Red foxes appear in 418 New Hampshire records, scattered across all ten counties with a slight lean to the west and south, Sullivan and Hillsborough counties at the top. This is the fox of open ground, and its map follows the state’s patchwork of fields, farms, and woodland edges.
A mouser at the field’s edge
Red foxes hunt where meadow meets cover, listening for mice and voles beneath grass or snow and dropping on them in a high, pinning pounce. Rabbits, birds, insects, and berries fill out the diet. In New Hampshire that means hayfields, old farms, marsh borders, and suburban openings, with records from the University of New Hampshire’s Horticulture Farm, Sunapee State Park, the clearings of Connecticut Lakes State Forest, and the edges of White Mountain National Forest. A red fox tolerates people better than a gray fox does, which puts it in more headlights and more photographs.
Two peaks, two stories
Reports crest twice, in April and again in November. The spring rise belongs to provisioning, as adults make constant trips back to the den with food for kits. The autumn rise marks dispersal, when the year’s young strike out across unfamiliar country and turn up in places a fox would not normally linger.
Status in New Hampshire
NatureServe ranks the red fox S5, Secure, in New Hampshire, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
