Field signs
Droppings are usually black when fresh and pointed if there is much indigestible material, e.g. fur or feathers. They are often deposited on prominent objects: stones, fallen branches, molehills. The characteristic smell of fox may be readily detected.
Habits
The fox is an omnivorous scavenger and hunter that lives below ground in cold or inclement weather or to breed. It may also prefer to lie up under ground cover in hot weather. Primarily crepuscular or nocturnal, though urban foxes frequently exhibit daytime activity.
Good places to see foxes are generally where human activity is low, such as: railway embankments, schools, where ‘temporary classrooms’ (usually decades old) will allow for access beneath the building, old graveyards that have been left with some ground cover and mature household gardens. The best time of day to see a fox is a little after dusk or a little before dawn.
A resilient species, one observed in north Kent had three legs, one eye and no tail, yet managed to survive the harsh winter of 2012-2013.
Reproduction and life cycle
The breeding season begins around Christmas and a vixen has a three-day window of fertility once she comes into season. Vixens have a tendency for promiscuity and successful mating will result in an average litter size of five cubs, born black, blind and deaf. The vixen takes overall control but may use a previous year’s subordinate daughter as a surrogate mother, and relies in part on the dog fox to provide food. Cubs are born after 53 days and are part-weaned at around three weeks.
The vixen will move her cubs to a back-up den if required. A vixen was once seen re-locating her cubs early in the morning to a box when the den hole had been blocked up.
Distribution, status and conservation
In Kent in recent years evidence of very early cubs born in January has become much more frequent. The breeding season also appears to be extending over a longer time period.
Studies performed by the Mammal Society and Bristol University estimated that during the period 1999-2004, fox numbers nationally had fallen by as much as 13% but were now almost fully recovered. The study showed the only area of the UK at that time which had an increase in population was East Anglia, where fox numbers had risen by three percent.
Changes in habitat as a consequence of land development constantly occur within the region; this probably has little effect on the opportunistic fox.
