I thought I'd report back on my experience with deterring foxes. In
desperation at what had become the morning presence of 'daily dung' - the
last straw being a fine turd laid in the middle of my ground-based bird
feeder near the house - I invested in the 'Foxwatch' gadget I'd previously
discovered (in the end I got it off Ebay for c.£40). When it arrived I
installed it at the end of my freshly laid and planted raised vegetable beds
at the top of my garden. The following day started off well: for the first
time in over a week there was no sign of a fox near my house. Further up the
garden, however, by the Foxwatch unit itself, 'something' four-footed had
been parading up and down in front of it on the newly raked earth, gone past
it and dug a 6" hole right next to a newly sprouting clematis. I was
instantly suspicious, but at least there were no 'messier' leavings, and I
noticed that the new growth on the tree peony right in front of the clematis
was undamaged. Fox or cat? I wondered...

Next day, more four-footed footprints - again, only on the new beds at the
top of the garden - but a rather unpleasant 'heap' in uncharacteristically
liquid form on one of my new beds, about 6ft behind the Foxwatch. If it was
a cat, why hadn't it buried it, but if a fox, what had it been
eating?...(chicken vindaloo, I speculated..) Atleast I didn't have to scrape
it up off my gravel path, as previously....Anyway, I thought to check the
Foxwatch battery, and having done so found the it was running low - after
only 3 days, when it was supposed to last 3 months. I used a re-chargable 9
volt battery, but it had been lying around for months so I put it on charge
during the day, during most of which it proceeded to snow. (I should mention
that that I'd been out in the garden myself since installing the Foxwatch,
and that since it is activated by any movement, I guess I could have
exhausted the battery myself - it makes a barely audible 'clicking' sound
when the fox-deterring sound is being activated which I'd been noticing.)

In the excitement of the snow, I forgot about putting the Foxwatch out that
night, and the following day it looked like every fox in Kent had been
partying out there over night - including an unmistakable 'message' on the
path near the house, again. In fact, after this I started to be hopeful -
the prints left behind were more profuse than the previous ones I'd noticed,
and the fact that as soon as the Foxwatch was gone whatever-animal-it-was
reverted to its old pattern made it seem likely they were caused by a
solitary cat-with-colic wandering around rather than a bunch of boisterous
foxes.

That night (Monday) I put the Foxwatch back, and to cut a long story short,
there has been no evidence of a fox entering the garden since - despite
seeing one sitting on my next-door neighbour's new heap of grass-clippings
at 6am this morning, which I take to be another good sign.

In conclusion, at the moment I'm pretty pleased with the Foxwatch, but will
report back if I change that view. I might even invest in a Ca****ch, if the
neighbourhood moggies become too intrusive! Now, if only there was a
Pigeonwatch!...

Mark