Urban Fox Project

The Red Fox Vulpes vulpes is one British mammal that over the years has escaped my camera, so when I was given the recent opportunity to photograph a fox family, well, how could I refuse? On one of my photography workshops client Maggie Bruce mentioned that a fox family visited her garden in Hull on a daily basis. I asked Maggie if it would be possible to photograph them and received an open invititation to visit her and the foxes.

It didn't take long on my first visit (48 hours) for me to access the garden, find the best position to errect my hide, work out the best times to visit regarding the position of the sun and lighting and to find the places the foxes used to enter the garden.

Once all these were done, several more trips were necessary to work out the times of  day the foxes were most likely to visit. Maggie told me that they were most active on an evening, although she did see them occasionally during the daytime and early morning.

My first visits were evening ones. The foxes did show but not until around 9 p.m. when light levels were starting to drop. I decided to make an early morning visit, but despite being in the hide for 5 a.m. there was only one brief visit by the vixen. It was back to the drawing board; the only option was to have a crack at an all day/evening session.

On this nine-hour fox watch, it took five hours for the first young fox to appear, showing fairly well before disappearing into the undergrowth. As there was considerable noise pollution coming from the gardens either side, I thought it was possibly time to give up, but I stuck with it and two hours later it was fox heaven with up to four foxes at once!

It was really difficult to capture a number of foxes together. Two of the young foxes were very inquisitive and another youngster and the vixen proved very timid. I managed to get some beautiful shots and I would like to thank Maggie Bruce for looking after me with food and drink and giving me access to her stunning garden and amazing foxes!