Making an artificial fox earth

Over the years I have painted fox cubs after watching them play with their mother close to their den. But like most wildlife enthusiasts, I’ve never seen what they look like before they first emerge into the daylight.

So this year I have embarked on a very ambitious project. I want to watch fox cubs from the moment they are born deep underground.

It’s been a long-held ambition and all I needed to get it going was a site where I could almost guarantee to see foxes.

Then last year a friend of mine invited me to watch a pair of foxes courting in a wood close to his house.

After watching them, I said that it would be amazing to watch the cubs grow and suggested we build an artificial earth so appealing to the vixen that she couldn’t possibly pass it up as an ideal place to bring up her cubs.

Thankfully my friend is always up for a spot of wildlife watching, no matter how absurd my ideas are.

So last month we set about making the plan a reality. I brought along a box that I had built to create a chamber inside the artificial earth.

My ‘fox box’ is basically an upside down plastic pallet box, lined with wood to prevent condensation – which could be a problem once there is a warm fox inside!

It also has a weld-mesh floor, to prevent animals like badgers digging out from under it, covered with soil, dry bracken and leaves. Inside is an infra-red camera with a cable that leads to a hide close by where I can watch without being seen.

Over the weekend I enlisted two helpers and set about digging the box into a four foot hole. It took some doing! There were three men and a mini-digger in the wind and the rain… let’s hope the vixen takes to it!

We then dug two six metre channels leading away from it. I laid two 10 inch pipes into these, before covering the whole thing up with soil, moss and turf.

A little way off I also built up a grass bank so that any photographs I get will have a ready-made green background.

Any vixens in cub this year are likely to start looking for a safe den over the next few weeks ready to give birth in the spring so I am hopeful that I might get some interest!

Foxes do make use of existing holes, often colonising empty badger setts or even large rabbit holes, so I think I’m in with a good chance.

The good news is that when I went to check the site a week ago, there was a strong smell of fox so there are definitely still foxes about.

I hope that if I get a vixen to use my earth I will be able to watch the cubs every day and even capture that magic moment when they first emerge from the earth and discover the world outside.

The pictures I get should give me some wonderful poses for a new composition for a painting.