Pumpkins Kill Hedgehogs -Please Dispose of carefully

 

Badgers Are NOT "Garden Pets" for Social Media Likes!

 

 I am fully aware of Badger feeders just as I am aware of fox feeders.

I have seen photographs and video clips of people opening doors to entice badgers to take food from their hands. You can be as careful as you want but as with a fox being too slow will lose you fingers.

Although badgers and foxes tend to live in a "you don't bother me then I wont bother you" way with each other and domestic cats there can be problems.

Just as foxes are WILD canids so badgers are WILD mustelids and they are NOT "garden pets". With badgers and foxes you must -if you put supplementary food out every few days- leave it away from the house: bringing badgers and foxes to the doorstep is a challenge to house cats which means that you create conflict. Cats will take any opportunity to attack foxes and might not fare so well against a badger (though cats seem to display a sense that foxes they can attack but not badgers).

Social Media "Likes" is not what wildlife are there for. Photograph or video them from a distance but not only might your habituating them to humans lead to problems with neighbours (badgers are protected but I've been involved in a number of cases where neighbours have threatened to "remove" them.

Habituating foxes and badgers to humans makes it far easier to snare or kill them. There are a lot of sick people out there who love doing this for 'fun' and profit selling to taxidermists.

Personally., if it were withing my power I would make it illegal to feed foxes and badgers during summertime when all of their natural prey are out there in abundance and when they kill rats and mice there is less need for poisons to be used. Winter feeding when things are rough, okay, but summer time they do not need feeding up.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE consider how you interact with badgers.

A Serious Rant

Everyone -everyone-  is aware of the cost of living crisis. People had to resort to food banks, which are under stress. Families are struggling to feed themselves and sacrifices are made to make sure their children are fed.  Some stores are putting food out at low price so you will find chicken drumsticks and wings in bags or trays cheap.

This is what, and you will need to excuse me here, pisses me off. I have seen on Face Book fox groups people posting photos and of discounted chicken and what shops they found it in -"get it while it's cheap!". Every bag or tray is a  meal for humans who really need to look for the discounted foods.

During a hard winter giving a fox a little extra  "in case" is not that objectionable. Feeding a fox or foxes 2-3 times a day is wrong. Having the foxes queue up in your garden like trained pets at a specific time each day is wrong.These are NOT pets. They are wild canids and they are being trained to ignore their natural instincts. There are millions of rats, mice and wild rabbits (rabbits even in suburbs), beetles and other insects that foxes include in their natural diet. I have seen one photo after another on Face Book 'wildlife' groups of the pet garden rat...which will become rats and how are you going to get rid of them? 

Left-overs from your meal is what dogs and cats used to get and its perfectly acceptable for a scavenging fox.

People are being stupid. Plain and simple.

Time and again I see people posting to fox groups how they have fed 'their' foxes once or twice a day for several years but they have to move for employment or just moving home. "Ask the neighbours to feed them!" is the best answer. Yeah, spend your money feeding wild animals that the idiot next door has semi-domesticated then dumped. Far more likely that a fox or foxes congregating outside the neighbours' back door will be reported as nuisances. Local authorities then call in the pest controllers.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

And those foxes encouraged by food into kitchens, living rooms are going to go into other peoples' houses and people who are not keen on foxes. 

BANG! BANG! BANG!

One fox...two or three. Doesn't matter it's all an earner for pest control.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

I have had experience in a rabies zone when I was a kid in Germany and later. The aftermath is not pleasant. You get bitten by a rabid animal the treatment is not pleasant. Previously, foxes were mainly in rural areas and if there was a rabies outbreak less problems for those in towns.

We now have a lot of urban foxes and foxes encouraged to come up to people, be hand fed  and to interact with pet dogs and cats. They come into contact with badgers. Muntjac deer. Hedgehogs. From an isolated and easy to deal with outbreak we are faced with an out of control epidemic. In the 1970s even a false alarm in England resulted in hundreds of mammals and many birds being "culled" -dead animals once removed are no longer a threat to spread the virus.

