Site updated March 06, 2011

Urban foxes in a town garden, Ipswich UK

This is a small site where I’ll stick odds and ends about Foxes in our garden in Ipswich UK, as lots of people have ended up asking me about them.

By 2006 we had had sightings of foxes for the last 4 years in our back garden near the centre of Ipswich, and sightings of cubs in the last 2 years.

In 2005 we were able to observe a vixen bringing up 3 cubs, as they decided our garden was a good place to play and sleep. (We think they were living in an adjacent abandoned garden, or possibly some nearby allotments.)

Happily we have been able to get a fair bit of video footage of the goings on .. albeit with a fairly cheap video camera, and mostly shooting through a window in order not to disturb the action.

 Click below for a short video sequence of some footage from 2005. (This was originally produced for a BBC website, but they lost interest for some reason.)

2005 Cub Video (.wmv 12 MB)

Latest news

5th July 2007.

Sadly we have had no sightings of foxes or cubs at all this year. Whether this is due to some building work from last year putting them off, some change in fencing making their route more difficult, the fact they don’t like being filmed, or (most likely) nature and natural behaviour doings its normal complex thing, we don’t know.

We do however know that lots of chickens have been vanishing from the neighbouring allotments ......

 

22nd June 2006.

Well Surprisingly we have had some recent sightings of the vixen and cubs again. The last 2 nights, one or two cubs have been tagging along with mum on here visit through the garden - so the cubs obviously haven’t left the area all together yet. When there have been 2 cubs visiting .. they spent the time snarling and yapping at each other .. so they are obviously pretty ready to find their own territory.
 

15th June 2006.

The BBC ‘Springwatch’ program did indeed feature some of our footage last week, and showed a little bit in their series wrap up last night - so hopefully some people enjoyed that.
The vixen has continues to pass through the garden every few hours for a drink from the pond, and has had a go at stalking some squirrels and birds, but without too much enthusiasm. We have not seen any sign of the cubs for a week or two, so I assume they have left home already .. obviously fox cubs don’t get a very long childhood.

31st May 2006.
 
 
We had a sighting of the Vixen and 3 cubs all together this morning .. the first time we’ve seen that many cubs together for some while. they seem to be getting less social and more independent in their old age.

19 May 2006.

The recent wet weather doesn’t seem to have agreed with the cubs. When they have been about they have been taking their hole-digging and hole-occupancy very seriously. See the latest video for details.

This last week the cubs have been very noticeably ‘fox like’ with longer snouts and a more adult gait.

Click below for edited footage from the 19th April.

 19th May 2006 Cub Video (.wmv 18 MB)

11th May 2006.

Well It looks as though the BBC ‘Springwatch’ programs will be using some clips of ‘our’ foxes this years. The series starts on May 29th .. more details when we know.

8th May 2006.

We haven’t seem much daytime cub activity of late .. possibly because our builders have arrived and are bashing away during the day, and possibly because its been quite wet .. and furry creatures can object to getting their feet wet. There were 3 cubs having a good play and explore at twilight last night away from mum .. so possibly they are moving towards a more nocturnal cycle.

One of the cubs has decided that the existing holes in our lawn are no good enough, and decided to do some digging. I got some footage of that, and will stick it up here when I get a moment.

All the cubs were noticeably less ‘cubby’ - their snouts and bodies had significantly lengthened in the last week to make them appear muck more fox-like.

2nd May 2006.

We didn’t see much of the cubs this weekend .. they seemed far more skittish than usual .. possibly all the noise and people of a bank-holiday weekend had spooked them a little.

On the positive side, our ‘diagonal’ neighbours were taking some stills into the garden where we think the family live.

The cubs continue to play their evening time game of ‘sit in a hole until someone to fight turns up’.

We don’t know how much of the cubs we will see from now on, as the scaffolding for some building work we are having done went up today, and there is a chance the vixen will get upset by building noise and take the family elsewhere. We shall see.

Click below for edited footage from the 28th April.
 28th April 2006 Cub Video (.wmv 20 MB)

27 April 2006.

There seems to be at least 1 cub in the garden a lot of the time now. They are there when we get up, and they are still playing when its entirely dark.

I’ve got round to editing the footage from 25th April down to something manageable. Some of the footage is taken through an open window, so is particularly clear.

I was especially lucky to catch the confrontation between a crow and a couple of cubs. The crow was quite determined not to give in, and seems to manage to lift the back half of a cub into the air by its tail a few times.

Click below for edited footage from the 25th April.
 (I apologies for the music, I need to record some more soon !)

 25th April 2006 Cub Video (.wmv 19 MB)

25 April 2006.

The family continue to treat the garden as their play area. Mum has sunbathed a few times in a corner of the garden where another fox (her mum ?) sunbathed in previous years.

The cubs seem to be around 8 to 9 in the morning, then for odd periods from mid afternoon onwards, ending with a ‘mad 1/2 hour’ of games at twilight. Mum turns up when its sunny, or for a drink from our pond.

Click below for edited footage from the 22nd and 23rd April.

 22nd-23rd April 2006 Cub Video (.wmv 17 MB)

22 April 2006.

The entire family have been making themselves very much at home today. We had all 5 cubs jumping around at once .. and all seemed to be in good working order (One had looked as if one on its back legs was not-working, and was only walking on 3 last time we saw all 5 together.)

At around 6.00 pm we then got very confused when the Vixen turned up followed by 6 cubs. We assume there isn’t a 7th somewhere, but who knows.

Disappointingly one cub was around at the same time as a big fat pigeon, and thought about attacking, but got scared and ran away from it instead. We’ve got an hours worth of raw footage on the camera from the last few days, so I’ll edit that down as soon as I get a chance.

19 April 2006

We had a few sightings of a vixen from February onwards this year, but couldn’t decide if she was pregnant or not. Evidently she was, as we saw here with 3 cubs on 18 April 2006, and with 5 cubs the next night. The sight of 5 cubs all furiously trying to drink from mum at once is quite something.

Click below for a short video from the first couple of days sightings 2006.

19th April 2006 Cub Video (.wmv 12 MB)