Fox of the Day

It was misty and cold first thing, the kitchen was frigid, and I'm still sporting summer plumage, so I'd taken my tea and toast back to bed and was tucked up warmly under the duvet with a book, trying not to get marmalade everywhere, when R called upstairs: "There's a fox in the garden, if you're interested." Many people who only know me casually would probably be surprised at how fast I can move, given the right stimulus, and I was downstairs in seconds, camera in hand.

We've had foxes living in our wild garden for years, and we're very happy to share it with them. I'm still slightly traumatised by the occasion, many years ago now, when the local hunt came through the village, and half a pack of fox hounds invaded our land and flushed one right in front of me. I was running down the lane, looking for someone to berate, when I heard them kill it, and though I caught up with the huntsman and gave him a piece of my mind, he just smiled and saluted in a way that was surely calculated to increase my rage, and duly did so. I do still know some people who are prepared to defend fox hunting, but most people I know find it as repellent as I do, and since the Hunting Act came into force (toothless as that legislation is) we've been spared the regular visitations we used to suffer.

Even though we know that there are foxes here - from occasional crepuscular sightings, from the night-time films we capture on the garden cam, and from the droppings they leave around the place - it's very unusual for us to see one so close to the house during the day. I was concerned about this at first, but the fox appears to be absolutely fit and healthy. From the slightly playful way it was behaving I think that it's a youngster, so my best guess is that it might have been out exploring the area, with a view to leaving the den and looking for a territory of its own. It seems that it then decided to stop for breakfast on its way back home, because it spent quite a while foraging in the grass for the ground food I put out for the birds yesterday, and we last saw it bouncing in and out of one of the flower beds further down the garden, presumably attempting to catch some kind of live prey.