Now meet the real Fantastic Mr Fox

It's the real-life Fantastic Mr Fox – after springing four feet into the air, this super-nimble urban scavenger landed on a narrow bird table designed for much tinier creatures.

The amazing feat of agility was captured by retired GP practice manager Wendy Hollis in whose suburban Wolverhampton garden this charming scene took place.

Foxes, once mostly confined to the countryside, are becoming almost as common in cities as stray cats.

It is estimated that more than 30,000 of them have moved into urban areas – one was even spotted in Downing Street.

Wendy's visitor, whose face was bloody and scarred, turned up on her bird table in Finchfield on Tuesday to snatch some scraps. And he remained on the perch scooping up a selection of titbits for 20 minutes, to the delight of Wendy and her husband Brian. Driving instructor Brian, aged 67, was the first to spot the animal from the kitchen of the couple's Finchfield home.

He called Wendy who grabbed a camera to record the scene. She said: "I thought he wanted to show me a new bird – we get a lot. I couldn't believe it when I saw a fox on the table.

"It was probably attracted to the leftover catfood we put out for the magpies. But he also ate the seeds and nuts left for the little birds. There was bread and bits of cake, too – he polished off the lot. We don't know how he got up there, it's not an easy place to land."

The 65-year-old bird lover regularly feeds the local feathered population, attracting robins, blackbirds, bluetits, thrushes and woodpeckers, that visit her Finchfield Road back garden. "We put out food for stray cats from around the neighbourhood, too – now we're wondering if foxes come in the night and eat it all," she said.

"We've seen foxes in the garden before but just fleetingly. Occasionally they come up to the back door but not often. He was obviously hungry because he didn't go until every scrap was gone. It was such an unusual sight, and fun to watch."