The past two weeks at the
Wildlife Homestead have been some of the busiest and most exciting I've had here. All thanks
to these five adorable red fox kits that moved in under my garage. A lot has happened to get
to this moment so let's go back to before these foxes first arrived. When we first moved here I mentioned that growing up I used to watch a family of red foxes that
lived behind our house. We spent years watching these foxes from our backyard and ever since
it's been a dream of mine to have them on my future property. So late this winter I started
scouring our new land looking for any active fox dens. Because the tracks in the dirt from
inside of the hole stand out well against the snow, this is one of the easier times of
the year to find active dens. But after a lot of searching I came to the conclusion that
there weren't any on our land. I was however seeing adult red foxes every day right across
the street on the neighbor's lot, so that's where I suspected they had at least one of
their dens. But as the snow began to melt and spring began to set in, I started seeing less
of the foxes. We didn't see them for a few days, which turned into a few weeks, and eventually
it was over a month without a sighting. Even our trail cameras would only pick up the odd
clip of one now and again. But that's until one evening, when I finally saw one of the
adult foxes on the road. It seemed a little more alert and on edge than usual and that's
when I noticed a fox kit pop out right under our lilac tree. One by one, the other kits started
coming out and roaming around until I counted five of them around the house. I was unsure
of how long they'd be here, so I just soaked in the sighting as much as I could. I watched
them run around and play well into the night. Even when it was dark, I could just faintly
see them running under the light of the garage. I honestly thought this was going to be a
one-time thing, but the next morning, to my surprise, they were still there. Some of the
kits were right outside of our driveway and the others were out by the garage. The adults
were trying to enjoy the first rays of sun but at this time of the year they really don't
get a second to themselves. As you can see, the kits were full of energy.
Often chasing the parents around and wrestling with their siblings. Not only is this entertainment
for them, but play fighting is also a crucial part of their development. It helps them develop
their muscles, while improving their balance, agility, coordination, and reflexes. It also
helps them learn social skills, and most importantly, they get to practice predatory behaviors like
stalking, pouncing, and capturing prey. The adults will also teach the young how to scavenge
and look for food. I saw one pull out a leg from a carcass that was in the ditch. I wasn't
sure which animal it was until I saw this little pup on the left happily drag off a
raccoon head into the road. I'll admit, it was a little nerve-wracking
watching them run into the middle of the road like this, but luckily we live in a more secluded
area. And the parents have also been really good at teaching the young how to hide in
the ditches well before any of the cars passed by. In addition to being wary of moving vehicles,
they were also wary of me. Even though I was inside the house, if I moved too quickly or
made a noise they would stare me down through the window. You can see this one just doesn't
break eye contact, and after a bit of time they usually just take the kits and move further
up the road. I'm guessing they don't see a lot of people out here so I always had to
make sure to be still whenever they were around. Over the next three days, I watched the family
of foxes from our living room window. Little by little, both parents would leave
the young for longer periods of time as they went out to hunt and collect food. They worked
tirelessly to keep all the kits well fed. It makes you wonder how they find time to keep
themselves fed. Right now their main food source is rodents and wow, these adults are a voles
worst nightmare. They move around using their sense of smell to locate the area where the
voles are hiding, then using their excellent hearing they listen for the voles movement,
or excessive chewing, to silently stalk to its position, before pouncing and landing on
the vole with its forepaws. And I love seeing this hunting technique because it puts in
practice many of the important skills that the kits are learning while play fighting.
Every time the parents would come back with a mouthful, they'd try to give a vole to each
kit. One time, I did manage to capture this greedy little bandit stealing the entire mouthful
from the mother, taking off, and then hiding in our front yard. It just sat there and gorged
itself, vole after vole after vole, until it couldn't eat any more. It cached the last one
in the grass for later and the other siblings came sniffing around trying to figure out
where all the food went. That's why it's important to be one of the first ones to the adults
when they're back from a hunt. To this point, all the footage that I've taken has been from
inside of the house and I was fine with keeping it that way, because it doesn't disturb the
foxes. They would mostly stay in the front yard, so anytime I wanted to go out, I'd just
sneak out the back door so I wouldn't disturb them. But as the parents started leaving the
young more often, they started to explore more of the area. And it wasn't long before they
made our garage their new home. So back here is where all the red fox kits are hanging
out when the parents aren't around. If you look under our shed over here you can see
this gap underneath and this is where they've been squeezing through and they'll sleep under
there, if it's too warm they'll also go there just to rest and cool off. Actually there's
some fox scat right there. And yeah, this is a great setup. So they'll run around the entire
garage, they'll play, there's a feeder up front too that they go underneath to clean up
any seeds or peanuts that the birds left. The one problem though with this setup is that
every time I come outside, they're right here and they take off in every direction. And sometimes,
they run blindly across the street and even though there's not that many cars around here,
it is still pretty dangerous. So I decided the best course of action would be to get
them a little more comfortable with seeing me around. I didn't want to start hand feeding
them or anything, the last thing I want is for these foxes to start going up to people
for handouts. So I started sitting outside for a few hours every day in hopes of the
young getting bored of seeing me and just thinking I'm a part of the landscape. The first few days of sitting
outside were really slow, they mostly hid and kept their distance. Luckily there were other
things around for me to stay occupied with while I waited. I watched this Tree Swallow
pair continuously feed their hungry nestlings. They took up residence here at the beginning
of the season, so it's nice to see them having success as the first pair in this new box.
And to my surprise, while I was waiting for foxes, we also had a Bluebird pair start to
use one of the other boxes. We hadn't seen Bluebirds since early migration, and they're
starting this nest a little later, so I'm guessing they came from another property where their
first clutch was likely unsuccessful. Once they lay their first eggs they become very
secretive, but during the nest building stage I was able to watch them while they brought
material... or at least attempted to. I also spent some time listening and watching the Green
Frogs at the pond up front, where many large adults have moved in and started breeding. After a few days, I wasn't having much success.
The kits would still stare at me unsure, then they'd stare at me some more, but every time
they'd turn around and hide. Although it didn't seem like I was making any progress, each visit
they spent a little more time watching me than the last. On one of the days, I was filming
a pup picking at the rest of the raccoon carcass. At one point, the rain started picking up and
this kit turned around and started heading right towards the protection of the garage
behind me. Usually at this distance they would see me, stop, and head the other way. But this
one just kept coming, until it got so close that my camera couldn't even focus anymore.
It walked right by me and took shelter underneath the garage, and finally that was the first
moment where it seemed like one of them felt comfortable with me being around. I sat outside
until the rain slowed down and the fox made its way back out, and just like earlier, it was
fine with me being there. One thing that I had in my favor was that fox kits are naturally
curious and tend to take cues from their siblings really well. So once one of them accepted me,
the others quickly followed. And I was able to spend the next week filming them around
the garage. Don't get me wrong, they're still wary
of me. It's not like I can just run around or make a lot of noise, but it's a big improvement
over a week ago when I couldn't even step outside without them running off. Now they've
become a part of my daily routine, I respect their distance and they respect mine, and I
get to watch them as they continue to grow. They recently started venturing off further
with their parents and joining them on some hunts. I'm not sure how long they'll stick
around, but so far these moments with the Red Foxes have been some of my best here. And maybe
this time next year, we'll see one of these kits with a family of their own running around
on the Wildlife Homestead.
