I had almost given up feeding the foxes by New Year as they seemed to be less interested in the peanuts. Then we had some very cold nights and I saw them searching around for the food by the back door so I relented. This time I was alerted by a huge commotion outside and when I looked out there were four foxes, two standing on their hind legs and scrapping like boxing hares and the other two lying down watching. By the time I had grabbed a camera the fight was over and three foxes had moved away. This one was calmly eating the peanuts but you can hear the others in the background on the video clip. The photos are frame grabs from the video, recorded with ISO 12,800 and hand held with a 60W wall light as the only illumination - amazing.
The next night I was ready for them and I had a shorter lens on the camera. I also had an outside microphone but I forgot to switch it on so this is the sound recorded from inside the house. I am not sure if the fight the night before was over access to the food as this is also the mating season. However, these two are scrapping over the food but I am sure they are a pair. I think the one at the food first is probably the female but I can't be sure.
The foxes have a very leisurely way of eating peanuts, one at a time. On average they eat about 8 a minute with lots of chewing. I give them about 0.5kg which is around 1000 peanuts. So non-stop it would take one fox about 2 hours, which is about right. The first fox turns up before 6pm and usually all the food has gone before I go to bed. If a fox picks up more than one peanut I know it is about to move off and is taking a mouthful with it.
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