Kitchen Garden Forum

Thought you folk might be amused by an incident my wife and I watched in our garden yesterday (Sunday).
Our two local foxes, a dog and a vixen, came onto the lawn and did their usual cabaret of treating it like their own private amusement park, crapping on the lettuce patch, romping on the radishes and digging up a seed potato to play ball with. I was just about to go and shout at them when Valerie said “Wait a mo, this is new!”
To our astonishment the vixen leapt up on to the top of a 5ft high interwoven fence that is covered with lots of ivy. She proceeded to do a tightrope act along the top, battling through the ivy over three panels, then turned round and struggled all the way back, to finally leap down and rejoin her mate. They then left the garden!
We were helpless with laughter at her antics, but I couldn’t think why she would do this, but later wondered if she thought there was a bird’s nest, with chicks, in the ivy. (I couldn’t find one when I searched). Perhaps she was just saying to her mate “Look what a foxy lady I am!”
Cheers, John N.

Wish I could have seen this. I know that if I kept chickens I would probably feel very differently about foxes but I find their antics delightful and love watching them. Unfortunately the ones who come to feed in our garden at night are all very wary, so unless the security light gets triggered and we get a good view of them, they're quite difficult to watch. Your vixen may well have realised that ivy and hedges contain birds eggs or babies. They're pretty intelligent creatures where finding food is concerned.

Good evening John, i think you could be right about the birds nest, she was probably looking for eggs or chicks, bet she was hoping a sitting bird would fly out so giving the nest away.