Red Fox of the United States
Today’s post is on the Red Fox. Hopefully between description and photos when you are done reading my blog you will have a better understanding of the differences between the Red Fox and Gray Fox which I blogged on yesterday. The two foxes are distant cousins to each other as we discussed already. Both are common to the US with the Gray Fox being the dominant fox West of the Mississippi and the Red Fox the dominant fox East of the Mississippi.
The Red Fox is only slightly larger than the Gray Fox. Its overall color is an orange brown and the tip of its tail is white. Different to other foxes it has black legs called stockings.
It is also different than the Gray Fox because of where it lives. The Red Fox has only a small presence in the actual territory of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Fearful of another canine, the Coyote, it chooses to rather live in outlying areas buffering the heavily wooded national park. It can be found in towns and even cities which have greenbelt areas and county parks. It also enjoys living around golf courses and country clubs. Those locations are surrounded by wooded areas in which they hunt and the grassy fairways are like their highways to get from one hunting ground to another.
Because they do live in close proximity to humans, Red Foxes may be seen when they are moving from one area to another. They are seen even more in late winter and early Spring when males are searching for females. Females and kits are seen frequently in late spring. One of the reasons for this is that female Red Fox have to hunt and provide for their kits. They also have a tendency to move their kits from one den site to another. Sometimes the first spot is very small or very close to human activity. As the kits grow more space and privacy may be required, so she moves them during the night time hours. If this occurs she will move one kit at a time until the whole family is secure in the new location. Red Fox usually have 1-7 kits sometimes called cubs. It is common for a female to have a litter of 4 or 5.
(References: Wikipedia contributors. (2020, May 1). Gray fox. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:33, May 6, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php…)
