Dear Readers, early last Sunday morning I was shuffling about in my kitchen and sipping a cup of tea when I had the feeling that I was being watched. I peered out of the window. There were no birds, no cats. All was still, the sun just touching the top of the whitebeam tree. And then I chanced to look down, and, sure enough, a small face was peering at me over the edge of the patio.

How alive it seemed, this little creature, all twitching whiskers and bright eyes. It surveyed the scene, its small pink paws poised on the wooden beams beside the pond. It disappeared, and then popped back up again. And furthermore, it was not alone.

It seems, dear Readers, that while I have been away a mother Brown Rat has given birth to some babies in my garden. For a while I tried to convince myself that these little creatures were mice, but no, the small ears and blunt muzzles tell me that they are, in fact, Rattus norvegicus. And what a good time they were having, hoovering up the fallen mealworms from the bird table. It seemed to me that their mother had picked a perfect spot to raise her family – relatively safe from predators, warm, dry and right next to a food source.

The Brown Rat is the most successful mammal on earth (after humans), present on every continent except Antarctica. It shadows us wherever we live, though it is rarely seen. It could be argued that it has also sacrificed more for our well being than any other mammal, as the Brown Rat is the same species as the laboratory rat, and has hence been the victim of more varied torments than any other creature I can think of. If you have ever had a pet rat (and they can make delightful playmates, with a tremendous sense of fun) you have also been in contact with a Brown Rat. But there is no denying that these animals can be a vector for several diseases, including Weil’s Disease and Toxoplasmosis, and that they are associated in our minds with everything that is unclean and sordid.

At this point, I sense rising horror in some of my readers. After all, are rats not public enemy number one, a source of disease, thoroughly disgusting creatures who deserve to be eradicated on sight? Or have ‘seagulls’ taken their place this year?

Dear Friends, it seems to me that if we make a wildlife garden, we cannot be altogether sure what wildlife will turn up. And if we are a little too generous with the bird food, it is not surprising that all manner of opportunistic, intelligent creatures pop in to take advantage. I fear that the amount of food I’ve provided recently hasn’t taken into account the fact that many birds are now in moult and hence not visiting gardens very much. There is also a lot of natural food about, which most birds will take in preference to anything I can provide. And so, these little chaps are taking up the slack.

Now, I make it a rule not to kill anything that turns up in my garden, be it aphid or slug, snail or harlequin ladybird. Or, indeed, rat. But even if I did have a more ferocious turn of mind, can you imagine what would happen? Any animal control company would put down poison to kill these youngsters and their mother. And then, what happens if a fox, or a cat, or a dog eats the corpses? We don’t have many owls around here, but in the country, rat poison is the number one reason for the death of Barn Owls. We do have all manner of corvids and birds of prey, who are not averse to a spot of scavenging, who could also be killed. And anyhow, we are too quick to turn to death as a tool of species management. I am not an absolutist about these things, but in almost every case I’ve ever come across, there is a better solution to the problem of an animal in the wrong place than killing it.

Nearly all of our ‘pest’ animals increase their populations in response to our messiness. Pigeons, seagulls, rats, mice, will all become more noticeable in response to unemptied bins, food which is not kept securely and general litter-dropping. Plus, for some of these creatures we are taking their normal food – we have stripped the fish from the sea, for example, and seagulls are now stealing our ice cream and chips. So, I will cut back on the amount of food that I leave in the garden, not in order to starve my new rodent family, but to persuade them to disperse. There are always a few rats around, but they are normally invisible, unnoticed. It’s only when they binge-breed that they become a problem.

So, the baby rats ran around the patio for a while, and then suddenly noticed that they were being watched. One sat up on his back legs for a moment, eyes bulging as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. After all, for a fortnight there has been very little activity at my house, and maybe they were starting to think of the garden as their own. And then, both the rats bolted back under the path, and I haven’t seen them since. Have they already moved on? Has one of the many cats around here put an end to their short lives? Or are they keeping a low profile, emerging during the night to tidy up the garden? Whichever it is, I send them a salute,  from one opportunistic, adaptable, inventive species to another. All of our lives are so short, so fraught with troubles and worries that it’s hard to deny another creature a few moments in the sun.

All of the fox photos this week are copyrighted by John Humble – many thanks to John for being my guest photographer. What great photographs they are!

Yesterday, at 7 a.m., my husband called me downstairs.

