COULD it be that the era of the country fox is ending? Certainly, for anyone wanting to see foxes in numbers the place to go is into north Leeds where the high concentration of fast food outlets catering to large numbers of students has also produced a thriving population of foxes.

As readers of Roald Dahl’s “Fantastic Mister Fox” will be aware, foxes usually live in family groups, each holding a territory that in an urban environment with a reliable and easily accessed food supply, can be as small as 0.2 sq km.

Their main food sources come from dustbins, discarded fast food and bird tables although many have learned to tour gardens in the expectation of handouts from sympathetic householders. Catching moving prey is reduced to an occasional town pigeon.

Their country cousins by contrast, have to rely much more on their hunting skills with a diet of small mammals such as rabbits and voles as well as small birds, earthworms, beetles and fruit. In upland areas in winter they may depend on carrion and to survive the country fox may need a territory of up to 40 sq km.

They often dig their own dens or may enlarge a rabbit burrow or move into part of a badger sett that is not being used by the badgers.

In the towns, dens may be dug in brownfield sites although, with many of these now being built on, some have taken to living under garden sheds.

Many foxes, however, opt for the best of both worlds, going into the suburbs to forage for a living by night before returning to an earth in the countryside at daybreak.

With a garden backing on to Farnley Hall woods, we have had an occasional fox deviating from its route home for a drink at a pond, sometimes followed by a rest on the patio.

They can sometimes be encountered trotting confidently along the roads out of north Leeds after a night on the town.

Perhaps it is no surprise that the majority of fox sightings in Wharfedale in the past few years have come from the southeast around Otley and Menston. It raises the question as to whether many of these have spilled over from North Leeds, just a short fox trot away. With urban territories so small, many young foxes must be forced to move out to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

wharfedale-nats.org.uk