Little charmer!

We have been watching the fox family, and feeding them. Although I always leave food on a plastic dish beside my frog-pond, others are less careful: My neighbour's garden is a wilderness of shredded packaging. In fact, another neighbour, also elderly, is away on holidays and I am watering her houseplants. Her back lawn is also covered with rubbish, including a shopping bag spilling out onions and potatoes. How do foxes know when a garden is unvisited?
Yesterday P and I stood at our bedroom window looking at the vixen and one of the cubs: comfortably couched quite near us, playfully nuzzling and nipping, grooming, open-mouthing and generally the picture of relaxed affection. The mother has quite bad mange so the drops I add to her food have not helped much if at all. I can only let Nature take its course - the possible interventions are all complicated, uncertain and possibly counterproductive.
Today I went down the garden and stood up on my grass-clippings pile to squint over the wall into Martin's. out from the shrubbery on my right trotted the smallest of the cubs, quite oblivious of me: I was downwind of him, above him, but only about 10 feet away!
S/he paused and cocked her head, pointing perfectly like any retriever, poised on three paws, the fourth daintily lifted. Then she scampered back into the bushes, entirely unworried and unhurried.
I have seen this little charmer before: the cub family consists of a Large (Sandy) two Mediums, (nameless) and a Smallest, this little sweetheart here. Many fox families that we have seen over the years follow this pattern: the littlest one is often one of the survivors, because the shyest and most cautious!
It is impossible to sex fox cubs by eye alone but I'm guessing female, fairly randomly I admit, just because she seems so delicate and feminine i.e. small! I hereby christen her Charmer!

Four cubs and a vixen

Calloo callay! Spotted tonight, bounding around in the long grass of Martins' uncut lawn; first Sandy, the groundbreaker. Then another very small cub. Then a third, and then Mama, shaking her head Mary Poppins-style and sitting down heavily under the palm tree to watch her brood. And then we noticed that two cubs were scrapping to our left. And another two to our right. Definitely four! That is,unless a last and shyest one has yet to appear.
They scamper and swivel like otters, like greyhounds: they are very fast and they love to chase, one of them had a ball of white paper, it appeared, and the others pursued and hunted it.
Wow, I love watching cubs play! And we have had a couple of years with no cubs.
This bunch we assume to be the young Stringfellow tribe: ominously, their Mama has a large bare patch of mange on her left haunch. I will dose their food carefully from now on...now we must choose names for all the cubs.
All are sandy, a surprisingly pale colour for a fox. Almost beige, some of them.
Sandy, big brother. What else is sandy or beige? beaches? deserts?
All suggestions gratefully received...

Cub

We have been seeing a half-grown cub in our garden and next door. He, or, of course, she, was first seen very shortly after the sad demise of Stringfellow. He is a good size and sometimes seen with an adult. If he was born, as most cubs are, around St Patrick's Day, he is better grown than some would be at this stage.
It is unusual that we have seen no others: a single-cub litter seems rare to us who have watched fox families for years. But it is possible that there is a more unpleasant explanation...
For the first few weeks after birth, the cubs remain underground in the breeding earth, with their mother. The dog fox brings food for her which he lays outside. Gradually the little foxes' blue eyes open and their chocolate brown fur becomes paler. After a while the vixen begins to leave them for short periods and the children, left alone, fight among themselves. This may account for the tumult of yelping, shrieking and growling that we have sometimes heard at dead of night very early in the year: I read somewhere that the cubs fight for dominance at this time and it may happen that the strongest one kills all the others.
Or possibly, Stringfellow and his missus just had a small family!
Whatever the reason, Sandy is so called because he is sandy in colour, quite pale for a fox cub, and full of mischief! He has been skittering around Martin's, exploring the lawn, sunbathing, and jumping around the adult that we presume is his mother, the quondam Mrs Stringfellow.
Fox cubs are as charming as puppies and kittens and just as lively: a delight to watch! Poor Mary Martin now has a garden full of ripped plastic bags, chewed shoes and food wrappers...ah well, kids grow up fast!

Rest in peace

I heard along the neighbourly grapevine how Stringfellow's story ended. We last saw him crawling along the hedge of the house directly behind mine, on a Monday. Evidently he had a way through, for the following Wednesday, the mother of that household found a dead fox about midday on the grass verge in front of her house. She found that a local vet would not dispose of the body free of charge, but the body was eventually removed by the DSPCA. The description corresponds exactly with poor Stringfellow, who apparently hung on for about 48 hours from when we saw him.
Mange is a horrible, horrible thing: material for another post!

