Hello this is Ben from the Fox Repellent Expert website and welcome to  the latest episode of this podcast.

This episode is the second in a series I’m doing, looking at what foxes are up to during each month of the year. Today I’m looking at February and I hope it will give you some insight into what’s going on with your local foxes and give some context to their behaviour.

February is actually quite a quiet month for foxes, compared to the huge amounts of activity that went on in January. The mating season is over and the vixens that are able to breed will now be pregnant. 

Because the battle for mating rights has finished, the horrible high-pitched shrieking that so many people object to will thankfully be much reduced. You might still hear some late night noise from foxes, but it should be nothing like as loud and intrusive as it was in January.

A vixen’s pregnancy lasts for 53 days and by now she will most likely have identified her den, or earth, in preparation for giving birth to her cubs. She’ll also have a couple of back up earths in mind that she can run to in case the main earth becomes compromised for some reason.If she’s been late in finding a suitable breeding spot, you might still experience some digging in your garden, particularly in the earlier part of February. If you are noticing some digging, i’ll put a couple of links in the show notes to articles that will help you reduce the damage and disruption.

As February goes on, the vixen will start to spend more and more time in the earth, getting used to her surroundings and making things comfortable. If you’ve got a den actually in your garden (or very close by), you might get a rare sighting of the pregnant vixen at dawn and dusk, otherwise most sightings you see in your garden will be a dog fox, or a subordinate female that has not fallen pregnant this year.

Interestingly, if these subordinate, non-pregnant females are related to the pregnant vixens, such as grown up daughters from the previous year, sometimes they will stick around and help the dominant vixen with their new brothers and sisters. Of course, this depends on whether or not the environment supports it, food being plentiful etc.. but it’s great to know that this level of cooperation among foxes is possible.

Dog foxes generally take it easy throughout February because there isn’t much for them to do. They’ll still be doing the rounds of their territories, making sure everything is in order, so don’t be surprised if you spot them scent-marking at various prominent points in your garden throughout the month. They still need to protect the area from rival foxes and they still need to eat, so you can expect to see the male foxes coming out to forage for food in the early evening.

However, the easy life for the male foxes won’t last long. They’ll be pressed into serious action next month once the cubs are born and we’ll look at that in more detail in March’s episode.

So that’s February in the world of the fox. Not the most exciting time as it’s a bit of an in between stage, coming after the frantic mating season and before the very hard work of raising cubs. A bit of a calm before the storm month.

In the next episode, I’ll focus on the newborn cubs and the differing roles that the two parents have to take up in order to give the cubs the best chance of survival, so I hope you’ll join me for that.

On a related note, as we move into the spring, it starts to become mating season. So for one week in every February, the RSPB promotes National Nest Box Week where it encourages people to put up bird boxes in their garden to give garden birds somewhere to establish a nest. I actually received a bird box made from recycled materials as a Christmas present but I hadn’t put it up, so National Bird Box Week was a great excuse to finally hang it up in my garden.

I put the bird box high up on a 12ft fence and made sure it was positioned facing approximately north east. I learnt from the RSPB that If it faces south, it can get too hot inside and possibly kill the chicks so I now know that positioning of the nest box is incredibly important. If you want to attract Robins and Wrens then you need an open-fronted nest box, but the one I was given has got a 32mm hole on the front of it which is favoured by Blue Tits, Great Tits and House Sparrows, so I’m looking forward to see if it gets any interest! 

Well, that’s it for this episode of the Fox Repellent Expert podcast. I hope it’s been informative, and helped explain some of the fox activity in your local area at this time of year. I’ll put any links mentioned in this episode in the show notes.

If you found today’s episode interesting, you can subscribe to the Fox Repellent Expert podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Please feel free to leave a review as it helps other people find the show.

Thank you very much for listening and I’ll see you next time.