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

This episode is the seventh in this series looking at what the UK’s foxes are up to throughout the course of the year. This time I’m looking at the month of July with the aim of giving you some insight into the behaviour of the foxes in your local area.

It’s July and by now the family of foxes will have all but abandoned their den. They may still use the area around the den as their home base, but it’s rare that they will still be using it.

If foxes have made a den in your garden, such as under a shed or garden office, then, if they’ve been causing a bit of disruption, this would be a great time to block it up to try and stop foxes coming back to it next year. Foxes will always take the path of least resistance when it comes to dens and won’t want to find or dig a new one unless absolutely necessary. So if you have a nice sheltered spot in your garden, foxes will keep coming back to it every year unless you take steps to put them off using it.

For more information on dealing with a fox den in your garden, you can listen to episode 11 of this podcast where I discuss this in more detail.

Continuing the behaviour that started in June, the adults will increasingly take the cubs on exploratory missions around the neighbourhood. According to the founder of the National Fox Welfare Society, Martin Hemmington, in his excellent book called Fox Watching, in July the two adult foxes will split the cubs between them. For example, if there’s a litter of four cubs, two will go off with the vixen and two will go with the male. It’s not clear why this occurs, but it could be that by splitting the cubs up, the adults are preparing them for a life without their brothers and sisters and are able to focus more intensely on teaching them more complicated skills.

One of the most important skills that cubs start being taught around this time is the art of caching, or burying, prey for future use. Foxes are clever in the sense that when food is plentiful, they will eat what they need and then bury the rest in different places for when food is scarce, such as in the winter. Squirrels are another animal that does this.

Foxes have an incredible ability to use a combination of mental map reading and a keen sense of smell to find previously buried food, even if it was done months in advance.  So around this time of year, if you find something odd buried in your flowerbeds, potted plants or vegetable patches – voles, eggs, dog chews, small children’s toys – it could be a result of adults teaching their cubs the fox equivalent of putting leftovers in the freezer.

Because the cubs are often split between the adults, this can sometimes cause people to assume that the other cubs they had been seeing previously have died. While this is of course possible, most often it’s just that the other cubs are off somewhere with the other parent learning life lessons.

You might also see the cubs on their own, because the adults will usually take them out on these exploratory trips and then leave them alone a long distance from the home area. This is deliberate to encourage the cubs to improve their orientation skills and, again, prepare them for a life of independence.

So July is a busy time in the world of foxes. The parents are working hard to impart their wisdom and the rapidly-growing cubs will be going through their apprenticeships. However, there’s still time for playing so don’t be surprised if you hear screaming and fighting going on in your garden, the cubs can be particularly noisy at this time of year.

In other news, July is the month when the Wimbledon tennis championships are on, which is one of my favourite events of the year. I got tickets this year and took my Mum as a present for her 70th birthday. We were in Number One court and had a great time watching some great tennis from British players like Katie Boulter, Harriet Dart, Jack Draper and Cameron Norrie. We also went out onto Henman Hill and watched some of Andy Murray’s final match at Wimbledon on the big screen as he played doubles with his brother Jamie. The weather was great, as was the atmosphere and we had a fantastic time.

I’ve been before, but my Mum hadn’t and she was so excited about it that it took her about an hour to actually accept she was at Wimbledon.

It’s an amazing event with so much history and tradition, and there’s a lot more to see around the grounds than just the tennis. Did you know that Wimbledon has a resident hawk that patrols the 42-acre site to keep away pigeons, who are apparently particularly attracted to the roof on Centre Court. At the time of recording, Rufus the Hawk has been protecting Wimbledon for 15 years and he’s also been used at Westminster Abbey. On the day we were there though he was obviously caught napping as a Pied Wagtail landed right in the middle of Number One court and disrupted play for several minutes, despite the desperate efforts of the ball boys and girls to shoo it away, much to the amusement in the crowd. I’d love to go again next year, so I’ll enter the ballot and see if I get lucky.

Well, that’s it for this episode of the Fox Repellent Expert podcast. I hope it’s been insightful and informative, regarding some of the fox activity in your 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.