They live in family groups of one breeding pair and the strongest cub from the previous year, making a den under sheds or compost heaps, or in old badger holes. Active for only eight hours a day, they breed in January and February, the males leaving their territory to mate with other females. They rarely live beyond three years and eat birds, mice, beetles, worms, windfall fruit and roadkill, hardly ever foraging in bins. Trevor Williams, of the Fox Project rescue centre in Tunbridge Wells, said: "When people ask what they should be feeding urban foxes, we say, 'Preferably nothing'."