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

This episode is the ninth in this series looking at what the UK’s foxes are up to during each month of the year. This time I’m looking at the month of September to shine a light on the behaviour of the foxes in your garden and local area.

As we move into September, many of us have finished with our summer holidays and returned to our routines. That might mean we’re spending less time outside or not paying as much attention to what’s happening in the garden. But for the foxes, September is a crucial time, and their behaviour is far from quieting down.

By this stage, the young foxes are hard to distinguish from the adults. If you spot a fox in your garden, it’s now much harder to tell if it’s a youngster from this year’s litter or a more mature adult. But while they might look similar, there’s a lot happening under the surface as these young foxes make the transition into independence.

As Martin Hemmington notes in his book Fox Watching, “September is the month where it’s very much every fox for itself.” I very much agree with that. This is the time when you’re far more likely to see foxes hunting alone, rather than sticking together as a family. It’s a month of transition, where the young adults may still try to keep some level of contact with their siblings and parents, but they’re also starting to show more aggression towards one another.

This shift often signals the beginning of the dispersal process, with the young foxes starting to seek out their own territories by the end of the month. It’s not unusual to hear some noise in your garden or local area—these sounds could be a mix of final moments of family bonding and the growing hostilities that come as the young foxes begin to forge their own paths. So even if you’re not keeping as close an eye on your garden now that summer’s ending, the foxes are still very active and adapting to their new roles in the wild.

As nights grow longer, foxes become more active during twilight hours, which is when they often enter urban gardens. With people returning to busier work routines after the summer holidays, foxes might feel emboldened to explore gardens a bit more freely in the evenings. If you’re seeing more of them around, this could be why.

September is also often considered the peak month for picking blackberries. These juicy little berries are a favourite for many of us, and it turns out that foxes love them too! Foxes have a varied diet that includes everything from small mammals to fruits, and blackberries are a real treat for them during late summer and early autumn.

If you have a blackberry bush in your garden, don’t be surprised if you spot a fox helping itself to your stash. They’re quite adept at nibbling on the lower-hanging berries and can be seen foraging for them, especially during dawn or dusk when they’re most active. Foxes are opportunistic feeders, meaning they’ll eat whatever is most readily available, and in September, blackberries are often ripe for the picking.

For those of you who like to make jams or crumbles with your garden blackberries, you might want to get to the bushes before the foxes do! This can be a fun way to share a connection with nature—while the fox is out there enjoying its wild treat, you can be inside enjoying yours.

And while blackberries are a nutritious snack for foxes, providing them with natural sugars, fibre, and vitamins, they’re also part of the broader role foxes play in our ecosystems. By eating fruits like blackberries, foxes can help to disperse seeds through their droppings, contributing to the growth of new plants. So, in a way, those blackberry-loving foxes might be helping to spread a little more wild greenery around your neighbourhood!

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.