On the cusp of spring

February 26, 2021September 15, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)17 Comments

This year it has felt like winter has lingered longer than usual, but there is at last a feeling of seasonal change here. Spring is definitely in the air, which has warmed appreciably from two weeks ago, when there were still traces of snow on the ground, showing up the tracks of Kit the fox all around the chicken run. On my walk today the touch of the breeze was pleasant rather than painful, with no need for bundling under woolly layers to keep out the chill and the bright sun was warming and very welcome. Although the woods are still wreathed in browns and greys and remain bare twigged, the leaf buds are starting to swell and it won’t be long until they burst open with joyous green.

Birdsong is building in the early mornings, which is a lovely way to greet the day and is usually started by high clear notes from the robin. The pigeons bill and coo along the length of the fence and the bluetits are darting to and from the nest box, not yet bringing in nesting material but definitely behaving like prospective buyers.

Spring feels especially welcome this year and I’m daydreaming about the longer days to come, picnics, knitting in the garden, wearing short-sleeves and enjoying the feel of the sun of bare skin. Winter hasn’t been all dull and dismal though, the skies have provided lots of splendid colour; whether it’s been tightly focused in the curve of a rainbow or splashed across the whole sky in technicolour sunsets. And there is always colour inside in my knitting bag. I’m working on lots of new patterns at the moment, cabled sweaters, new animals and a few other ideas are being played around with. As always I’ll keep you posted with more details once they’re all further along and ready to share.

Lastly there’s foxy news from the garden. Kit has had her third litter of cubs. We don’t know where her den is but it must be close by as she’s popping in daily for snacks. I knew that she was pregnant as I saw (and heard!) her mating in the early morning light on December 19th and throughout February she has grown obviously and progressively more bulbous around the middle. It’s most likely that the cubs were born between February 10th-14th as she didn’t come to visit at all on those days and when she arrived on the 15th she was no longer looking pregnant. It was the worst possible time of the year as Feb 10th was the coldest night for quite a few years with temperatures down to -7. I’m hoping that the cubs have all survived and are flourishing now the days are warmer and I’m wondering if we’ll get to meet them later in the spring once they’re old enough to venture out of the den. I shall make sure that I have my camera battery fully charged and ready, I’d love another morning like the one I had last year when Kit brought her cubs to visit for the first time 🙂

I hope there’s a little in your life right now to lift your spirits and that you have a good weekend ahead. See you soon xx

crafts & knitting · foxes in my garden · garden stuff · general stuff

December light

December 9, 2020September 16, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)30 Comments

Though we’re not yet at the Winter Solstice the days now feel very short here. When I wake at just after 7am the sun has not yet risen and by 4pm it’s almost dark. And though daylight might be in short supply, one of the things I love about this time of year is watching the sunrises and sunsets. We’ve had some beautiful skies at these times of day, sometimes all aflame and dramatic and sometimes beautifully subtle like the colours in a mother-of-pearl shell. Some days before I go to wake up sleepy Toby, I take my early morning cuppa and go out into the garden in my coat and PJs to watch the subtle shifts in the cloud colours as the sun comes up. Even at midday the sun only rises now to 16% above the horizon and on bright days this low light slants through the windows casting angled shadows across the surfaces. We’ve had a lot of foggy mornings and a few frosts, both leaving everything damp and dewy and the water droplets that collect on every surface (even a ladybird shell) are illuminated by this low light, so they sometimes appear like silvered glass. All small delightful things that are particular to this time of year.

Kit the fox is still a regular garden visitor and despite the fact that H removed the thick growth of cushiony ivy when he put up new fencing, she still uses the heavy duty netting on the top of the chicken run as a hammock for daytime naps. She has grown her thick winter coat now and curls herself up, tucking her nose under her tail like a duvet to keep out the cold wind.

Here inside I’ve been cosy with my knitting. I’ve been playing around with different textures for a small set of toy scarves. I’ve got the pattern written up but need to knit it through and check it, then will share it as a free pattern with the hope that you might still have a little time to use it for some of your Christmas animal makes. I am also hoping to get the last pictures for the badger pattern I’ve been working on done later today, much later than planned but I’ll be back with news of that soon (ish!).

I’m behind with almost everything on my to-do list but I’m sure I’m not alone in that, it’s been a tough year so we’re all a little frazzled I think, and maybe if some things we had planned to do don’t get done it doesn’t really matter, leastways that seems to be the best way to think at the moment.

I hope you’re getting most of what you need to do done at the moment and that you then get to have some calm and relaxing time coming up over the holiday period, J x

foxes in my garden · garden stuff · wildlife

The one all about Kit and her cubs

May 8, 2020November 18, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)43 Comments

I know that you’re most likely to be here for the knitting, but fair warning there’s none of that here today. Instead this post is all about my lovely garden visitor Kit and her sweet cubs (eeeek!)

