The red fox appears in 4955 Maryland records spanning every county, from Assateague Island National Seashore on the coast through the suburban corridor of Montgomery, Howard, and Baltimore counties, where sightings are densest, and west into farm and forest country along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
An edge hunter that works by ear
A red fox makes its living on mice, voles, and rabbits, hunting field edges, fencerows, and powerline cuts by sound, then pinning prey with the familiar high pounce after triangulating rustles under grass or snow. It dens in burrows it digs or borrows, and its willingness to eat almost anything, berries, insects, carrion, spilled feed, lets it live comfortably inside Maryland’s suburbs as well as its quietest corners.
Spring belongs to the kits
Records run all year but crest in April and May, when vixens are nursing litters underground and both parents hunt conspicuously through daylight hours to provision growing kits. By midsummer the young foxes wait at the den mouth at dusk, and by fall they disperse, some traveling many miles to claim ground of their own.
Status in Maryland
NatureServe ranks the red fox S5, Secure, in Maryland, and the species is treated as native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