A rabid fox will bite anything including humans.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

In some countries it is illegal to feed foxes. I some times think that might be a good idea in the UK. Stop the hunts killing foxes but overfeed foxes, cause health problems in foxes so that there are immunity problems -some of these I have seen with the Fox Death Project.

Human food is for humans. Feeders baulk at paying for a one off mange treatment that works but will spend £40-60 a month buying chicken, eggs and worse for wild animals. hey, why pay when there are suckers who'll send you free homeopathic treatment for free? It can be effective in early cases but the best med is the one you can buy. 

I see images and videos of foxes that are overweight -this is not a "healthy" look. Foxes should be slim and can only eat as much as a domestic cat. The number of eggs and rotten chicken gardeners dig up each year shows how overfed foxes are. "It came back three times -poor thing must have been hungry" No. It was taking the food and caching it all. It was left to rot because that fox is fed everyday eats some and buries the rest.

Feeders are domesticating foxes and encouraging large groups when they should be dispersing. Wildlife is wildlife and not garden pets.

I have spent 50 years now studying foxes and I have seen how people have lightly fed in bad weather or when actually treating wounds and injuries. The foxes were always slim and keen to hunt out rodents.  Now we have people feeding 2-3 times daily, dropping homeopathic drops on them when they "think" they have mange (usually when foxes start losing their winter coats). I am seeing fat foxes that ignore their instincts and raise their young to depend on humans for food. It has always been a symbiotic relationship but now some humans are trying to tame foxes and that, one way or another, may lead to very dire circumstances ...for the fox.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE step back. Look at how you are feeding and treating the foxes. They are ignoring their natural food for processed food that is not good.

THINK

Deer Monitoring and Badger Killings

 Deer Monitoring

We are currently looking at cases of emaciated roe and muntjac deer. They have died quickly and the concern that this might -MIGHT- be CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease) which, as far as we are aware was not in the UK.

Get in touch if you have seen such deer.

This may not be carnivore in topic but as part of the food chain (even as RTA) and how it will affect the environment it is important to monitor.

BADGERS

There is currently a badger cull ongoing in Buckinghamshire despite lack of evidence that they have bovine TB and no cases of cattle TB.

The UK National Carnivore Advisory is totally against these culls and the evidence shows that legally required biohazard precautions are being ignored.

Farmers and Badgers

It has been noted that some farmers are illegally killing badgers and dumping them by the roadside so that to casual observers it looks as though the badger was killed by a car.

Police appear to be sitting on their hands and local police not willing to challenge farmers and others involved.

THAT is how a "protected species" is treated in the UK.

Sorted

  After a lot of thinking I have come to a decision about my archives and books.

I arranged today (to make double sure) that when I croak my online store is deleted. Let's face it the books are not selling due to the current state of illiteracy so the only ones who would make money from any sales are the printer and the print on demand firm and the bank will only filch money for monthly charges. 

 Since my family has shown absolutely no interest in my work or books and constantly tell me I have wasted my whole life and money on "rubbish" like feck are they getting anything.

In fact when I previously stated that something needed to be sorted with my work (wildlife, UFOs etc and comics/publishing) after I croak it was made very clear that there is an incinerator in the back garden and that was no joke. It does take care of a lot, though.

In five decades I have been ripped off, my work used uncredited (by academics at that) and no one wanting to cooperate I see no reason why, like better researchers before me, I should allow the scumbag fakers to get a hold of my work and gain from it.

If I cannot make anything (even a basic living or to pay bills) from the books and research then no one else is and I am not having fighting over who gets my work. Mr Burner will take care of that and I will not be around to care.

Sorted.

The Red Paper Volume 1: Canids (2010)

 

Unfortunately there appears to be absolutely no interest in the new versions of The Red Paper (Canids or Felids) amongst fox people and certainly not from publishers who base what books they publish based on readings by their own writers who are, obviously, not going to push a book challenging what they are making money from.

The Red Paper (2010) has sold about 5 copies since 2010. The big problem is also that people are not buying from the secure online store but third party dealers and that means they are paying MORE for a copy (there is no such thing as "free post" its added to the book price).

