Red Fox Vulpes vulpes vixen on patrol

November is a busy month for Red Foxes Vulpes vulpes and there is quite a lot of social interaction as the breeding season approaches. As this film begins a vixen is responding with excitable screams to the presence of another equally vocal unseen fox (presumably a vixen) on the other side of a fence. Such encounters are very noisy affairs! Had there not been a barrier in the way then both animals would have squared up to one another, standing up on their hind legs, each with their front paws placed on the chest of the other and with their teeth bared. However these confrontations often end suddenly and on this occasion the vixen decided to end her fruitless attempts to reach his opponent (or possibly potential mate if it had been a male) in favour of patrolling her patch, scent-marking repeatedly as she did so. The photographer did have some hiccups when filming from the middle of the lawn as it proved impossible for him to continuously pan round about 270 degrees without moving his feet at least twice. This meant that a couple of shaky parts of the continuously shot sequences needed to be edited out. After doing a full circuit of the garden the vixen eventually flopped down on the rockery for a rest, having clearly been worn out by her exertions! Note that the gender referred to in the original title of this film has needed to be altered (as indeed have the personal pronouns in the accompanying text) as this fox unexpectedly produced a first litter at the ripe old age (for a fox) of four!

[kweeeng]

I was wondering why the foxes made those strange noises until I read your notes, David. Thank you very much for sharing the interesting video and the valuable notes.

Hello David,
again I learned a lot of foxes. Thank you for sharing this video.