pretty cool to be able to get photos like these!
I haven’t seen a fox for over a decade. Last time I saw one was when we lived in Bismarck. Move way out rural, never see one.
jazzletsays
When we lived in Sheffield the local fox had a route that included our garden and crossing the road in front of our house to the cemetary across the way. The bus stop was a few houses up the road and if you happened to be getting a bus or getting off a bus around nine at night you would often see the fox calmly checking for traffic then trotting across the road totally ignoring the people getting off the bus or standing at the bus stop. It knew that none of us were fast enough to get anywhere near it.
DonDueedsays
In over thirty years at my current home I’ve seen a fox just once. It was in the open, crossing my yard in broad daylight, and didn’t look at all healthy. I was worried it might be rabid.
Squeeeeee!
I must say that sadly, most foxes I’ve seen were roadkill.
I hear them alright
rqsays
My favourite fox memory is from way back, when the old house still had a view across the road to a forest-surrounded pond with some nice Canadian shield samples poking through, and one sunny winter afternoon I looked out across that frozen pond, where a rounded bulge of rock was glazed in gleaming white snow, and upon that snow danced a lone red fox, chasing its own tail and looking bedazzled with life and friskiness.
Some clever colonial twit introduced foxes into Australia in the 19th century, and there’s now little love for them here. They do look striking though as they rush across open spaces in their red furry suits.My bicycle trips on lonely tracks sometimes startles one out of hiding as I draw quietly near. Way too fast for a photograph though!
Urban foxes in Britain are definitely a new thing over the past few decades. I’ve seen them before moving here at the end of last August -- but never at such length, and never more than one at a time -- in my parents’ garden in suburban London, and right in the centre of London, from a friend’s flat ten minutes’ walk from Kings Cross station! Where we are is urban, but also only 100 metres or so from Holyrood Park, which is large (for an urban park) and wild, although heavily used during the day. To get to our garden from the park the foxes would have to travel along roads, but not busy ones. We wonder where their den is -- in the park, or in an overgrown corner of one of the row of gardens either side of ours.
Now I want to see pictures of KG’s garden in Summer. -- chigau@2
So do we! My wife is the gardener, and has done quite a bit of cutting back overgrown shrubs, but not much planting yet. When we moved in, it was almost impossible to get to the garden’s end, which isn’t far beyond the summerhouse visible in the photos, as the vegetation was so thick.
Thank you for sending them! Foxes are grand for keeping mice at bay; we could use a whole lot of them, this winter saw droves of mice and other little critters into houses and barns. A few unfortunate mice made their way into my studio, where they were immediately set upon by the rats.
KGsays
As I write this, I can just see one of the foxes, curled up on a bed of dried grass near the bottom of the garden -- not visible enough for a photo, but obviously feeling itself quite at home.
KGsays
LIve blogging a fox! It got up, crossed to the next garden, went up their path -- unfortunately, it’s limping slightly on a back leg -- and when I went out front, it was standing on the neighbours’ front porch! It looked at me for a minute or two, then went back down the path, and reappeared in their back garden, crossed back into ours, and is now hidden somewhere at the end.
KGsays
Came out again, and I got the closest pictures yet. If they come out reasonably well, I’ll email them when I next connect my camera to my computer.
Very nice captures indeed.
While their tails are proportionally shorter than rats’ tails, they still have very long tails.
In the last it looks like they’ve got a plan and they’ve started to implement it.
Now I want to see pictures of KG’s garden in Summer.
Lookit that! I have never seen the foxes who reside in the woods behind our house, I have only heard them at night when it’s mate finding time. Oh, and once one of them bounded across the road in front of my car-- tail flat out, reddish blur, two leaps and gone. I don’t count that as having seen one, though, more I saw the streak of color it left in its wake before my brain fully registered what happened. Kids and I got about 20 yards down the road before I blurted “that was a fox!” Fast little buggers.
I think it’s amazing how well foxes have adapted to human spaces. They have to get over/under/through all those fences and so on and yet manage to do so no problem.
We have grey foxes here and while I have seen them from time to time, for the most part I just know they were here due to tracks and scat. It would be pretty cool to be able to get photos like these!
I haven’t seen a fox for over a decade. Last time I saw one was when we lived in Bismarck. Move way out rural, never see one.
When we lived in Sheffield the local fox had a route that included our garden and crossing the road in front of our house to the cemetary across the way. The bus stop was a few houses up the road and if you happened to be getting a bus or getting off a bus around nine at night you would often see the fox calmly checking for traffic then trotting across the road totally ignoring the people getting off the bus or standing at the bus stop. It knew that none of us were fast enough to get anywhere near it.
In over thirty years at my current home I’ve seen a fox just once. It was in the open, crossing my yard in broad daylight, and didn’t look at all healthy. I was worried it might be rabid.
Squeeeeee!
I must say that sadly, most foxes I’ve seen were roadkill.
I hear them alright
My favourite fox memory is from way back, when the old house still had a view across the road to a forest-surrounded pond with some nice Canadian shield samples poking through, and one sunny winter afternoon I looked out across that frozen pond, where a rounded bulge of rock was glazed in gleaming white snow, and upon that snow danced a lone red fox, chasing its own tail and looking bedazzled with life and friskiness.
Some clever colonial twit introduced foxes into Australia in the 19th century, and there’s now little love for them here. They do look striking though as they rush across open spaces in their red furry suits.My bicycle trips on lonely tracks sometimes startles one out of hiding as I draw quietly near. Way too fast for a photograph though!
The one in the second picture appears to have paused to think. Deep thoughts. Perhaps schemes.
Oh schemes, definitely schemes.
Thanks for posting these, Caine! The foreground blurs, BTW, are snow on my study window, from which I took the photos.
Marcus Ranum@11, jazzlet@12,
Schemes indeed. I think that one’s wondering how to gain appointment as Professor of Cunning at
OxfordEdinburgh University!Urban foxes in Britain are definitely a new thing over the past few decades. I’ve seen them before moving here at the end of last August -- but never at such length, and never more than one at a time -- in my parents’ garden in suburban London, and right in the centre of London, from a friend’s flat ten minutes’ walk from Kings Cross station! Where we are is urban, but also only 100 metres or so from Holyrood Park, which is large (for an urban park) and wild, although heavily used during the day. To get to our garden from the park the foxes would have to travel along roads, but not busy ones. We wonder where their den is -- in the park, or in an overgrown corner of one of the row of gardens either side of ours.
So do we! My wife is the gardener, and has done quite a bit of cutting back overgrown shrubs, but not much planting yet. When we moved in, it was almost impossible to get to the garden’s end, which isn’t far beyond the summerhouse visible in the photos, as the vegetation was so thick.
KG:
Thank you for sending them! Foxes are grand for keeping mice at bay; we could use a whole lot of them, this winter saw droves of mice and other little critters into houses and barns. A few unfortunate mice made their way into my studio, where they were immediately set upon by the rats.
As I write this, I can just see one of the foxes, curled up on a bed of dried grass near the bottom of the garden -- not visible enough for a photo, but obviously feeling itself quite at home.
LIve blogging a fox! It got up, crossed to the next garden, went up their path -- unfortunately, it’s limping slightly on a back leg -- and when I went out front, it was standing on the neighbours’ front porch! It looked at me for a minute or two, then went back down the path, and reappeared in their back garden, crossed back into ours, and is now hidden somewhere at the end.
Came out again, and I got the closest pictures yet. If they come out reasonably well, I’ll email them when I next connect my camera to my computer.
Exciting! Looking forward to them.
KG
If you do too good a job on cleaning up the garden, you may lose the foxes.