Rather than get a decent profit after printers and print on demand company get their money (far more than I do) I 'earn' £2.75 for a major wildlife reference book that covers decades of work.

I have sent out more free copies than I have sold. £20.00 was cheap so now, as the new works look like they will never appear, I have put the price up to £25.00 and I am not even going to apologise for the price increase as no sales mean the research work has now ground to a halt and that's it.

So please do not ever tell me "it's a bit steep price wise".

https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/1dnpv7rv?page=1&pageSize=10

Are Foxes Cats?

The fox has always been known as "the cat-like canid" and for good reason.

 "THE FIRST FOX KNOWN TO FISH FOR FOOD" That's how the headline read and it was accompanied by this photo and the following account.

(c)2022 Respective copyright owner

In March 2016, two researchers in Spain watched as a male red fox stalked and caught ten carp over a couple of hours. The event seems to be the first recorded instance of a fox fishing, the researchers say.

The discovery makes red foxes just the second type of canid - the group that includes wolves and dogs - known to hunt fish.

“Seeing the fox hunting carp one after another was incredible,” says ecologist Jorge Tobajas. “We have been studying this species for years, but we never expected something like this.”

Tobajas and his colleague Francisco Diaz-Ruiz stumbled across the fishing fox while surveying a site for a different project. The fox first caught their attention because it didn’t immediately flee when it spotted them. Seizing the opportunity, the researchers decided to hide nearby and see what the fox was up to.

Their curiosity turned to excitement after the fox caught its first fish. “The most surprising thing was to see how the fox hunted many carp without making any mistakes,” Tobajas says. “This made us realise that it was surely not the first time he’d done it.”

Instead of immediately eating all of the fish, the fox hid most of its catch and appeared to share at least one fish with a female fox, possibly its mate.

Fish remains have been spotted in the scat of foxes before but scientists weren’t sure whether the foxes had caught the fish themselves or were simply scavenging dead fish. This research confirms that some foxes fish for their food.

For Tobajas, the fishing fox is an example of how much scientists still don’t know about the natural world, even for a species that live fairly close to humans.

“The red fox is a very common species and is in many cases a bit hated,” he says. “Foxes can sometimes attack pets or livestock and are considered a pest in many places. But observations like this show us that it’s a fascinating and very intelligent animal.”

(The study was published in the journal ‘Ecology’.)

Now that is an interesting story and a few months ago a video clip popped up on Face Book of an angler in Italy who was somewhat surprised when a fox came out of undergrowth and watched his fishing line -and eventually got a couple of fish for its 'efforts'. The suspicion was that the vixen had young nearby and this was an easy meal to take back. However, although curious, rather like the proverbial cat, wild foxes tend to keep a distance from humans and yet this particular fox knew exactly what the angler was doing, which end of the line to watch and it waited for a fish to be given. That in itself shows that the fox was no stranger to fishermen and had received fish before.

The old fox books (most modern ones are only reciting dogma) tell you a lot about foxes and so if you know foxes you know that fishing is not rare just rarely photographed.

Foxes are good swimmers and in the past that helped some evade hunts. They are intelligent and will soon spot food sources -it's a matter of survival. Foxes living in the mountain areas had prey that was found on mountains -hares, rabbits etc.. Those living on coastlines would scavenge "sea food" washed ashore and there is such a thing as a crab eating fox (The crab-eating fox (Cerdocyon thous), also known as the forest fox, wood fox, bushdog (not to be confused with the bush dog) or maikong, is a species of medium-sized canid endemic to the central part of South America since at least the Pleistocene epoch).

Combine shallow streams or rivers and fish then no carnivore is going to pass up any potential meal.  So, like cats, foxes have no problem with eating fish.

(c)2022 respective copyright owner

When I posted a photograph of a fox resting up in a tree a few years back it got the same reaction from people as the original newspaper article did. People could not believe -a fox in a tree? It had to be a ginger cat. A digitally altered photograph? It was not. Just as the ones above and below are not. Genuine -foxes climb trees and other things.
(c)2022 respective copyright owner

In fact, foxes used to climb trees to evade hunts -as can be seen in this old illo.

