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

This episode is the sixth 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 June and hopefully it will give you some insight into the behaviour of the foxes in your local area.

It’s June and we’re at the midpoint of the year with the daylight hours reaching their longest. Inevitably this leads to increased sightings of foxes in our gardens and neighbourhoods.

If you see the vixen in June then you’ll probably notice that she’s looking a bit worse for wear and scruffy. This is not sickness, but simply due to the huge effort it’s taken to raise the cubs and get them safely to this point.

By about the middle of the month, the cubs will be around 2/3s the size of their parents and their bright orangey-red coat will have developed much more fully. June is also the time when you’re most likely to see cubs at play. They’re old enough to be left alone for periods but young enough to still have that mischievous spirit, so don’t be surprised if you see some chasing and play-fighting in your garden. You might hear them get noisy with other and also see them picking on the smallest cub as they establish their hierarchy.

It’s not all fun and games though, as the adult foxes will be taking their parenting duties very seriously, making efforts to set the cubs up for a life of independence.

The parents will spend longer and longer away from the cubs, making them wait increasing amounts of time for food. Though the parents will still be providing some prey, this behaviour teaches the cubs to be a bit hungry and encourages the development of their natural hunting instincts so that they learn to feed themselves.

The cubs will also be taken further afield from the familiar area around the den. Exploratory trips around the local neighbourhood will become more frequent as time goes on, with the parents wanting to improve the cubs orientation skills and expose them to different environments. The cubs will eventually need to identify and claim their own territories, so these trips are vital to their development.

On these trips the parents will also demonstrate catching prey and digging, encouraging the cubs to do the same. This can cause frustration among keen gardeners as they suddenly may see a hole appearing in a new spot in their garden for seemingly illogical reasons. Sometimes it can be looking for grubs or earthworms, particularly after rain, but often there is no particular reason, it’s just digging practice and your garden unfortunately is where the training session is being held. If you’re looking for ways to reduce the digging and the damage in your garden, then go to foxrepellentexpert.com/digging

Talking of going on trips out and about, I did a very interesting one myself this month. I ventured out into the beautiful Wiltshire countryside and attended the excellent Chalke History Festival. It’s a week-long event, normally held in the last week of June, and it has a huge variety of guest speakers, displays, demonstrations and activities – all with an interesting historical theme to them.

On the day I went I saw some fantastic talks including one from author Clare Mulley discussing Agent Zo, who was a Polish Second World War Resistance fighter. She trained in Britain and was involved in some incredibly brave operations including parachuting in a dress into Nazi-occupied Poland and jumping out of a moving train to avoid the Gestapo. Incredible!

I also had the pleasure of seeing former singer-turned-clean water campaigner Feargal Sharkey give a very charismatic speech about the importance of protecting Britain’s chalk streams from pollution. Feargal was humorous, passionate and informative so I’m really pleased I got to hear him speak in person.

Other highlights included demonstrations from a blacksmith, a wheelwright and a stone mason and a brilliant one-man performance of the legend of King Arthur. It was great seeing the actor play all the parts with split second costume changes, adopting different mannerisms and doing all the voices. A great effort and thoroughly entertaining.

I went for the day, but they have glamping and camping, plus live music that goes on well into the evening, so if that sounds interesting to you then definitely take a look at the Chalke History Festival for next year.

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.

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