The Telegraph today launches an interesting study in an attempt to count the number of foxes living in towns and cities around the country.
Shortly after my election to Parliament four years ago, and staying with my sister in Chiswick, I was surprised to see a fox in her back garden. She told me that foxes were not an uncommon sight.
One night about three weeks ago, I was even more astonished to encounter a fox trotting calmly towards me along Morpeth Terrace, less than a hundred yards from Westminster cathedral. Where, I wondered, did it live, in this concrete and tarmac desert? And how did it manage to negotiate, as it must need to regularly, the particularly busy thoroughfares of Victoria Street and Vauxhall Bridge Road?
The Telegraph says that there are estimated to be around 10,000 foxes in London, and that some have been spotted in the stalls of St Paul cathedral and outside 10 Downing Street (lots of foxy types there, I’d have thought). But a gut feeling tells me that there may in fact be a lot more.
I’ve sent a report of my own vulpine experience to ukfoxes@telegraph.co.uk. I’m looking forward to seeing the survey’s results.
I lived 20 years with Welsh farmland on my doorstep and never saw a fox once.
First time I ever saw one was leafy, but definitely urban, Oxton in Birkenhead.
In rural Yorkshire now, you mostly see them dead on the roads.