“There’s a fox under the bird table!”, he whispered. And there she was, delicately picking through the suet pellets for something edible. Something in my heart softened. A healthy fox is such a glorious animal, copper and frost, taut as a spring and yet confident. In an urban environment, a fox feels like a magical gift, one that can lift my spirits for a whole day. However often I see them, they are always a small glimpse of the wild world, and a reminder that not so long ago this area was not a suburb, but one of the most unruly areas of common ground in all of London: Finchley Common, home of Highwaymen and criss-crossed with fox tracks.

Later in the morning, as I went out to the shed to get some more bird food, there was a scuffle and the fox bolted out from her hiding place and away over the fence. As I peered into her refuge, I could see where she’d curled up under the ivy, snug and hidden amongst the foliage.

Last week I went to Foxycology, a London event organised by the League Against Cruel Sports. They are aiming to contest some of the many untruths that have grown up around foxes, especially at a time when there is a real threat that the Hunting Ban will be repealed. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the arcane ways of country sports, it is currently illegal in the UK to hunt foxes with dogs – instead, hunts have to follow a trail of scent that is laid in advance (drag-hunting). However, if the hounds pick up the scent of a fox and kill it, well, it’s difficult to prevent (apparently). The Hunting Act also permits up to two dogs to flush a fox towards someone who will shoot it.  And even this small measure of protection is now under threat. If the Conservatives are elected in May, they have promised to reinstate the old situation, where, as Oscar Wilde put it, the Unspeakable are in pursuit of the Uneatable.

In towns, there have been a number of horror stories in the press, in which foxes have have been demonised. There was the case in Hackney where a fox apparently entered a basement flat on a warm evening and bit two sleeping babies. There was a case in The Sun where a woman apparently had her finger bitten off by a fox. This was rather contradicted by a two-page spread with a photo of the ‘maimed’ woman holding up her hands which appeared to have a full complement of fingers. Furthermore, she had grabbed the fox, who had wandered into her house, and that was when she was bitten. To be honest, I would expect the same outcome (and worse) if I picked up a frightened feral cat.

So, what is the truth about foxes, as revealed at Foxycology?

First of all, the papers will tell us that fox numbers are increasing, both in the town and in the country. In fact, there are approximately 225,000 rural foxes, and about 33,000 urban ones. These numbers have held steady since 2001, although urban foxes have increased their range and are now seen in more cities. Furthermore, in urban areas some foxes are becoming bolder, which gives an impression of an increased population.

The second untruth is that foxes are responsible for a high proportion of lamb and chicken losses in rural areas. Defra’s own figures show that 95% of lamb losses are due to husbandry issues, and that less than 1% of lamb deaths are due to fox predation. Often, foxes are seen scavenging lamb carcasses and are then blamed for the deaths. In the case of chickens, the estimate is that foxes are responsible for less than 2% of deaths where the poultry are kept indoors at night. Furthermore, whilst foxes, like most predators, will kill more than they can immediately eat if they manage to get into a hen house, given a chance they will cache the food to eat later. The predation of farm animals by foxes is also offset by the number of rabbits that they kill, which benefits arable farmers to the tune of about £200 a year (£900 over the fox’s lifetime).

The third untruth is that culling foxes is effective. In both rural and urban areas, a fox territory which is left vacant will be occupied in less than four days. This is so often the case – it applies equally to the culling of magpies, crows and many other predators. Furthermore, the animals that move into the vacant territories are likely to be young, inexperienced animals which will look for the easiest possible food source because they don’t have the skills to catch wild prey. This means that they are more likely to look to domestic animals as a source of food.

Of course, I was particularly interested in city foxes. The speaker was Dr Dawn Scott, who has been studying the behaviour of urban foxes. In Brighton, a number of animals were radio-collared, so that they could be tracked during their nightly excursions. The maps were like  abstract paintings, with lines showing where the animals had been. On an average night, an urban fox will travel about 3.5 km, but in the Brighton study, they seemed to spend a lot of time in two particular gardens. This was where the foxes were fed.

Feeding foxes is an area fraught with controversy. The message from Foxycology was, in general, not to feed, and certainly not to feed too much – some houses were leaving out two whole shopping bags full of scraps every night, and the foxes were becoming obese. But there are always exceptions. The fox that is injured, the fox that has mange (there are medications that can be administered through food), the fox that is already tame, these may all require a different approach. It is so hard, sometimes, knowing what is best for a wild animal, especially one which appears vulnerable. But there are various organisations, such as The Fox Project (details at the bottom of the article) who are able to help and advise. The Fox Project takes a humane approach to fox deterrence too, and has proven to be more effective in helping with ‘problem foxes’ than the use of terriers and poison.

