Fox watching

Some people count sheep before they go to sleep but I count foxes.  I think there may be more than four cubs in the family but it is very difficult to tell as they are not all here together and they don't keep still.  This is quite a busy post but I wanted to show you something of what goes on each evening.  The first video shows how things are much of the time - just foxes chewing peanuts.  In this picture are the alpha male (front), alpha female (back), yearling vixen (back left), and two cubs (centre).

Here is an example of what happens when the alpha vixen arrives.  The cubs are beside themselves with excitement while the two yearling vixens carry on eating.

On another night when the vixen approached the cubs again got very excited and ran to meet her.  The yearling played it cool and sat and watched.

A few moments later the dog fox arrived.  He is often here first but if not he always makes an entrance to make sure all the others know how important he is.  He bounds in and sometimes some or all of the cubs run off.  On this occasion they stayed (initially at least) and there was a lot of excitement and furious tail-wagging.

I can often hear other interactions going on out of view on the audio tracks of the videos, even with six foxes in view.  I may risk a couple of trail cameras to get a different view although the foxes in the past have been wary of them in the garden.