And, I need to point out, foxes are not the only wild canid that can climb a tree. The raccoon dog, which is in this country (please, if you see one do not report it as DEFRA has a kill policy based on no research and I have heard of one trapped and killed and there was no scan for a chip to see whether it was an escaped pet or not) is also known to be fond of tree climbing.

Raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) (c)2022 respective copyright owner.

So you see the fox has a few cat-like qualities other than its hearing and night vision. People seeing the swift-moving fox at night often tend to think that they saw a cat. It is one reason why urban foxes may have been ignored for so long. In the old days refuse bins (trash cans) would get tipped over or refuse pulled all over the place and "a bloody cat" was held responsible.

Just as there is anecdotal evidence suggesting there were fox feeders in the 19th century on -some "on hunt territory" so there is anecdotal but stronger evidence of urban foxes and well before the official "1930s" date given in dogma.

Over the years I have had to rescue foxes cornered and receiving "rough treatment" from various cats. The myth of foxes being aggressive toward cats is just that and there are many videos out there of cats chasing foxes. The semi feral cat living next door used to attack foxes and even had to be pulled off the back of one that it was trying to deliver a "nape bite" (or "kill neck bite) to. No wonder foxes vanished from the area!

And now, in Downing Street itself, we have No. 10s cat, in front of the media, dealing with a fox that had dared enter his territory.

Note the fox's reaction to the confrontation -it arches its back to make itself look bigger and ward off (unsuccessfully) an attack; the same thing you see cats do in similar situations.

It's lucky we know foxes are canids rather than felids!

The Fox Deaths Project is not just about local foxes but a lot more.

 

I have mentioned before that the Bristol Fox Deaths Project is the only one of its type in the UK. Ever. 

While Bristol City Council refuses to cooperate in any way we nave the cooperation of the official bodies that can carry out the post mortem examinations and have a top pathologist to carry them out.

Initially, all the reports were of foxes that had been poisoned and there was, and some times still is, the scream of "fox poisoner!" The results so far are that poison is very low down on the list.  We will hear from someone that they say a perfectly healthy looking fox collapse, convulse and die. "POISON!"

In fact neither myself nor Zoe Webber give any public on cause of death as that is speculation and, in all honesty, a fox found dead and looking as though it was in good condition is highly deceptive. Zoe will normally examine the fox in situ and check for injuries but normally none are found. For that reason we assume that the fox did not die naturally and is "one for us".

The post mortems usually reveal the cause of death as "RTA" (road traffic accident) or "car strike". All of the injuries, which can be fairly minor to major, are internal. Slow bleeds or massive haemorrhaging.  There are other injuries but we do not just decide "RTA -no use" and throw the body away. Each death has taught us something from illnesses and diseases and how the fox must have spent its last few hours at least. We were all surprised at some of the results and the pathologist wants to see whether the results of the past year are duplicated in 2023.

A unique study in Bristol which  can be a major guide to any future fox research in the UK and it may well be that what we learn here will also be shown as common in other cities in Europe. 

Sadly, I doubt that there will be any shortage of dead foxes but getting them is a problem. Zoe checks and collects (and does much more for which she deserves credit) but we often hear of a fox found dead 2-3 days (in one case 5 days) after it was found dead. These tend to be what we call "maggot surprises" -they look okay until you turn them over and -surprise! Rigor mortis can set in after 10 hours and weather conditions can speed or slow this up. Winter and cold weather are our best friend because it keeps the body chilled until it can be collected.  We do not have funding so purchasing a chiller for the purpose of preserving evidence is out. This creates problems.

We have lost a number of dead foxes (around ten) because they were reported on a Friday. With the correct storage facility no problem but the pathology lab where foxes are submitted closes after 1600 hrs on a Friday and do not accept dead animals until the following Monday. We get bank holidays and Christmas when, again, the lab is closed. Reported on a Thursday we can get a body to the lab on Friday and breath a sigh of relief but that is it. 