I am intrigued by my visiting fox. Is she a pregnant female, I wonder? Most of us are familiar with the shrieks and general carry-on in the winter as foxes mate and pair up, and I knew that male foxes keep company with vixens for a few weeks during the breeding season. What I didn’t know was that the males will often help to provide food for the cubs, and also that the cubs from the previous year may stay with their mother and also help to raise the next generation.

The talk that intrigued me the most at Foxycology, though, wasn’t by a scientist, interesting as they were. It was by Patrick Barkham, author of The Butterfly Isles and, more recently, Badgerlands. He showed us some slides of foxes in myth and legend – the cunning fox of Aesop and La Fontaine, the ‘Foxy Lady’ of Jimi Hendrix, and asked this question: how much do we really know about the fox, as an animal, and how much of what we know is all about the projection of our own needs and desires? For me, this is a constant battle. I can admire the idea of the fox or the coyote as a trickster, and acknowledge that both animals are adaptable, intelligent and opportunistic. But when does the stereotyping of an animal reflect more about us than about the animal itself? Can an animal really be ‘cunning’ for example (the word that I suspect is most often used in conjunction with the word ‘fox’)?. In Barkham’s talk he was, I think, asking us to take a step back and think about having a relationship with the real animal, rather than turning it mentally into a little person in a rust-coloured furry suit. And that is the real challenge. How can we empathise with an animal and still recognise that it has different needs from our own?

 The Fox Project website can be found here: it has lots of helpful information about what to do if you are worried about a fox, or if you want to discourage one humanely.

For more information about Dr Dawn Scott’s Fox Project in Brighton, there is a BBC article here.

And to find out more about the work of the League Against Cruel Sports, have a look here.

Last night was full of surprises. My husband opened the front door and a frog leapt in and jumped onto my foot. It was only after I’d picked it up and popped it back into the pond that I realised that maybe it was trying to disperse, to leave its home and strike out for pastures new. I could imagine its initial befuddlement, followed by a weary sigh as it started the long hop to freedom all over again.

I went back inside. John picked up the recycling to take it to the wheelie bin and then I heard him whispering (very loudly).

‘Fox!!!!’

And there he was, less than ten feet away, hoovering up the suet pellets from the bird table.

What a bold animal he was! We both stood and watched him for a few minutes, as he rooted about and licked up the food. I wondered if he would stay for a photo, and he did. I wondered if I dared risk the flash, and he was completely unconcerned.

At this time of year, young foxes are leaving their mothers and trying to find their own territories. This fox, however, was so confident that I felt sure that he was an adult. There was a hard-bodied, muscley quality to him, a wary intelligence. He was thin but not skinny, and his fur was in good condition. I wondered if I would recognise him again by the darker patches of fur on his back.

There are about ten thousand foxes in London. Where, I wonder, do they all go during the day? Where do they make their dens? How does a creature that is larger than a cat keep such a low profile for most of the time? I just know that, for me, a visit by a fox is still a surprising event, something that gives me a frisson that only a sparrowhawk can match.

Last year, there were a number of stories about foxes biting toddlers and babies. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London said that they were ‘a growing problem’ and urged councils to do more about ‘pest control’. He said he would also be happy if someone wanted to create a ‘London Fox-Hunt’, though we can hope that, on this at least, he was joking. I suspect that, as usual, the ‘fox problem’ is a result of inadequately wrapped food-rubbish (certainly the debris from the Kentucky Fried Chicken at the top of our street keeps a number of crows, pigeons and foxes very happy), and people forgetting that foxes are wild animals. The worst thing we can do to any creature is, unfortunately, to hand-feed it, or to encourage it to come too close.

We yearn for connection with undomesticated creatures. I know how much I want to stroke a fox, to know what his fur feels like, to feel the dome of his head beneath my hand. But even if the animal would tolerate this (and chances are I’d become another ‘fox bite casualty’), I  know that this desire is all about me, not about what the animal wants, or needs. It’s one thing to help an animal in distress, or to provide it with food when things get tough. It’s another to impose ourselves upon it. And so, giving silent thanks for the fox’s tolerance of our whispering and flashing, we went back indoors, and watched as he finished feeding and headed back up the side of the house, to jump over an eight-foot fence, and continue his evening patrol.

In the morning, we found that the fox had ripped open a bag of compost and deposited a big scat right in the middle. It’s almost as if he’s reclaiming this territory, making it clear whose garden it is. After all, foxes trotted here before the houses were built, and the way humanity is going, they’ll be making their dens in the rubble of the terraces after we’ve gone.