[3759allen]

i found what looked like a rabbit hole in my spud patch this morning. i'm assuming it's rabbits but they don't seem to have eaten anything, just dug a hole.

we don't have rabbits in the area really, never even seen one in the neighbour hood. i also can't see any tracks where they have come into the garden (they could come up the drive i suppose)

could this be anything else?

i'm going to keep having a look around over the night to see if i can spot it.

[Growster...]

Quite often it's a badger, they've done the same on 'The Patch', but they've not dug up much. I found several holes in the grass nearby too, where they forage for worms

[cadalot]

Foxes do that on my plot all the time

[Markw]

Same as Cadalot I had foxes digging holes in my potato plot last year.

[Comfreypatch]

Yes foxes do that on our allotment.

[JayG]

Foxes round here usually dig slightly tapering holes, sometimes at an angle, when they think they have 'found' something, but in the last few weeks they have dug holes about a foot deep and use them several times as a toilet before deciding to dig a new one nearby and repeat the process. Lovely! 

Smaller holes appear here and there which are probably abandoned attempts by squirrels to either find or hide food, but they have tried twice in the past few weeks to dig up one of my two remaining oriental lilies (they ate the other one early this spring.)

Just to add to the 'wildlife' aggravations I have seen a lot more cat poo on my garden this year than in previous years - I suspect there are fewer and fewer people in the area with cultivated and sometimes invitingly bare patches of soil, and there are definitely no fewer cats... 

[Salmo]

Foxes round here usually dig slightly tapering holes, sometimes at an angle, when they think they have 'found' something, but in the last few weeks they have dug holes about a foot deep and use them several times as a toilet before deciding to dig a new one nearby and repeat the process. Lovely! 

.

Holes filled with poo is badgers. Disgusting. Like cattle you could get TB from that.

[JayG]

Just spent a very unenjoyable half hour gurgling the difference between fox and badger poo - you could be right Salmo but I hope you're not, especially as the latrines in question are right next to my sweet corn which I am still harvesting.

I'm trying to gear myself up to do the pong test, which is apparently a reliable way of telling the difference, although as you say the digging of, and multiple use of, latrines is much more characteristic of badgers than foxes.

Feeling a bit under siege at the moment, particularly as this would be the first known encounter with the 'b' word in the 15 years I've lived here. 

[3759allen]

on probability of the area i live in i would say foxes may be the ones to blame.

this is only the second time in 18 months that we've had any digging, so i can put up with that to be honest.

on the up side if it was a fox it hasn't actually eaten or really damaged anything.

[Salmo]

on probability of the area i live in i would say foxes may be the ones to blame.

this is only the second time in 18 months that we've had any digging, so i can put up with that to be honest.

on the up side if it was a fox it hasn't actually eaten or really damaged anything.

http://www.discoverwildlife.com/british-wildlife/how-identify-animal-droppings

[Comfreypatch]

Badgers usually make a terrible mess trampling over everything. More likely to be foxes. They dig holes around the potatoes on our allotment site. I think a characteristic of fox poo is that it is very pointed at one end, think I heard this somewhere although I may be wrong, but seems unlikely that I would have dreamt up such a bizarre statement.

[beesrus]

Definitely foxes on my plot last night digging away. A couple of the last sweet corn were munched and two lovely butternuts disappeared into thin air, so cut and took another 5 ripe ones home with me... they had better not invade the greenhouse. Seems like every little animal is busy harvesting at the moment. It's a strange emotion, on the one hand I'm quite ok that there's a happy animal family munching my hard work somewhere, and apparently foxes are excellent parents... that's sort of sharing the space, but I can get a bit irked when quite a few things go at once, as that's just plain greedy. I've been lucky this year so far, or am I getting a bit more canny. Daily visits are definitely required at the moment or else it's the equivalent of leaving your bicycle unlocked in a town centre overnight.
Sweet corn is definitely a crop not to grow anywhere near a main animal thoroughfare.

[cadalot]

Look like the foxes are developing a taste for courgette from what I saw today on my plot, saves finding someone to give them too I guess

[barley]

if its about a bunny size hole it could also be a Rat 

or if smaller voles - both will be a pest to crops

[JayG]

Just spent a very unenjoyable half hour gurgling the difference between fox and badger poo - you could be right Salmo but I hope you're not, especially as the latrines in question are right next to my sweet corn which I am still harvesting.

I'm trying to gear myself up to do the pong test, which is apparently a reliable way of telling the difference, although as you say the digging of, and multiple use of, latrines is much more characteristic of badgers than foxes.

Feeling a bit under siege at the moment, particularly as this would be the first known encounter with the 'b' word in the 15 years I've lived here. 

Just been speaking to one of my neighbours - her OH saw a badger trotting down our road a few nights ago. 

Only need a few stampeding herds of muntjac now and I'll have the complete set of larger mammals to contend with!