I have had a few sharp comments from people about being "not that interested then" when I explain all of this. Every time I have to be very polite and take the abuse because I have to show the public that we are serious and do not engage in arguments. People are rude to me and I ignore it as arguing is nothing to do with the actual work. There are also people who think we are here to pick up road-kill or dead foxes when there is a delay in the council collecting (again, weekends) and if a fox is found dead in the road the cause seems obvious and although I would love to pick up every dead fox and see what we can learn we have one pathologist and criteria that I set up for submissions.

We have had certain people (and we have a suspicion as to whom) trying to waste our time with hoaxes. A fox found dead on green in a populated area...placed and posed. "There's a dead fox in----" a quick check with someone and -no dead fox at all. A report of a dead fox that seemed to have been in excellent condition and the location is a wood or "in a field" all miles away from anywhere and we do not search woods that may cover acres for something the  size of a house cat that might not be findable. It goes on but it is part of the work.

We can be contacted via Face Book messenger at the Fox and Canid Study Project page or if I am on a FB group just tag me.

Foxes found need to be reported as soon as possible and we ask that a photo is taken of the fox where it is found -it tells us a lot and proves we are not being hoaxed. The only photos we would have otherwise would be those from the post mortem report.

If we cannot get it that day and the weather is good enough a body will need to be covered or put into a bin bag until it can be collected. We prefer to have the body left in place and covered as in the past we took a lot of effort to travel and collect a body that was bagged as "looking fresh" but was decomposed or maggot laden and no one is going to carry out post mortems on those.

By the end of 2023 we hope to at least have a good picture of how foxes in Bristol die. How illnesses or diseases they have affected them and that may well help rescue foxes in future and, most importantly, a new generation of vets is being trained through all of this so that means they will know far better what to expect during their careers rather than guessing "poisoned" or "RTA". 

The project is not just about local foxes but a lot more.

Fox Photographic Data Base

 Part of the ongoing fox study is to catalogue, or, rather, build up a data base of photographs of foxes in the UK. You might think "But one fox looks the same as the next, right?"

Wrong.

(c) British Fox Study

As I detailed in The Red Paper 2022 Vol. 1 we have black foxes (melanistic red foxes and silver foxes that are escaped pets) and white to whitish ones not to mention foxes with visible ringed tails and, never thought I would see this, a striped fox that we jokingly called "the thylacine fox".  We have foxes with a yellowish tinge, light or deep orange colouring as well as reddish to "cherry red" coloured foxes.

There are long legged, tall foxes, foxes smaller than domestic cats and so on and so forth. 

There are other slight differences and we know that there are North American Red Foxes (NARFs) and have been for a very long time since the British fur farming industry collapsed in the 1950s and these foxes all 'escaped' (if you get my drift).

Fox rescues release their charges around the country so there are no longer regional types -with so many thousands dying each year the new blood kicks in for as long as they survive so the look can change and there are people I know who have kept records and photo references of the local foxes for 2-3 decades.

I never give out locations and the data base is not a public one. There should be no concern that once I get a photo I will post it along with "Sent in by Mrs Cullen, 32 Windsor Rd, Thumpheath" Location (NOT down to street number) is needed or else its just a jumble of photos from anywhere.I am perfectly aware of the type of people out there so protection of animals is the priority.

Can you help? Do you get regular fox(es) and can you take any photos or have photos of them? If so I can be contacted via Face Book (Fox and Canid Study Project) or at blacktowercg@hotmail.com

We still need to learn so much more about foxes.

The Beartooth Mountain Fox -Similar To the Old British Fox?

 Rare red fox subspecies thriving in Beartooth range - In the drainages, plateaus and enclaves of the Beartooth Mountains, a relic of two ice ages ago is thriving despite being isolated for hundreds of thousands of years. The Rocky Mountain subspecies of the red fox is a success story in survival despite rarely receiving the benefits of conservation efforts.

