When you think “fox,” you might imagine your classic, straight-out-of-central-casting idea of fox: white chest and chin, russet body, white-tipped tail. Several fit the bill that I regularly encounter on early mornings in my wooded city neighborhood, nonchalantly angling their way across yards or trotting down the street.
But Virginia has another fox you are less likely to see. A fox of a different color. Smaller and more elusive than its coppery cousin, the gray fox is a bit of a mystery among Virginia’s native species. Where are they found in the Commonwealth? Are populations stable or declining?
These are questions which Virginia Tech Ph.D. candidate Victoria Monette is hoping to begin to answer through an ambitious, multi-year research project spanning the entire state, dubbed the Virginia Gray Fox Project (VGFP).
“There has not been a lot of work that has focused strictly on gray foxes in Virginia,” says Monette. Anecdotal reports, though, suggest their numbers may be decreasing, not only in Virginia, but throughout a range that stretches from South and Central America to the Canadian border—possibly due to competition with other small-animal predators like red foxes, bobcats, and the expanding population of coyotes. With her study, Monette hopes to build a more comprehensive picture of their presence in Virginia and seek any evidence of changes in their historical distribution or numbers.
To accomplish these goals, she is relying primarily on two resources: trail cameras and a whole lot of legwork. In the first season alone, Monette anticipates, “the VGFP team will end the field season with roughly 400 camera locations across the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, covering an area of 16,300 square miles.” She has also solicited the help of private landowners who have set an additional 50 cameras for the project. Future field seasons will cover the Piedmont and coastal plain regions. (Landowners interested in participating can find out more by searching “Virginia Gray Fox Project” on Facebook.) “Virginia is huge, so
if people have their own trail cameras and are willing to set them and follow my protocols, it’s really helpful. It means a physical location I don’t have to get to,” she says.
If you have gray foxes on your land, would you know it? To tell the difference between a gray fox and a red fox with a quick glance might not necessarily be easy, says Monette. “Gray foxes actually have red coloration on their ears, their neck, their legs, and their underbelly.” However, they are smaller than reds, and “look like they are wearing a gray cape over their shoulders and back.” The tip of the gray fox’s long, bushy tail is black—another giveaway. But there’s not much risk you’d confuse a gray fox with coyotes, which are much taller, she says.
Both red and gray fox females share the same short, high-pitched cry you might hear early on a winter morning. It sounds unnervingly like a human shriek, but “it’s her ‘come hither, I am available,’ call to male foxes. Males have their own, longer shriek, as well as a raspy bark,” says Monette. The males and females form breeding pairs in late winter and stay together to raise their young through the summer.
Also like red foxes, gray foxes are omnivorous, with a diet that ranges from berries and plants to insects and small mammals like mice, rabbits, and squirrels. But gray foxes have one surprising skill that sets them apart and gives them a literal leg up: they can climb trees. “Their claws are partly retractable,” Monette explains, “and the curvature of the claws allows them to grip onto the tree bark to climb up.” This handy (pawsy?) talent has earned gray foxes the occasional nickname “cat fox” or “tree fox,” and it expands their diet by allowing them to prey on birds and birds’ nests, says Monette, while also providing the foxes a way to escape from danger.
For this reason, gray foxes “have largely been associated with forested areas,” she continues. “For the project, I expect to see they are more common along forest edge habitats where they have access to fields that are a great place for hunting mice and small rodents, but they have access to the forest where they can get up into the trees when they need to.”
She expects she might be surprised, though, by what the cameras reveal. “Gray foxes are elusive and have that sneaky ability to be in the landscape and go unnoticed. They’re definitely in areas where people say, ‘We don’t have those.’”
This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue.
