Introducing the urban Red Foxes
“A Fox tries to make its home near good supplies of food”
ABOVE One of the foxes that lives in the cemetery.
Since November last year I’ve been working with some urban Red Foxes who live around a cemetery. The foxes are used to people with the comings and goings of visitors to the cemetery which makes them much easier to work with than their rural realtives.
There are three who I’ve spent the most time with, two male’s called dog foxes and one female known as a vixen. The vixen had four cubs this year with one of the dogs and from observing them I think the other dog might be related to them both too, he’s bigger and older looking so perhaps he is the father of one of them.
ABOVE Leo, Girl and Willow.
I’m not really one to give animals names, I think it implies ownership, these are wild foxes and no one should be able to claim them but having said that I needed a way to distinguish them from each other so I gave them names.
Leo is the older dog fox, he earned the name by having a lovely big bushy chest like a male lion so that’s why I chose it, girl is called girl for obvious reasons but the friendly vixen also gets used and finally we have Willow so called because he would always emerge from an area of willow trees. I initially thought he was a she until I observed him for a while and saw the obvious signs.
ABOVE Leo sitting proud and posing for me, he is striking with his bushy mane.
Each fox has its own character and personality, Leo likes to keep his distance but will happily sit upright and just stare back at me. He was initially wary of me but now looks at me with something more akin to curiosity than anything else.
ABOVE Girl sleeping under a Rhododendron bush in the spring sunshine.
ABOVE Girl taking a break from being a mum to get out the rain.
Girl was incredibly friendly up until she gave birth, once the cubs were out and her earth was known by others she became very wary of everyone, she still comes over to me but soon disappears again. To put how much she trusted me into context I followed her one day until she laid under a bush to have a snooze. I was able to approach her and take full frame photos of her asleep with my iphone. She knew I was there, she would open her eyes see it was me and go back to sleep.
ABOVE Willow sitting with me under a tree.
Willow is by far the boldest and most trusting of me, he is like a pet dog, it started raining one day when I was visiting so I moved under a tree to shelter, he followed me and laid down under the same tree, curled up and had a nap until the rain stopped, an amazing experience I was smiling from ear to ear.
ABOVE Willow from an unusual angle, his coat is showing signs of the summer moult.
I’ve got so many fox photos from the project I could do many more pages on them, this one was just an introduction to the three main ones I’ve worked with so far. I’ll do some more in time including this years cubs and more on the other foxes in the area.
I don’t think there is another animal that polarises opinion as much as a Fox, those who love them really do love them often spending a small fortune to feed them every night and worrying about ‘their’ foxes if they don’t make an appearance for a few nights.
Those who hate them treat them so incredibly badly blaming them for everything from killing livestock to cutting brake lines on cars, they are shot, snarred, hunted on horseback, dug out of their homes when young and ripped apart by packs of hounds. Although fox hunting is against the law there are loopholes that the hunting fraternity use to continue the ‘tradition’, how they can call themselves dog lovers and not see the similarities between foxes and dogs is beyond me.
There are many fox rescue charities across the country who are always looking for donations or Amazon goods from lists or release sites for cubs. One organisation that is dealing with the legalities of Fox Hunting is the League Against Cruel Sports who are working to change the loopholes to stop any hunts taking place.