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The nightly fox count in the garden is now up to eight but I can't get more than four in one photo.  The adults usually arrive first and the cubs are the last to leave.  The dog in particular gets a bit fed up with the boisterous cubs and often leaves as soon as they start chasing about.  If he isn't first here he charges into the middle of the group to assert his dominance which also tends to break things up a bit.  This is the dog.

And this is his mate.

There are now at least four cubs but there may be more.  I was often seeing three together until the last few days but sometimes it was two large and one small and at others it was two small and one large so I knew there must be more.  The larger cubs are already almost as big as the yearlings.  There is a bigger difference in size between this year's cubs than I have seen before, so I just wonder if they are not all from the same litter.  You may remember that in the spring I thought there were signs that the half-tail yearling vixen was suckling cubs at the same time as her mother, the alpha female, obviously was.

Usually the only vixen in a family group to breed is the alpha female.  Marc Baldwin, in his Wildlife Online website, says "in some urban populations at least, subordinates do mate and many conceive", although unless resources are plentiful in the territory they may not produce live cubs.  He goes on to say "it is not unknown for subordinates to produce litters, particularly in urban areas; the cubs ... may be raised independently or combined with the dominant vixen's cubs and raised together".  This is one of the small cubs.

This is the alpha female with one small and one large cub.  If she arrives after the cubs they rush to greet her very excitedly.  They don't respond the same way to the half-tail yearling.

Here is a small cub between a yearling vixen (L) and a larger cub (R).

Here a small cub makes a very submissive approach to two larger ones.

And then another small cub joins them.

Here are the four, with the two smaller cubs in the middle.

The same scene from a different camera viewpoint.

This is the alpha female, centre, with a yearling vixen on the left and a large and small cub having a bit of a shoving match on the right.

This photo shows the dog, centre, the vixen, near, and a small and large cub.

Here is the half-tail yearling.  Doesn't she look like her mother in this photo?

Here are two large cubs having a bit of an argument while their mother ignores them.

I still wonder if there might be more than four cubs but unless more turn up together I shall never know - apart from smaller/paler and larger/darker they have no distinguishing features.  I think I may have missed the chance of getting the whole family in one photo but I'll keep watching.