Maine’s 661 red fox records spread from one end of the state to the other, thickest in Hancock and Cumberland counties and reaching from Acadia National Park’s meadow margins to the Kennebunk Plains and the farm country of Oxford County. It is a map of edge habitat rather than deep wilderness.
A hunter of open edges
The red fox makes its living where cover meets open ground: field borders, blueberry barrens, salt marsh edges, and roadsides. It hunts mostly mice and voles, listening for movement under grass or snow before pinning the prey with a high, mousing pounce, and it rounds out the year with rabbits, birds, berries, and carrion. That flexibility lets it live close to people, and many Maine records come from the settled southern counties rather than the Maine North Woods.
Spring dens and winter tracks
Counts crest from April through July, when adults are provisioning a den of kits and the young foxes themselves begin appearing near the den entrance. Foxes stay active through the coldest months, and their narrow, straight line of tracks across fresh snow is often the clearest winter sign of one working a field at night.
Status in Maine
NatureServe ranks the red fox S5, Secure, in Maine, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