Kit started visiting my garden in February 2019. I’d see her peeking through the broken fence and managed to get a few pictures of her from a distance. She was drawn to our garden by the presence of our hens and when I wasn’t in the garden she’d try every way possible to find a way into their run, causing much panic, consternation and a great many ruffled feathers in the process. But the run, built by my inventive and clever husband, defied all foxy attempts at entry and the hens stayed safe and well. I felt a bit sorry for the fox, who was very thin and scrawny, with a damaged eye and who showed such tenacity and ingenuity in her attempts to get a warm, feathery meal, and so I started to throw her small scraps of food whenever I saw her – it was always possible to know when she was around by the sound of alarmed clucks from the hens.Gradually over a couple of weeks the fox decided that the hens were not worth the bother and so stopped trying to chase and torment them and instead went close enough for them to sound the alarm, whilst seeming to understand that this would result in me appearing from the back door with something nice to eat in my hand. We found she’s partial to leerdammer cheese slices, hot cross buns, raisins, cooked chicken skin, infact anything chickeny (though I never feed her cooked bones as they can splinter into sharp shards), digestive biscuits, bacon rinds but not definitely tuna, which she turns her nose up at.

Back in spring of last year she was visiting sporadically and we’d go a week or more without seeing her and then there she’d be again. I wasn’t sure at that point whether she was male or female but one day in May I took some pictures of her when she visited in daylight and when I looked at them I could clearly see teats. So we knew at that point that she was A. Female and B. had cubs somewhere, and I decided to stop calling her fox and give her a name, Kit (from Kitsune, the fox from Japanese folklore). I hoped so much that she’d bring the cubs to the garden at some point and in June I did once have a brief glimpse of one cub with her but I have a feeling that the cub didn’t make it as we never saw it again. Kit however kept visiting and I kept feeding her little tidbits. The hens grew bored of panic and became complacent, not even glancing up from their corn when she trotted by. I have a lovely video of Kit in front of the run and Bluebell, the biggest hen just looking at her and before we tidied the top of the chicken run ready for new fencing it was covered in a thick layer of ivy and was a favourite place for Kit to curl up and nap on, with the oblivious hens happily pecking below.

As 2019 ticked over into 2020 Kit was visiting daily and I felt very lucky to be regularly seeing such a beautiful wild creature up close. I started to keep a note in my diary of when she visited and in mid February I noticed she was getting rather barrel-like around the middle and it soon became clear she was pregnant again. On the 1st of March she didn’t visit and when she turned up again on March 3rd she was no longer plump, so we knew that she’d had her cubs and within a week her teats were clearly visible. Throughout March and April she’s continued to visit daily for her regular supplementary snacks and has been coming more in the daytime perhaps while the cubs were safely napping in the den. Last monday I heard some funny noises in the garden just before bedtime and when I looked out there were a pair of cubs frolicking on the grass and pouncing on worms. I tried to take some pictures but in the dark they came out blurred and grainy and were not much to look at. We heard them again the next night and on wednesday we saw Kit with one of the cubs. But then on Thursday there was no Kit, and on Friday she didn’t come, although I saw the two cubs in the garden at around 2am, and on Saturday still no Kit and no sign of the cubs and I was starting to worry that something bad might have happened to her.

On Sunday morning I woke up at just before 7am and got up to feed the chickens and just as I was coming back into the house I heard a sound behind me and there was Kit again. I was so pleased to see her and found her a snack, which she promptly carried off to a corner of the garden. There was a movement in the bushes and as she came back to enquire about further snacks a small, plump and fluffy bundle came running after her. I sat on my kitchen floor for the next 40 minutes with my camera, feeling immensely privileged to be witnessing the scene before me as Kit washed and cleaned her three little ones: nibbling at their fur to groom out fleas; snuffling their plump bellies and licking their ears. Like all small children they squirmed and complained and played up, running off to investigate various bits of the garden and giving some of my garden furniture a nibble in the process and she was wonderfully tender and loving with them. Eventually she came right up to the back door again to see if I had one last snack and two of the cubs followed her. By the time they all trotted of into the bushes again I’d taken 240 photos on my camera. So these are the highlights 🙂

I just wanted to add that although there is a small element of trust between us she definitely retains her wild instincts and I’d never try to get close to her. She will come into the garden when we’re outside too, but she keeps her distance and we never approach her but leave it for her to decide how close to us she is comfortable with. I never feed too much and do everything to ensure she does not become dependent on us or in any way tame and I only ever give food to her when she arrives, so she can take it to the cubs herself. When she first arrived I only started to feed her in order that she didn’t chase the hens and this arrangement has become a satisfactory one for all involved parties, she leaves the hens in peace and, most surprisingly to me, they now ignore her 🙂