What Does a Fox Den Look Like? Earths, Holes and How to Tell

Fox holes are easy to find once you know what a fox wants from one: a dry bank, cover overhead, an escape route, and as little disturbance as possible. Riverbanks, hedge bottoms, old quarry faces, railway embankments, root plates of fallen trees, and — in towns — the space under sheds and decking all qualify.

The entrance#

• Size: roughly 20–30 cm across, usually wider than it is tall — an oval rather than a circle.
• Spoil: a fan of loose soil below the entrance, often with visible claw grooves, and a polished, smooth lip where the animal passes through.
• Number: several entrances is normal. A large earth may have four or more, and old badger workings taken over by foxes can have many.
• Debris: bones, feathers, fur, eggshell, and in towns food wrappers and chewed plastic scattered around the mouth.
• Smell: unmistakably musky and strong, particularly on damp days. This is the single best confirmation.

Is it in use?#

Inside#

A breeding earth typically runs 1–3 metres of tunnel to a nesting chamber, though systems inherited from badgers can be far more extensive. There is no bedding: cubs lie on bare earth, which is one difference from a badger sett. Vixens keep the chamber reasonably clean but the area outside becomes progressively more littered as cubs grow.

Most vixens maintain more than one earth and will move a litter — carrying cubs one at a time — if the site is disturbed, flooded or infested with fleas. That is the main reason not to interfere: a forced move puts cubs at real risk. The cub timeline is set out in fox cubs: the first year.

When dens are used#

Contrary to the picture in children's books, adult foxes do not live underground. Outside the breeding season they lie up above ground in brambles, bracken, long grass, on flat roofs or under garden decking, moving between several favoured spots. Earths become central from March, when cubs are born, and are largely abandoned by July or August.

If a fox has denned under your shed#

1. Wait. The family will leave by midsummer of its own accord. Blocking an occupied earth can seal cubs in.
2. Do not dig or poke. Disturbance triggers a move, and moves kill cubs.
3. Once empty (August onwards), exclude properly: weld mesh buried 30 cm and turned outwards.
4. Remove the attraction at the same time — food sources are covered in how to get rid of foxes.

If you want to confirm what is using a hole without disturbing it, work the ground around it instead: prints in the spoil, scat on nearby stumps and hair on wire all give the answer, as described in fox tracks and field signs.

Where urban foxes den#

In towns, the classic bank-and-tree-root earth is replaced by whatever offers the same combination of dry ground, cover and quiet. The commonest sites are beneath garden sheds, under decking, in the void below a conservatory or extension, inside overgrown bramble, in disused garages, and along railway embankments — which function as continuous linear habitat through otherwise built-up ground.

The tell is usually a worn entry point at the base of a structure with polished, hair-caught edges and a scatter of soil, rather than a recognisable hole in a bank. Add prey remains, a musky smell and — from May — chewed rubbish and flattened grass, and the identification is straightforward. What to do about it depends entirely on the month, as set out in how to get rid of foxes.