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

This episode is the first of a monthly series that I’ll be doing, looking at what foxes are up to throughout the 12 months of the year. Kind of a calendar of events for foxes in the UK. I thought it would be an interesting little series to see if you can match each episode up with the behaviour you’re seeing in your garden.

You’ll probably notice a lot of fox activity in January and this is because it’s peak breeding season. Vixens are on heat for about 3 weeks but can actually only get pregnant for 3 days a year, so the dog foxes have to be really vigilant and at the top of their game to make the most of their mating opportunities.

As a result you’re likely to hear a lot of noise from male and female foxes. It’s estimated foxes have around 28 different types of calls, which is far more than a domestic dog. While you might hear them doing some short, sharp barking, the noise that really tends to upset people is the vixens letting out blood-curdling shriek that is often mistaken for a human screaming. Apparently there’s data that suggests the Metropolitan Police get a call every 3 weeks on average, from people believing someone’s being attacked, when it’s actually just a fox.

So, the females will be particularly vocal, trying to attract the attention of local males to let them know their location. There may also be a resident male fox doing his best to fight off the other male suitors. The previous year’s cubs will now be fully grown and making it known that they’re looking for a mate. This all means there’s a lot of noise and territorial disputes going on, which you might notice in and around your garden.

If you’ve had foxes denning in your garden in the past, you might notice an increase in activity in the same area. This’ll be the vixen doing some preliminary checks to make sure she’s got options for giving birth to her forthcoming litter. Under sheds, summerhouses or garden offices are common places for fox earths so don’t be surprised if you see a little digging in these areas.

If you don’t want a fox setting up home in your garden, then you need to make those spots as unwelcoming as possible. Not in a cruel way, but just enough to make the vixen decide your garden isn’t suitable for raising cubs. You can go to foxrepellentexpert.com for my articles on dealing with digging and denning. I’ll put links in the show notes.

Because there’s a lot at stake for foxes at this time of year, you might notice them in your garden quite frequently during the day. The evening will also be busy with the foxes active between around 6pm – 10pm then it will likely go quiet for a few horse before the noise starts up again around 3am until just before dawn – not ideal in a highly populated urban area when people are trying to sleep!

With all this activity, you’re likely to see an increase in scent-marking around prominent areas in your garden. This could take the form of the foxes spraying urine, pooing and the rubbing of their sweet smelling Violet gland on their tails up against things. It’s all part of the mate attraction and territory protection process. I’ll put a link to the top ten fox deterrents in the show notes in case you’re impacted by pooping foxes.

So that is January in the world of the fox. There’s a lot going on which is why you may well see and hear them at this time of year in your neighbourhood. It’s quite serendipitous that just as we humans are often making fresh starts with New Year’s resolutions, it’s also a fresh start for foxes with the next generation being planned.

In the next installment we’ll look at February and see what the foxes are getting up to and what you can expect to see in your garden. I hope you’ll join me for that.

On a garden-related note, I’m recording this in the last weekend of January and I’ve just completed my RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. If you haven’t heard of the RSPB BGB, it happens over the last weekend of January every year and has been running since 1979. You spend an hour watching your garden and you note down the birds that visit during that time, and then submit your results to the RSPB. The RSPB uses the results to assess bird numbers in the UK – which ones are thriving and which ones aren’t doing so well. It’s really worthwhile and it’s free to do, so I definitely recommend it. My hour was quite quiet this year, I saw 2 Robins chasing each other, 2 house sparrows on my feeder, 1 dunnock and 1 female blackbird foraging for food on the ground. I had some Miles Davis on in the background and a cup of peppermint tea on the go – just a great way to spend an hour. Give the Big Garden Birdwatch a try next year if you’ve never done it before – I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

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

There is a pretty simple way to stop foxes destroying football nets but I’ll come to that in a minute, because this actually raises a much more serious issue that needs addressing.

For some reason, foxes, and especially young foxes, are quite attracted to goal nets. Nets can flutter in the breeze and can easily be moved around with a paw, so it might be that foxes enjoy playing and practising their hunting skills on them, like a cat might do with a ball of string, it’s hard to say exactly. Sometimes a fox can accidentally run into a net when scared and trying to make a quick escape from a garden.

Whatever the actual reason foxes are drawn to them, football nets can pose a serious danger to foxes and are very often responsible for causing serious injury and even death.

What happens is a fox can quickly get tangled up in the net and have its movement restricted. In its effort to free itself it can start to panic, fighting to escape, getting more and more entangled in the process.

This can lead to horrible constriction and strangulation wounds as the netting tightens around a limb, a neck or a muzzle. And if the fox can’t free itself, or isn’t freed by someone, then it may well die a slow and painful death. Not pleasant at all for a fox, or anyone that finds it, yet this is an issue that is much more common in urban back gardens than you might think.

I was recently watching some videos on the excellent Wildlife Aid YouTube channel.

Wildlife Aid is a wildlife rescue centre based in Surrey and they get called out to all kinds of situations where there’s a wild animal in distress.

On their channel you can find a lot of rescue missions involving foxes caught in football nets. It often requires delicate unravelling of a very stressed fox from the net and the injuries can be quite severe, often needing treatment by a vet back at the animal hospital.

Fortunately, most of the videos shown on the channel have a positive ending and all of the injured foxes are released back into the wild once they’ve recovered, but what we don’t see are the numerous other cases where the fox’s injuries are too severe to survive.

What the videos highlight very clearly is how such a seemingly innocuous and everyday garden item can be incredibly dangerous to wildlife. It’s not just foxes either, there’s also videos of a hedgehog and a badger cub stuck in a football net, so it’s a problem that affects a wide range of animals.

So what can you do to stop foxes chewing holes or getting caught in your football net? Well, the answer from Wildlife Aid is very straightforward and it doesn’t include banning everyone from putting a goal in their back garden or anything extreme like that.

All you need to do is remember to lift the net up off the ground by a foot or two when not in use. There’s normally some hooks or clips running up the back of the goal posts so you can hang the bottom of the net up away from the floor while the goal isn’t being used.

If you can find some way to do it, this simple tip will put the net out of reach of foxes, stop it from being chewed and will strongly reduce the possibility of you going out into your garden one day to find an injured fox or other animal thrashing about between your goal posts.

If you are unlucky enough to find a fox caught in your netting, just keep calm and call your local wildlife rescue centre. They should hopefully be able to send someone out who has the appropriate tools to free the stricken animal and they will be able to make a professional judgement on whether the fox can be released or if it needs further treatment. I’m sure they’d appreciate a small donation from you as well.

That’s it for this episode of the Fox Repellent Expert podcast. I hope that’s been informative and has some useful information if you’ve got foxes and a football net in your back garden. I’ll put some links in the show notes for this episode which you can find at foxrepellentexpert.com/episode12.

If you found today’s episode interesting, you can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Please feel free to leave a review.

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