Patrick Cross is an ecologist and lab manager at the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center based in Bozeman, Montana and he writes https://abatlas.org/from-nutcrackers-to-cutthroat/fox-of-the-beartooth

"No matter where you are in the world, if you see a fox, chances are it is the species red fox (Vulpes vulpes). That’s because the red fox is the world’s most widely distributed terrestrial carnivore, naturally ranging across North America, Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, and introduced to Australia. It has a remarkably diverse diet beyond its typical small rodent prey base – Norwegian red foxes have been observed hunting deer fawns, Japanese red foxes have been seen fishing for salmon, Spanish red foxes have been recorded picking berries and pouncing on beetles. And it inhabits likewise diverse habitats, from deserts and forests to suburban backyards and farms, hence the proverbial “fox in the hen coop.” Such a long-running and widespread coexistence with people has earned the red fox an important place in our shared culture and traditions, like the always hungry fox in Aesop’s Fables, or the thousand-year-old nine-tailed fox from Korean legend, or the cunning Reynard of French bedtime stories."

"But given such a wide distribution across such a wide variety of environments, there is substantial diversity within the red fox species as well. Some populations have been isolated from other red foxes for so long that they are becoming distinct in themselves and are considered subspecies. In the American West, for example, large mountain ranges act like islands isolating red foxes adapted to life in a subalpine environment, resulting in distinct subspecies in the Sierra Nevada, Cascade Range, and Rocky Mountains, respectively. There can even be substantial variation within populations, like with coat color: in 1881, Yellowstone National Park superintendent Philetus Norris wrote that its red foxes were “numerous and of various colors, the red, grey, black, and cross varieties (most valuable of all) predominating in the order named.”

What has this to do with our extinct Old foxes?  The length of fur, etc. in this image would fit how the Old foxes were described and especially the Mountain/Greyhound fox that lived in pretty wild, wet and cold territory. The head of our Old foxes were slightly different as were, it seems from the ones we have, the dentition -all of this needs to be studied thoroughly. Of course, the Mountain fox we have is larger than a coyote; in fact those we have are all large.

Our Old foxes developed into three types (not species but types -variations for their habits and habitats) and these would have been Ice Age foxes that, once the Doggerland Bridge was flooded, spent millennia rather like the Old wolf as an island species and with the wolf it did not succumb to island dwarfism. These Old foxes were also in Ireland until it, too, separated from mainland Britain and no doubt developed along its own lines (again, as did the Irish wolf which also was untouched by dwarfism). "Gifts" of Mountain foxes sent to Irish hunts confuse matters since it is hard to tell exactly when the Irish Old fox died or how long it survived before or during importation. Mange in Ireland -thank the hunts and circumstances around their importation -all detailed in The Red Paper 2022 Vol. I Canids.

old British mountain fox illo by Col Thomson

Left unhindered by hunting for 'fun' foxes can survive as shown with the Beartooth Mountain foxes. It is interesting that Cross mentions foxes hunting a deer fawn as there is a note by a naturalist that he observed several foxes "stalking" a deer in the snow circa 1950s. Now foxes are curious and do follow and also use game trails so this is unlikely to be a hunt as such and more like travelling an easy route in snow already trampled down by an heavier animal.

We are learning all the time about our Old foxes -and there were similar in Western Europe- but the work is slowed down due to the fact that no one funds such research and we need more pre 1900 fox taxidermy. The only reason the Fox Deaths Project can even take place is because I fought long and hard and showed that there were things we could learn and we have learnt a lot but if we had to pay for every post mortem and the tests it would have cost many thousands of pounds and we do not have that.

Our photo data base of old taxidermy and modern foxes is growing and these lead to some interesting discoveries but, again, the work takes time and money.

It is sad that a key animal in our environment will have many thousands spent to poison, shoot, snare and otherwise kill it (and I include secondary rodenticide poisoning here thanks to public misuse and local authorities) but no one will contribute or finance a study of foxes. One thing that has become very clear after nearly 50 years of studying foxes is that they are once again at a point where they may well be pushed to the brink of being listed as Endangered or pushed further into extinction. It happened to the Old fox and Old wild cat.

Extinction is forever.