Rainbow over Huntingdon Road in East Finchley

Dear UK Readers, has anyone noticed the increasing shortness of the daylight? It’s only the end of August, but it’s clear that the season has turned, and the long nights of winter are fast approaching. But that’s not all bad – one of the things that I love about living in the UK is the way the seasons each bring their own joys, and the first hints of colour are appearing on the trees. The crab apples are absolutely laden down with fruit, which sadly no one will want. And the weather turns from stormy to sunny in a space of minutes, hence this rather impressive rainbow spanning my street on Friday night.

But once darkness falls, my trail camera is able to catch what goes on. This huge fluffy cat is a regular visitor now, but I still don’t know who s/he ‘belongs’ to.

However, I am convinced now that we’re visited by two foxes, one early in the evening and one in the wee small hours. A couple of readers pointed out that they have different tails – one has a white tip, and the other a black tip.

This is ‘early fox’…..

And this is ‘late fox’….

Studies in cat behaviour have shown that cats segregate themselves into time ‘niches’ when there are a lot of them in a neighbourhood: the more dominant cats are out and about at prime hunting time (i.e. dusk and dawn), while the cats who are further down the local hierarchy visit in the less auspicious times, such as midday or in the middle of the night (at least if their owners let them have total control of when they come and go). I wonder if this is the same for foxes? The fox who visits earlier seems a bit younger and skinnier to me, but s/he will get the bulk of the food on offer, as it’s usually thrown out after human dinnertime (so about 8 o’clock in our house). I suppose this early fox could also be bolder, or more desperate – there are lots more people about than at 3.00 a.m.

The later fox could be older and wiser, but will definitely get less food.

Maybe early fox is a vixen, and late fox is a dog fox? It will be interesting to see if they appear together later in the year, when breeding season starts.

And then I look back to my earlier post about the trailcam, and see that the time that the foxes visited was reversed, with ‘late’ fox being early, and ‘early’ fox being late, so clearly my theory goes out of the window. Furthermore, how do I know that these are the same two foxes? More data is clearly needed! I shall keep you posted!