James' Snowday: Foxes!
posted by on 08 Feb 2007

I have a family of foxes living at the end of my landlady's garden (I live upstairs) and they left their tracks all over the neighbouring gardens this morning.
Unlike the foxes that lived on the railway tracks where I grew up in South London, which were skinny, ratty beasts, these North London Reynards are fine-looking animals, as evidenced by this rather shaky pic I snapped over breakfast a few weeks back:

There are at least three of them, perhaps four, and they live in the dense undergrowth at the end of the garden. They're pretty bold too - we see them most mornings at breakfast and the occasional evening - and we hear them most mornings at about 5am. If you've ever heard foxes doing what they do at five in the morning, it is one of the most unpleasant, blood-curdling noises imaginable (see here). Ah well.
I imagine they're pretty chilly today, as it's all rather white out there.

Happy Snowday!
Comments: 3

Hey! You could use the book I bought from Crow on the Hill the other day - Animal Tracks and Signs. Foxes, I have learned, are digitigrade, with five toes on the fore foot and four on the hind. "Foxes use all types of gait, but move most frequently by trotting". Lovely trotting foxes.
Posted by: Em | February 8, 2007 10:55 AM
I daren't let our resident gamekeeper see these, he'd be on the train up from Devon and staked out in your garden in no time.As for that noise, it really does make my stomach churn.Very primeval and often goes on all night around us here...until the gamekeeper goes out and...
Posted by: dovegreyreader | February 11, 2007 01:49 PM
we need more actual fox pics
Posted by: anomenys | February 16, 2007 10:47 PM