Young country diary: Camping in my garden, nose to nose with a fox | Ada
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- Ada, eight, and her dad camped in their garden during a UK heatwave to escape the heat indoors, hearing swifts swooping overhead in the orange evening light.
- On the first night, a vixen drank from the garden pond while Ada slept; her dad tried to wake her but she missed it entirely.
- The second night, the fox returned — Ada had asked her dad to pull her toe if it came back — and she woke to find the vixen standing just 10cm from the tent, nose to nose through the mesh window.
- Ada describes the vixen's amber fur, sharp pointed teeth, triangular ears, and eyes that glistened in the moonlight.
- There are about 150,000 urban foxes living in towns and cities across the UK, with hearing acute enough to detect a watch ticking from 40m away and a mouse moving under snow.
- Ada concludes: "You don't need to live in the countryside to see amazing wildlife."
Why it matters: Britain's roughly 150,000 urban foxes are routinely close enough to encounter in a back garden, and Ada's 10cm nose-to-nose moment — seen through a child's tent mesh — makes that everyday proximity vivid for young readers who might otherwise assume wildlife belongs only to the countryside.
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