Stringfellow

What a lovely morning it was today. I strolled around the garden, inspecting violets, checking on tadpoles, etc. Noticing that the fox food from last night was gone, but a strong smell lingered in the still, dewy air. I had gardeners coming to do some chores today so I went and fetched the petrol can and put it on the terrace table. Some bluebottles flew up.
We have suspected a leak in the sewage pipe near that spot. I peered under table, but could see nothing. A home-made hutch for Cleo the cat to sleep out in is under that table too, but Cleo was indoors. So why was there a paw sticking out?
I backed away from the table, and peered directly under it. There, not one foot from my own toes, was a fox in the box, on top of Cleo's cushion.
I promise you, gentle readers, I was so gobsmacked I was breathless! I ran quickly and quietly into the house and got my mobile phone, took a couple of pics. Fox barely moved - in fact at first I had thought it might be dead!
A runny eye blinked, flies buzzed around. The camera-phone has no zoom. But luckily, just then, I heard my husband arriving home from an early-morning errand. I called him, and son no, 4, to view the fox. "Pretty cool!"
Patrick is a keen photographer and he fetched his excellent camera. Took several shots of the fox in the box, and then the fox got uneasy and began to come out. We were shocked to see the mangy hindquarters so close - naked haunches: septic scabs: lame left back leg. He limped off down the garden.

Later, when the gardeners were working, one of them pointed out our poor sick fox asleep in the picnic area, and reported seeing him unable to jump the wall: banging his head as if blind in one eye, which was indeed very suppuratey.

I phoned the DSPCA, in distress: thay said that they would send a van if we could get it into a crate. But our attempts only caused Stringfellow to crawl through the only possible gap into a neighbouring garden, (Cassidys) and then further out of sight, unreachable.

So that was that. Poor creature, he looked on his last legs. Probably dead by now, already.
It was the nearest we ever were to one of our own foxes, and rather touching to see him in the cat's hutch. Near his food supply, in a comfy spot.
I think now of his vixen, probably nearby with cubs, but not in our or Martin's garden:
There is a row of houses further up where all the owners are elderly and their long gardens probably overgrown. Of course a sensible vixen will choose there. She will have to defend the cubs herself now.

Take a look at this!

Spotted by my husband on YouTube: lovely film of a fox in, I think, Yellowstone Park.

Wildlife watching in Offaly

Carl stood on the canal bank, fishing. Behind him, lower, was the cottage. On the opposite bank, fields sloped upwards to the road. All was quiet in that remote spot.
Carl turned away, pausing in his work: he needed more ground bait from the picnic table in the cottage garden.
Returning up the bank to the waterside, he heard a sizeable splash.
"Hmm, that's a good-size fish for me to catch", he thought.
Resuming his rod, he gazed at the water: but the surface was undisturbed. Then greatly to his surprise an animal climbed out of the water on the far side: it scrambled up the bank, shook itself, paused and looked back at the amazed Carl, and trotted away up the slope along the western hedgerow. Was it an otter? The first, likeliest guess? No. A dog? No. A mink, a stoat? No.
It was a fox. Definitely, unmistakeably. Carl is from South Dublin: he knows foxes well.
In fact, at the cottage, foxes are rarely seen. The few previous sightings were both in the area of that self-same western hedge of the opposite field - evidently a traditional track.
Could the fox have been swimming to catch fish? I've never heard of this! Though Carl reports that fish are scarce this year. And foxes are known to eat dead fish on the seashore.
Perhaps the fox routinely hunts on this side the canal, and prefers to take a shortcut home, instead of a 2-kilometre walk via the bridge.
Maybe the fox only checks out our side when people are about, because there may be food scraps in the compost, or bait.
Maybe he was hiding, taken by surprise, waiting his chance to get clear: I've seen foxes do this, they are very collected.
By the way, there is no other inhabited house nearby on our side: no henhouse or animal feed, no dustbins. Plenty of birds in our trees, and some mice and rats no doubt. One other holiday cottage, some cattle, troughs, rushes and boggy fields.
We have seen, over the years, rabbits and hares, and sheep. There are ducks and moorhens, herons and swans on the canal. So I suppose an enterprising fox could arrange to feed a young family, if he was willing to take a swim! At this time of year, there may well be cubs underground in the care of their mother. Papa fox must forage for them all.
Still, it was a very unusual sighting: and I am very pleased to record it here!