Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/17/gallery-of-londons-urban-fox.html
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A couple of times I have seen coyotes or ‘coydogs’ roaming Boston, and wild turkeys too, sometimes in flocks (not downtown, of course.) Sometimes I think it’s cool, other times annoying or strange (it’s definitely not cool to find a big turkey dump on the hood of your car in Harvard Square.)
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A quick “foxes are not vermin” educational website I ran across - before the fox-bashing begins…
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I’m old enough that when you say “Urban Foxes” I think of the prey of the Festunk Brothers. http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/two-wild-crazy-guys-double-date/3007641?snl=1
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I grew up in the middle of the countryside, where there was a lot of loud support for fox hunting. We’d occasionally see a fox on the far side of a field, but almost never closer. (And despite my mum keeping chickens for the last twenty years, they’re never killed any).
Now I live in a big city and see foxes far more often, often within a few meters, so I’d say they’re a long way to being domesticated.
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“German Nazi fox send from Brussels ate my Baby!”
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There used to be one who would sleep on the roof of my car. He looked like a crackhead. I called him Crackhead Charlie.
He was a good dude.
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In all the time I spent in London I never saw a fox. I feel slightly cheated now.
Once I saw a train pull up and when the doors opened a couple of pigeons walked out. My spouse still doesn’t believe this in spite of the number of other people who’ve seen the same thing.
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Do they live off garbage or eat rodents and pigeons? I wonder why we don’t get them here in the NE US? Raptors like red tails and peregrines seem to fill the wild urban predator slot here.
That black fox is badass. The next step in their urban evolution, red camouflage doesn’t do much in the city.
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I’m still grumpy at the foxes for waking me up twice last night with their howling in my back garden. 
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I like foxes.
I think this is the closest we have to domesticated ones:
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My niece is spending the semester in Kingston-on-Thames, a bit upriver from London. On her first night over there a fox trotted up to her. She said “hi” and crossed the street.
Probably a good move. I imagine her getting scammed out of her oyster card and loose change.
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About a month ago I saw a fox waking past crowds of people in the middle of Oxford, completely unconcerned by all the people.
No foxes where I live though, the local cats chased them all off.
There’s plenty of red kites in Oxford. You really wouldn’t guess that they were an endangered species in Britain 30 years ago.
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Yeah, the first time I saw a large hawk in the city I was kind of amazed, but that was the beginning of me noticing them all the time-- roosting on light poles near the beach, attacking pigeons on my neighbors roof or squirrels in the park. It’s still pretty cool to see them up close because they’re beautiful birds, but the wonder of it is gone.
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I used to see them around downtown Naperville, IL. Pretty suburban area.
Although in recent years that town is more known for Coyotes (really, super common in all the Chicago suburbs).
I’m in Delaware and we have both red tail hawks and foxes, but in the more urban parts of the local environment dogs and (super stealthy, very rarely spotted) coyotes seem to be outcompeting the foxes.
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I seem to recall some science and nature journal somewhere that did an article about the pigeons that travel using the Tube. I can’t remember what they said about how this behaviour started, but it did mention they found a number of groups of pigeons around the outskirts of the tube network that were riding closer to the centre of London where the feeding was better, then riding back out again to where the buildings haven’t been pigeon-proofed and the competition for roosts was less intense.
Also, hedgehogs are the loudest animal I’ve ever heard in an urban space.
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There is a local fox, here in the woods of suburban MA, that has engaged my dog in a game of chase on a couple of occasions. Back and forth through the woods, and then the fox will pop up on a stump or pile of dirt not at all near my dog, look at me, and take off, I presume, laughing. Fox is definitely having fun with it.
It tires my dog out, so I support it fully.
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Aw yiss, Foxes!
I love foxes, some of my favorite animals. Thank you for brightening my day. We have urban foxes here in Frankfurt too. I saw them several times in a cementary nearby.
Also Peregrines are breeding for 10 years now on top of the Commerzbank tower in downtown Frankfurt, the tallest skyscraper in the city. They live very well of rats and pigeons.
Urban wildlife is amazing.
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