Dear Readers, I don’t know about in your neighbourhood, but here in East Finchley there has been a lot of ‘fox action’ over the past few weeks. I’ve been awoken several times by the sounds of several foxes bickering, or ‘gekkering’ as it’s known, and usually it’s over the handful of dry dog food that we throw out every night. In addition, the toys in next door’s garden have been chewed, played with and generally misplaced. But what’s going on?

In late August through to October, this year’s fox cubs may be unceremoniously  booted out of their mother and father’s territory, and sent off to find a home range of their own. This is the most dangerous time for the young foxes – they have no traffic awareness whatsoever, and are forever getting themselves stuck in fences/football nets/tin cans. The average lifespan of a London fox is only eighteen months, whereas they live up to 15 years in captivity.

However, in territories where there is plentiful food (which is often the case in urban areas, what with our sloppy food waste habits and generally more tolerant attitude to foxes), young vixens might be allowed to stay on in their parents’ territory, and help to provision next year’s cubs, so, as with all animals, it’s difficult to make definitive statements.

What is clear is that the new young foxes, leggy and bright-eyed, are full of mischief and energy.

If you want to get a sense of the range of sounds that count as ‘gekkering’, have a look at the video below. It gets vocal from about 1 minute 23 seconds.

Foxes ‘chatting’ 

And here’s a rather impressive sound file from Wild Ham and Petersham.

How can you tell a young fox? For a start, they’re rather long-legged and rangy. They sometimes have a touching innocence: the fox in the photos above was spotted in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery a few years ago, and she happily approached to within a metre of myself and a chap who was also taking photographs, amazed at how ‘confiding’ she was. Such unusual behaviour in an adult fox can be evidence of toxoplasmosis (a parasitic disease which can make the animals who carry it more reckless), but in young foxes it often seems as if their curiosity overcomes their natural reticence.

At any rate, soon the nightly arguments and play fights will stop, to be replaced, as darkest winter comes, by the unearthly screaming of vixens looking for a mate. Personally, I love that we’re surrounded by these signs of the wild, and in spite of the black dustbin bags that are ripped open up and down the High Road, I still think it’s a privilege to live alongside these extraordinary creatures.