Things to look out for in the garden - December

What are you most likely to see this winter? A fox! More than 30,000 foxes that have moved into Britain's towns and cities and about one in seven foxes are now townies. Most live in leafy outer suburbs, but more and more are heading for city centres with sightings at places like Buckingham Palace Gardens and the House of Lords. Many homeowners are welcoming the new arrivals by leaving out food and milk on their back lawns. But others complain that foxes are digging up their gardens, fouling their lawns, attacking their pets and ripping open their garbage bags. The garden fox in winter eats insects, earthworms, fruit, berries, wild bird, small mammals and scraps left out by people like us.

Whooper swans arrive around now. The whooper swan is a large white swan with a long thin neck, which it usually holds erect, and black legs. Its black bill has a large triangular patch of yellow on it. It is mainly a winter visitor to the UK from Iceland, although a couple of pairs do actually nest in the north.

Although it may appear that the garden is dead or dormant, the catkins on the Alder are developing already, so if you are going to site nest boxes for birds, butterflies or bats, this is the time to do it.

If you look up, you may see something surprising. The buzzard population has been booming in recent years - a 51 per cent increase between 1994 and 2002 and there are reckoned to be around 50,000 pairs in Britain. Young, non-breeding birds travel widely in winter, and their major food in their juvenile winter is, believe it or not, earthworms! In the breeding season they prefer rabbits, whose post-myxomatosis population boom may have a lot to do with the raptor's recent success.

Garden December fox photograph by Ahisgett, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

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