Gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus)
Look! Up in that tree! It’s a bird! It’s a…fox?!
Yup. This week’s crawly is an arboreal canine. Meet the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) one of Oregon’s prettiest and most petite members of the Canidae Family.
How small are they? (don’t worry – we’ll get back to the whole tree thing!) Gray foxes are truly tiny! On average they are 24 inches in length with a 13-inch tail and they weigh an just 12 pounds.
Between their diminutive size and their tree climbing prowess it’s no wonder one of the nicknames for the gray fox is the cat fox. Their faces are also quite cat-like.
Gray foxes can be found in nearly all states in the US. Here in Oregon, they are almost always found west of the Cascades, so right here in our own backyards.
If you’ve never seen a gray fox (or at least one that isn’t dead on the highway), don’t feel bad. They are very shy and elusive critters.
Their secretive nature goes back to their small size and nocturnal nature. While gray foxes are omnivores and hunters, they’re just as likely to end up as prey. Gray foxes can become a meal for cougars, eagles, owls, larger hawks and coyotes. Gray fox fur isn’t as coveted as that of other foxes, but they are still hunted for fur, and as mentioned above they are often killed by vehicles.
For all that, gray foxes can live up to 10 years in the wild and much longer in zoos and wildlife refuges.
Their wide-ranging diet allows them to forage with relative ease as they’ll eat just about anything. Their main prey is small rodents, but they will also eat birds and amphibians as well as insects and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.
Their tree climbing ability comes in handy for both safety and nutritional reasons. They’ll climb trees to escape predators, to rest and to chow down on fresh fruit. They’ve been seen as high up as 20 feet.
How do they climb so well? They have rotating wrists and semi-retractable claws which help them climb up. They aren’t great at climbing down, and do sometimes suffer injuries, but they keep on climbing.
Outside of their mating and kit-raising season, gray foxes are solitary animals and will often snooze the day away up in a tree. When it comes to raising kiddos, they prefer an underground den.
Foxes form monogamous pairs in February or March. The females will have between three to seven kits who will be weaned at around 10 weeks. The male will provide food for the mom fox and the kits until the kits are old enough to venture out of the den with their parents.
The family will stay together until late fall when the kits will go off to find their own territories and the mom and dad foxes will live the life independent until the following spring when they get back together.
Unlike the bigger, bolder red foxes, gray foxes shy away from humans and aren’t generally found in suburban or urban areas. Luckily we have lots of rural and forested areas around where we just might catch sight of one of these mysterious creatures.