Urban Foxes

i think i heard a coyote on the hill across the street! i'm not sure, it was too much of a pained yelp to be a dog bark.

jbr, you're in silverlake/echo park now - right? (non-crepey, i saw you're posting to the "your building" thread) there are many coyotes around, i have seen several in the area late at night. if you had a car and were driving around, you'd see more i think. urban wilderness is fun.

jbr, you're in silverlake/echo park now - right?

correct. but this is my first l.a. coyote spotting, although i've certainly heard tell of them being around at night. i know a few were roaming around town right after the griffith park fire.

feathers are scattered all over my garden!

We've got one in our back yard now. I think it lives in the shed, which is full of the landlord's junk so impossible to get into. It was up on the shed roof earlier. Our cat was eyeing it disapprovingly from the back window.

I used to see it a lot over the road in the building site, I wonder if it used to have an earth there and has been displaced. Looks v mangy and sore, so my wife emailed a fox protection society to see if they'll send us some mange medicine. Apparently they like peanut butter and jam sandwiches!

This one, a regular visitor to our garden, actually looks quite healthy. Joined by a playmate the other morning, jostling over one of Lulu's plush toys that we left out there after a BBQ (and kinda gave up on after it was rained on a few times)...

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1373/1463081820_586884def8.jpg

we had two of them doing an elaborate (and noisy!) mating ritual in the backcourt about two weeks ago. watched them for about 20 mins (feeling like total voyeurs) before they eventually decided to zoom off up the path somewhere else.

interesting mating ritual: lots of yelping, punctuated by running round in circles. reminds me of my student days.

Great photo Michael, and a very handsome beast it is too.

Grimly, that's what they do. My housemate and I play a game called 'cat, fox or human' when we hear that BAAAAO noise and/or hissing and yelping coming from the back garden.

It took some chasing with my fiver-off-a-geezer-in-Lewisham long lens to get that shot, NickB. Wouldn't cooperate in our garden so I eventually snapped it in next door's garden (we do occasionally mow our lawn!) from our bedroom window. Then I felt a bit creepy for pointing my camera into next door's garden...

Our fox looks in considerably poorer condition to that one. He looks v healthy.

If we call the RSPCA will we get billed if they come out and take care of it (in one way or another)?

We'll have urban fox hunting soon, kids on mini motorbikes and quads with packs of pitbull terriers, the rousing sound of the hunting ring tone.

Col. Poo, no the RSPCA won't bill you, I'm pretty sure of that. I think that if they do come out, they'll either catch it and take it to a wildlife rescue centre, or if it's too poorly, it'll probably be put down.

A couple of foxes are now regularly coming over to me on my allotment early in the morning. They'll sit as close as about 2 or 3 metres away in the long grass at the edge of the plot, watching me digging. They're so tame that someone must be feeding them. Must take some jam sammies along with me for them next time.

my former flatmate managed to feed a fox half a mars bar on the meadows in edinburgh about 10 years ago. if you've got food, they tend to be just tame enough :)

OUR BACK YARD
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2358/2459323113_bfb23cb6ed.jpg?v=0

they're so cute!

Does kinda highlight the fact I've done zero gardening in the last 6 months, but it just won't stop raining.

We've been chucking mince laced with mange medicine out there since we saw the cubs, cos the mum's not looking too great. She made it through the winter at least. Didn't see her at all.

Awww.

http://xs227.xs.to/xs227/08186/wild_and_crazy_guys671.jpg

coyotes is good people

I was at the Trails Cafe in Griffith Park just N of Los Feliz and this guy was watching me the whole time

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3274/2423913309_9f6bd0033d.jpg

i think we should train these guys to maul boris voters

There is a dog run right by my flat and our local urban foxes are so polite, they won't crap anywhere else.